Natasha’s Law Labelling Software for Restaurants
Restaurants often assume Natasha’s Law does not apply to them because food is made to order. Then they add a grab-and-go fridge. This covers exactly which restaurant food is PPDS, what labelling software has to produce, and how to tell the two categories apart.
Which restaurant food is PPDS
The distinction is timing and packaging, not the food itself. The same brownie is PPDS in the fridge and not PPDS when you box it after someone asks.
What labelling software has to produce
- Name of the food — descriptive, not just a menu name
- Full ingredient list in descending weight order
- The 14 allergens emphasised within that list, consistently
- Compound ingredients broken out into sub-ingredients
- Use-by or best-before, correctly chosen for the product
- Storage conditions where relevant, and your business name and address
The full item-by-item version is in the Natasha’s Law checklist. What software adds is that the label is generated from the recipe, so changing a supplier ingredient reaches the label without anyone remembering to reprint.
The restaurant-specific problem
Restaurant menus change constantly — specials, substitutions when a delivery is short, seasonal swaps. Each change is a potential label change for anything pre-packed, and the kitchen making the substitution is rarely the person who prints labels.
That is the failure mode worth designing against: a chef swaps an ingredient at 6pm on a Friday and the grab-and-go labels printed that morning are now wrong. Systems where the label derives from the recipe at least make the discrepancy visible; systems where labels are a separate Word document do not.
A practical setup
- Separate your menu into made-to-order and pre-packed. Only the second needs labels.
- Build ingredient records with allergen data for everything in the pre-packed range first — that is a much shorter list than your full menu.
- Generate labels from those recipes rather than maintaining a template.
- Put a rule in place: no substitution on a pre-packed line without a label check.
- Keep an allergen matrix for the made-to-order menu, which covers the information-on-request obligation.
Frequently asked questions
Does Natasha’s Law apply to restaurants? To any pre-packed for direct sale item you offer — which most restaurants have as soon as they sell anything from a fridge or counter display.
Do we need labels for delivery orders? Made-to-order delivery is not PPDS, but allergen information must accompany the order. Pre-packed items sent with it do need labels.