Serving Staff and Food Allergies/ Intolerance

• Make sure that staff encourage customers to ask about whether the food they are allergic to is used in the dishes they want to order.

• Make sure that staff know they should never guess whether an ingredient is in a dish or not. They should check with the kitchen staff every time someone asks for a meal that doesn’t contain a certain food.

• Make sure that if staff are not sure whether a dish contains a particular ingredient, and they can’t check, they tell the customer they don’t know.

• Make sure that staff don’t remove the food that someone is allergic to from a dish that has already been prepared and serve it as meeting the customer’s needs, for example removing the nut decoration from a gateau and serving it as ‘nut free’. There could still be small amounts of the food in the dish, and these are enough to trigger an allergic reaction.

• Make sure that kitchen staff always tell serving staff about any recipe changes, particularly if foods that can cause severe allergic reactions are now being used in a dish.

• When you are planning to prepare a meal that doesn’t contain a certain food, always use separate serving utensils.

• In self-service areas, for example breakfast bar, make sure you have signs saying what is in each food

• Make sure that staff don’t put desserts containing foods that can cause severe allergic reactions, such as nuts or cream, on a sweet trolley and risk small amounts of the food being transferred to other desserts.