Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died aged 15 after eating a baguette containing sesame that was not listed on the packaging. The law that carries her name has been in force since October 2021. Many caterers still follow allergens in a spreadsheet, on a recipe card, or by word of mouth. The March 2025 expansion added new requirements for non-prepacked food. This guide covers what UK law requires, where caterers are most at risk, and how allergen tracking should work in practice.
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There are two distinct obligations under UK food allergen law, and caterers need to understand both.
Food prepacked for direct sale must carry a label. It shows the name of the food, and every ingredient, heaviest first. It also shows every one of the 14 major allergens in it, marked clearly in bold, capitals or underline. PPDS means food packed at the same place where it is sold. The packing happens before the customer orders it, or picks it up.
For caterers, PPDS catches more products than many realise. Boxed lunches assembled in the kitchen before the client orders. Individually wrapped sandwiches in a display. Pre-portioned desserts in sealed containers. Labelled meal trays for corporate deliveries. Food may be sealed or wrapped before the customer chooses it, and they cannot change what is inside. It is then PPDS, and it must carry a full label.
From March 2025, guidance was strengthened for non-prepacked food (buffet platters, open food displays, food served directly to the customer). Providers of non-prepacked products should make consumers aware of the presence of any allergens in writing, as well as verbally. Previously, a spoken answer alone was enough for non-prepacked food. The change means caterers now need written allergen information available for buffets, canapes, plated meals, and any food served without individual packaging.
The risk is not theoretical. The FSA investigates allergen incidents. Local authority environmental health officers inspect catering businesses. Prosecution for allergen-related harm can result in fines, closure, and criminal charges. These are the common failure points.
At minimum, an allergen tracking system for caterers needs five capabilities.
Kafoodle is the strongest dedicated option. It tracks all 14 allergens through every recipe, prints PPDS labels that meet the law, gives you the nutrition figures, and handles recipe costing. The platform is UK-built and widely used. The limitation is that Kafoodle is a recipe and compliance tool, not a catering management platform. You need a separate system for event management, client CRM, and invoicing.
Nutritics is another option, offering allergen tracking alongside detailed nutritional analysis. Originally designed for dietitians and food service, it can be used by caterers who need calorie counts and nutritional data alongside allergen information.
FoodDocs offers food safety management including allergen tracking and HACCP documentation. More focused on compliance documentation than recipe management.
Planglow LabelLogic and IndiCater focus specifically on food labelling, including PPDS-compliant labels with allergen highlighting. These are labelling tools rather than recipe management platforms. They generate correct labels but do not manage the underlying recipe data or track allergens through menu variations.
None of the catering management platforms covered in our catering software comparison include allergen tracking that meets the standard described above. Spoonfed does not track allergens. CaterSOFT does not track allergens. Caterease does not track allergens. The allergen tracking tools (Kafoodle, Nutritics) do not handle event management or invoicing. Caterers are left running two or more systems that do not talk to each other.
Take a wedding with 120 guests, 8 dietary needs, 3 courses and labelled canapes. The allergen data must travel the whole way. From the recipe, to the menu, to the need of one guest, to the kitchen sheet, and to the label printer. In the current tool ecosystem, that flow is broken at every handoff point.
The law asks one thing of you, and it asks it after the event. Show that this label matched this dish, made from this recipe, on this day.
Most caterers hold that as documents. A recipe card, a spreadsheet, a printed label. Each one is written by a person, so each can be rewritten by a person, and nothing shows that it was. Change one ingredient and four documents can disagree. That is exactly what an environmental health officer finds.
On engage.re an ingredient, a recipe, a dish, a menu, a guest requirement and a label are declared once, with permanent identifiers. Change the ingredient, and every dish and every label that uses it changes with it, because they are the same data. Every action goes to a signed log, and each entry holds the hash of the one before it. You can therefore prove that the label you printed matches the recipe you used.
Every caterer we build for shares that foundation, so no single business pays to create it. We explain that in bespoke software for a whole sector. We give the cost in what does it cost to own and run your own systems.
A bespoke system built for a catering operation can connect what off-the-shelf tools leave disconnected. Ingredients with allergen data at the base. Recipes built from ingredients with allergens calculated automatically. Event menus built from recipes with allergens visible. Guest dietary requirements matched against menu allergens with conflicts flagged. Kitchen production sheets that show allergen information per dish per table. PPDS labels generated directly from recipe data. Written allergen information produced for buffet displays.
This is not a hypothetical architecture. It is how allergen tracking should work in any food business handling more than a handful of recipes. No ready-made tool does that, and the reason is simple. Different companies built the catering platforms and the food compliance platforms, for different purposes. A bespoke system connects them because it is built for your specific operation from the start.
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You can see this in a working system. The ESRE live catering demo opens with no login, and it shows the allergen work in this guide. Sign in as kitchen and see the Natasha's Law matrix update live, or as events and enter an order with allergens flagged. It is a working system, not a screenshot.