Key takeaways
- Every UK food business must be able to say, accurately, which of the 14 allergens are in each dish. A written matrix is how most kitchens do it.
- Fill it in from recipes and supplier specifications, not from memory — allergens hide in stocks, sauces, dressings and garnishes.
- Use 'may contain' only for a real cross-contamination risk you cannot control. Blanket warnings help nobody.
- Date it, review it whenever anything changes, and make sure every member of staff uses the same copy.
What an allergen matrix is
An allergen matrix (sometimes called an allergen chart or allergen grid) is a table with your dishes down the side and the 14 regulated allergens across the top. A tick in a cell means that dish contains that allergen as an ingredient. Many businesses add a second symbol for “may contain”, meaning the dish does not contain the allergen as an ingredient but there is a cross-contamination risk in how it is made.
It is the one document a customer with an allergy, a member of front-of-house staff and an environmental health officer all want to see. Done well, it answers the question “can I eat this?” in seconds and without anyone having to remember a recipe.
When a UK food business needs one
UK food information law (the retained EU Food Information to Consumers Regulation, applied by the Food Information Regulations 2014) requires allergen information for the 14 allergens to be provided for all food, however it is sold. How you provide it depends on how the food is sold:
- Non-prepacked (loose) food — restaurant and café meals, takeaways, deli counters, bakery counters, catering. Allergen information must be available, in writing or verbally. If it is given verbally, a written notice must tell customers where to ask. The matrix is the standard way to meet this.
- Prepacked for direct sale (PPDS)— food you pack on the premises before the customer chooses it, such as a chiller of sandwiches. Since Natasha’s Law (1 October 2021) this needs a label with the name of the food and a full ingredients list with the allergens emphasised. Our Natasha’s Law guide covers it.
- Distance selling — online, app and phone orders. Allergen information must be available before the purchase is made and again when the food is delivered. A matrix on your website does the first half of that job.
How to fill it in
- Work from written recipes. List every ingredient in each dish, including sub-recipes: the stock in the soup, the dressing on the salad, the oil in the fryer, the garnish. If a dish has no written recipe, that is the first thing to fix.
- Check each ingredient against its specification.Read the label or the supplier’s product specification for every bought-in product. Soy sauce contains wheat as well as soya; Worcestershire sauce contains fish; most stock cubes contain celery; many sausages contain sulphites; some breads contain lupin or sesame.
- Ask suppliers when the spec is unclear. Keep the answer in writing. If you cannot get a spec, assume the worst and consider a different product.
- Tick “contains” for every allergen that is an ingredient, however small the quantity. There is no minimum amount, with one exception: sulphur dioxide and sulphites are declared at more than 10 mg per kg or litre.
- Decide may-contain risks from your process, not your fears. Shared fryers, shared slicers and toasters, open-topping stations and loose flour in the air are genuine risks. Mark those. Do not mark an allergen that is simply somewhere in the building.
- Add a note where staff need to ask a question— “ask which dressing”, “available without feta”. The note column prints with the matrix.
Keeping it current
Most allergen incidents are not caused by a missing matrix. They are caused by a matrix that was right when it was written and wrong by the time it was used: a supplier changed a recipe, a chef substituted an ingredient on a busy night, a special went on the board without anyone updating the chart. To keep it current:
- Date every version, and make the date part of the printed sheet.
- Review it whenever a recipe, an ingredient, a supplier or the menu changes.
- Have one copy of the truth. Kitchen, counter and website should all be printed from the same version.
- Brief staff on every change, and make “check the matrix” the answer to every allergen question.
- Re-check supplier specifications periodically — manufacturers change recipes without warning.
This is the part a spreadsheet cannot do for you. In Recipee the matrix is generated from the recipes themselves, so when an ingredient changes the matrix, the labels and the menu all change with it.
Common mistakes
- Blanket may-contain warnings on every dish. Customers stop trusting the chart and start guessing.
- Forgetting the extras: sides, sauces, garnishes, bread served with the dish, the oil things are fried in.
- Specials and substitutions that never make it onto the chart.
- Old copies in circulation. One stale printout at the till undoes the rest.
- Verbal answers that contradict the matrix. If staff say one thing and the chart says another, you have no reliable information at all.
- Treating “free from” as a casual claim.“Gluten free” is a regulated claim (20 mg/kg or less); “no gluten-containing ingredients” is a different, weaker statement. Only say what you can prove.