Natasha's Law UK: Cafés & Food-to-Go Guide for 2026

Natasha's Law has changed how every UK café, sandwich shop, deli, takeaway and food-to-go operator handles allergen information. Five years after it came into force, many independent businesses still aren't sure exactly what's required — and which of their products are caught by it.

This guide explains Natasha's Law in plain English, walks through the practical implications for cafés and food-to-go businesses, and ends with a short compliance checklist you can act on this week.

Natasha's Law is the everyday name for an amendment to the Food Information Regulations 2014, which came into force on 1 October 2021 across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (with Scotland following shortly after).

It is named after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, a 15-year-old who died in 2016 after eating a baguette that contained sesame, an allergen not declared on the packaging. The law was introduced to close the loophole that allowed food *pre-packed for direct sale* — sandwiches, salads, pastries, ready-to-eat hot food — to be sold without a full ingredients label.

The result: any food a UK business packs on-site before a customer chooses it now needs a full ingredients label, with the 14 regulated allergens clearly emphasised.

The category Natasha's Law applies to is called PPDS — pre-packed for direct sale. A product is PPDS when all of the following are true:

1. 1It's in packaging before the customer chooses it (not made to order).
2. 2It's offered for sale at the same premises where it was packed.
3. 3The customer doesn't interact with the staff person who packed it during the actual purchase.

Classic café and food-to-go examples include:

• A sandwich pre-made and wrapped for the chiller cabinet.
• A salad bowl with a lid placed in the grab-and-go fridge.
• A pastry put into a paper bag in advance and lined up by the till.
• A bottle of homemade soup labelled and placed on the shelf.

Items that are not PPDS include food made to order at the counter, food packed for takeaway *after* the customer has ordered it, and packaged products supplied by a third-party brand (those follow standard FIC labelling rules from the manufacturer).

If you're not sure, the FSA's PPDS guidance walks through the decision in detail.

UK law recognises 14 allergens. Every PPDS label must list ingredients with these emphasised — typically by bold, *italic*, CAPITALS, or contrasting colour:

1. 1Celery
2. 2Cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats and their hybrids)
3. 3Crustaceans
4. 4Eggs
5. 5Fish
6. 6Lupin
7. 7Milk
8. 8Molluscs
9. 9Mustard
10. 10Peanuts
11. 11Sesame
12. 12Soybeans
13. 13Sulphur dioxide and sulphites (at concentrations above 10mg/kg or 10mg/L)
14. 14Tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, brazils, pistachios, macadamias)

For a deeper breakdown, see our guide to the 14 UK food allergens explained.

For each PPDS item, the label must show:

• The product name — *"Tuna Mayo Sandwich"*, not *"Sandwich"*.
• A full ingredients list, in descending weight order, with the 14 allergens emphasised wherever they appear.

For all other food — items made to order, items served on a plate, items behind the counter — you must still provide accurate allergen information to customers on request. This is where digital tools like a QR code allergen menu come in: customers can scan and check for themselves, and staff stop being the single point of failure.

The most common café & food-to-go mistakes

• Treating sandwiches as "made to order" when they're not. If you pre-make 30 BLTs at 7am and stack them in the chiller, those are PPDS. The fact that a customer picks one up doesn't change that.
• Listing "may contain" but missing the actual ingredients. "May contain" is for cross-contamination — it doesn't replace the ingredients list.
• Using generic templates from suppliers. If your recipe differs even slightly (different bread, different mayo), the label must reflect what's actually in your version.
• Verbal-only allergen info for non-PPDS items. It's legal, but it's high risk. The FSA's 2025 guidance strongly encourages written allergen information directly on menus.

Local authorities enforce Natasha's Law through Environmental Health Officers. Breaches can result in:

• Improvement notices — formal warnings requiring you to fix the issue within a set period.
• Fixed penalty notices — typically a few hundred pounds per offence.
• Prosecution — for serious or repeated breaches, with unlimited fines.
• Reputation damage — local authority enforcement actions are often public.

The most serious consequence, however, is what the law was passed to prevent: a customer being seriously harmed or killed by an allergen they weren't warned about.

For more on what an EHO inspection looks like in practice, see Preparing for an EHO allergen inspection.

Use this as a starting point — print it, walk your venue, and tick off each line.

1. 1Identify every PPDS item you sell. Cross-check sandwiches, wraps, salads, pastries, bottled drinks, soups, anything pre-packed on-site.
2. 2Write a full ingredients list for every PPDS item, in descending weight order.
3. 3Emphasise all 14 allergens wherever they appear in those ingredients (bold, capitals, italics or contrasting colour — pick one and use it consistently).
4. 4Put labels physically on the packaging before items go on display. Shelf-edge labels are not enough on their own.
5. 5Centralise your allergen data so every label, menu and QR code pulls from the same source. Using a tool like Allergenius means a recipe change updates everywhere at once.
6. 6Provide allergen information for non-PPDS items too — a digital allergen menu or printed allergen matrix works. The free allergen matrix template is a quick starting point.
7. 7Train every member of staff — including new starters and weekend cover — on what PPDS is, the 14 allergens, and how to handle a customer query. The allergen training guide for UK staff covers the essentials.
8. 8Audit yourself quarterly. Walk the chiller, the grab-and-go shelves and the counter as if you were an EHO. Check that every PPDS item has a complete, accurate label.

Allergenius doesn't print PPDS labels — that's something you'll handle in your kitchen workflow. What it does do is give you one accurate source of truth for the allergens in every dish and product on your menu. From there:

• Customers scan a QR code and see all 14 allergens per item, filterable by their own allergies.
• Staff stop being the single point of failure for allergen questions.
• You keep an audit-ready record for EHO inspections.

For a deeper look at how this works for café and food-to-go operators, see Allergen software for food-to-go and Allergen software for cafés. The original Natasha's Law compliance overview covers the wider regulatory picture.

• Natasha's Law applies to PPDS — anything you pack on-site before the customer chooses it.
• Every PPDS item needs a full ingredients label with the 14 allergens emphasised.
• Non-PPDS items still need accurate allergen information available to customers — a QR allergen menu is the most reliable way to do that at scale.
• Treat it as a system, not a one-off project. Recipes change, suppliers change, staff change. Your allergen data has to keep up.

Natasha's Law isn't going anywhere. The cafés and food-to-go operators that handle it well treat it as a foundation of how their kitchen runs — not paperwork they revisit once a year.