Allergen labeling

MenuSquared supports the 14 allergens defined by the EU Food Information for Consumers (FIC) regulation, the standard list most printed menus in Europe and the UK already disclose against. Each allergen has a fixed number: numbered superscripts next to menu items are the common convention on printed menus, so a guest can scan a dish, see "1·3·7" next to it, and check those numbers against a legend without you writing out "contains gluten, eggs, milk" on every line.

Every item's numbers point to the same legend, which lists only the numbers actually used on that menu. Mark an allergen on an item once and it's reflected in the superscript and the legend everywhere the menu appears: web, PDF, and print.

• 1. Gluten
• 2. Crustaceans
• 3. Eggs
• 4. Fish
• 5. Peanuts
• 6. Soybeans
• 7. Milk
• 8. Tree nuts
• 9. Celery
• 10. Mustard
• 11. Sesame
• 12. Sulphites
• 13. Lupin
• 14. Molluscs

These numbers are fixed and never change based on what a given menu uses: 7 always means milk, on every menu you build.

Click an item in the left sidebar to open its inspector panel on the right, then find the Allergens (EU 14) section below Dietary & Tags. It's a checkbox grid of all 14 allergens, each labeled with its number.

1. Open the item's inspector and expand Allergens (EU 14).
2. Check every allergen that applies to the dish as prepared. The section header shows a running count of how many you've selected.
3. Save as usual. The item's superscript and the menu's legend update automatically, no separate publish step for allergen changes.

You don't need to mark every item. Dishes with no allergens checked simply show no superscript, and only allergens actually in use on the menu appear in the legend.

MenuSquared has two separate systems that can look similar at a glance, but they answer different questions:

• Dietary tags (Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten Free, Nut Free, Spicy) are lifestyle labels. Guests browse by them to find dishes that fit a diet or a preference.
• Allergen numbers are safety disclosure. They tell a guest with an allergy exactly what's in a dish, regardless of diet.

The two are independent by design. Turning off dietary icons in Menu Settings hides the V/VG/GF/NF/HOT badges but leaves allergen numbers and the legend visible, since that's a compliance layer, not a decorative one. The Allergen numbers switch in Menu Settings, under Display options, controls the allergen layer on its own.

A legend appears automatically at the bottom of your menu, on the web, in PDF exports, and in print, whenever at least one visible item has allergens marked. There's nothing to build or position: it lists only the numbers used on that menu (e.g. "1 Gluten · 3 Eggs · 7 Milk") and disappears on its own if you clear every allergen from every item.

If an item is 86'd (marked sold out) and hidden from the live menu, its allergens drop out of that menu's legend too, so the legend always matches what a guest can actually see.