Food Labels for Prepacked Food Under Natasha's Law

Food you pack on site before a customer orders it, such as wrapped sandwiches in a chiller or pots of salad on a counter, is "prepacked for direct sale" (PPDS). Under Natasha's Law it needs a label with its name and a full ingredients list, with the 14 allergens in bold. Café QR builds a draft label from your recipes, a manager checks it, and only checked labels can be printed. You need the Food safety add-on. Labels are for cafés in the UK.

Your business is legally responsible for its labels. Café QR helps you build them but doesn't check them for you, so always check a label against the supplier labels before you confirm it.

Which food needs a label

Only food packed before the customer orders it. Food you make or pack after they order, such as a sandwich made while they wait, doesn't need this label. You still need to tell customers about allergens, as you do now.

On the Menu page, open the More menu, pick Product labels, then Food labels (Natasha's Law). To add a dish, pick it under Add a dish and press Mark as prepacked for direct sale.

Give your ingredients their label details

The ingredients list is built from each dish's recipe. For that, each stock ingredient needs its label details. Open Stock > Ingredients and press Label details. For each ingredient, add:

• the name to use on the label, for example "Mayonnaise";
• its own ingredients, copied from the supplier label, if it's made of more than one thing;
• its allergens, with the specific cereal or nut, for example wheat rather than just gluten, or almonds rather than just nuts;
• any "may contain" line from the supplier label;
• a photo of the supplier label, if you like, so you can check against it later.

Ingredients measured in "each" need their weight per item, so the list can go heaviest first. Café QR can suggest which words to make bold; tick the ones that are right.

If a dish has no recipe, you can type its ingredients list yourself instead.

Check and confirm a label

Open the dish. You'll see the label as it will print. Below it, a list built from a recipe shows each recipe ingredient heaviest first, with its weight and its share of the dish, in the order the label lists them. Pick a label size to see whether the label fits at that size and how big the text will be. Café QR also checks the label against the allergens on the dish:

• If the label has an allergen the dish doesn't, it says so. Press the button to add it to the dish, so guests see it on the menu too.
• If the dish has an allergen the label doesn't show, check the recipe and label details. If the dish is wrong, you can take the allergen off it.

You can edit the built list by hand. Put two stars either side of a word to make it bold, for example **egg**. When the label is right, tick I've checked this against the supplier labels and it's correct and press Confirm label. Only managers and owners can change or confirm labels.

When a label needs checking again

Café QR remembers exactly what each label was built from. If the recipe or any ingredient's label details change, the label shows Changed since last check, it can't be printed, and it appears on the Food safety to-do list. Check it and confirm it again.

Each label also needs checking once a year. It still prints when the yearly check is due, but it shows on the to-do list until a manager confirms it again.

Print labels

From the food labels list, press Print confirmed labels, or open Product labels and pick the PPDS (ingredients) label. Choose the label size and how many of each. You can add a use-by date, the price and your business name.

The label prints exactly the text that was confirmed. The text is never smaller than the legal minimum size, and the list is never cut off. If a list is too long for the label size you picked, Café QR won't print it and asks you to pick a bigger label.

On the inspection report

The inspection report lists each prepacked dish with the label text as confirmed, who confirmed it and when. Dishes changed since their last check are shown in amber.