Allergen table and notice generator

The two documents you actually need

Most allergen tools give you one table and stop. Under EU rules the table alone is only half of it: if your staff answer allergen questions verbally, the written record has to exist AND a notice has to tell guests it is available. This generator prints both from the same data — a landscape table of dishes against the 14 allergens, and a portrait notice for the wall or the menu holder.

How to build your allergen table

• Type your dishes, or import them from a menu you built with our menu maker — allergen tags come across with them.
• Tick the allergens in each dish. All 14 EU allergens, in the order the regulation lists them.
• Pick your code style: numbers 1–14, letters A–R, or spelled out in full.
• Add a per-dish note where it matters — 'fried in shared oil' is the kind of thing that saves an argument.
• Name whoever signed the record off and date it, then print both documents.

Numbers or letters — which code should you use?

Both are conventions rather than law: the regulation requires the information, not a particular shorthand. Numbers 1–14 follow the order the allergens are listed in Annex II of EU 1169/2011 and are common in Germany. Letters A–R are the Austrian convention, widely used across German-speaking hospitality; the set deliberately skips I, J, K and Q so a code is never misread as a digit or as its neighbour. Whichever you choose, print the legend wherever you print the codes — a code without its key is not information.

The 14 allergens, in the order that defines the numbering

• 1 Cereals containing gluten · 2 Crustaceans · 3 Eggs · 4 Fish · 5 Peanuts
• 6 Soybeans · 7 Milk · 8 Nuts · 9 Celery · 10 Mustard
• 11 Sesame · 12 Sulphur dioxide and sulphites · 13 Lupin · 14 Molluscs
• The order is not cosmetic: it is what the numeric convention encodes, so renumbering would mislabel every printed menu.

What the rules actually ask of you

EU Regulation 1169/2011 requires the 14 named allergens to be disclosed for non-prepacked food, and restaurant dishes are non-prepacked food. Germany implements it through the LMIDV: the information has to exist in written form, and you may inform guests orally only where that written record is available on request and a notice says so. In Germany enforcement and fines sit with each Bundesland and differ from state to state; other member states have their own implementing rules. The data here comes from your kitchen and this is not legal advice — but the paperwork shape is right, and it costs nothing.

Keeping it true after the first print

An allergen table is only useful while it is current, and it goes stale the way a printed menu does: a supplier changes, a recipe is tweaked, someone swaps the oil. Two habits help. Re-check the table whenever a recipe changes rather than on a schedule, because recipes do not change on a schedule. And keep the responsible name and date on it, so anyone picking it up knows how old it is. If you would rather this maintained itself, a live menu carries allergen tags on the dish and updates the moment you edit it — free for one menu.

Common mistakes worth avoiding

• Codes with no legend. A '7' next to a dish means nothing on its own.
• 'May contain' as a substitute for knowing. Cross-contamination notes belong in the note column, not instead of the table.
• One table for two kitchens. If a second site cooks differently, it needs its own record.
• Filing it and forgetting it. An undated table nobody has touched in two years is worse than none, because it looks authoritative.
• Leaving every box empty because a dish 'has no allergens'. That is possible, but it is worth a second look — this tool flags untagged dishes for exactly that reason.