UK food information law names 14: celery, cereals containing gluten (wheat, rye, barley, oats), crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, peanuts, sesame, soya, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg per kg or litre, and tree nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamia nuts). Those 14 are exactly the columns on this matrix, in the order the Food Standards Agency lists them. Other ingredients can still cause reactions, but these are the ones you are legally required to declare when they are used.

For food sold loose, which covers most takeaway and restaurant dishes, the law says allergen information must be accurate, available and signposted, and it can be given in writing or verbally by someone who actually knows the recipes. A written matrix is the most common way to do the written part, and environmental health officers are used to seeing one. What no sheet of paper can do is stay accurate on its own: the matrix is only right while the recipes and suppliers behind it stay the same. This page is a tool for producing the document, not legal advice; your local authority is the judge of your setup as a whole.

Distance selling has its own rule: allergen information has to be available before the customer completes the purchase, and again when the food is delivered. Before purchase can be the menu on your website or a clear note saying to call and ask. At delivery it can be a sticker, a printed sheet in the bag, or a driver who can point to where the information lives. If you take orders through your own ordering site, check what it shows customers before checkout, because the obligation is yours, not the software company's.

No, and it is worth knowing the difference. Natasha's Law covers food that is prepacked for direct sale: made and packed on the premises before the customer orders it, like a pre-wrapped sandwich in a chiller. That food needs a full ingredient label on the packet itself, with allergens emphasised, and a matrix does not replace it. Food made to order and handed over loose is not prepacked for direct sale, and that is the food this matrix is for.

Contains means the allergen goes in on purpose: it is in the recipe or in an ingredient you buy in, like soya in the bread roll. That is what the law requires you to declare. May contain is a warning about cross contact: the fryer shared with battered fish, the tandoor next to the nut grinder, flour dust in a small kitchen. Use it honestly and specifically. Marking may contain on everything to cover yourself helps nobody, because customers with allergies learn to ignore it, and the mark stops meaning anything at all.

Nowhere. The matrix is built and printed entirely inside your browser, there is no account and nothing you type is sent to us or anyone else. A copy is saved on your own device so that when a recipe changes you can open this page, change one cell and print a fresh sheet with that day's date on it, which is exactly the habit inspectors like to see.