Allergen Signage Made Simple: Ireland's Rules in Plain English
by CWDH, 4 min reading time
Every restaurant, café, pub, takeaway, food stall and delivery kitchen in Ireland is required to tell customers, in writing, which allergens are in the food it sells loose. Not verbally when asked — in writing, available before the customer buys. It is one of the most-inspected rules in Irish food service, and one of the easiest to get right once you understand what is actually required. Here it is in plain English.
What the law actually says
The requirement comes from S.I. No. 489 of 2014 (updated by S.I. No. 656 of 2024), which gives effect in Ireland to the EU's food information rules (Regulation 1169/2011) for non-prepacked food — that is, food sold loose or made to order rather than factory-packaged. The Irish rules go further than many EU countries: the allergen information must be in written form, in English or in both Irish and English, and it must be easy to find and available to the customer before they order.
The information must also be dish-specific. "Some of our dishes contain allergens — ask staff" does not comply. What complies looks like this: Spaghetti bolognese — contains: wheat (gluten), milk, celery. Handwritten or printed are both fine, as long as it is legible.
The 14 allergens you must declare
Fourteen allergens must be declared whenever they appear in a dish: cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats), crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts and the rest), celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin, and molluscs. The everyday traps are the quiet ones: celery hiding in stock cubes and soups, sulphites in wine used for sauces and in dried fruit, mustard in dressings and marinades, sesame in bakery seeds and hummus, and gluten in soy sauce. Your allergen list is only as good as your reading of your ingredient labels.
Where and how to display it
You have two compliant options, and you can mix them. The first is putting the allergen information beside each item — on the menu itself, on the buffet label, on the deli tag. The second is a central written display — an allergen book or chart kept in a clearly marked spot, with prominent signage at the point of order telling customers where to find it. For a printed menu, many venues use a simple number system: each allergen gets a number, each dish lists its numbers, and the key sits at the bottom of the page.
Buffets and counters are where inspections most often find gaps, because dishes change daily and yesterday's labels linger. Small table chalkboards or label holders at each dish, rewritten each morning as part of setup, solve this neatly — the writing takes two minutes and the format forces the kitchen to actually check the day's recipes. Chalk markers keep it legible; a smudged board is a non-compliant board.
The five-step compliance routine
First, list every dish you sell, including specials, sides, sauces and desserts. Second, check every ingredient label against the 14 — including the stock, the dressing and the garnish. Third, write it down dish by dish, in whichever format you have chosen. Fourth, make the location obvious: if you use a central book, the sign pointing to it must be impossible to miss at the point of order. Fifth — the step that separates compliant venues from lucky ones — assign one named person to update the record every time a recipe, supplier or special changes. Most failures are not ignorance; they are last month's information still on display.
Why it is worth doing well, not just doing
Beyond the legal obligation, visible, confident allergen information has become a booking factor. Ireland's coeliac and allergic diners choose venues that make them feel safe, and they are famously loyal to the ones that do — they book the table, and they bring three friends with them. A clear allergen display is compliance, hospitality and marketing in a single sheet of paper.
This guide is a plain-English summary, not legal advice — for the full detail see the FSAI's guidance on allergen information for non-prepacked food and Guidance Note 28.
Shop the range
- Chalkboards and table signage — including mini table chalkboards for buffets and counters
- White chalk markers for legible daily labelling
- Menus and menu displays for allergen-keyed printed menus
- Buffet equipment and accessories
