Dietary requirements and allergens in catering

What must a caterer tell you by law?

A food business must always be able to give information about fourteen allergens on an EU list, and that applies to prepacked products and non-prepacked food alike. Catering falls under it: the absence of a label on a canapé excuses no kitchen from anything.

The fourteen are: gluten-containing cereals, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soy, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin and molluscs. The Dutch food authority, the NVWA, enforces this.

In practice this means you may always ask, and that a good answer is specific. "I don't think there are any nuts in that" is not an answer.

What is the difference between an allergy and a dietary preference?

An allergy is a risk; a dietary preference is a choice. That sounds blunt, but the difference decides how a kitchen handles it: an allergy is about cross-contamination, separate boards and certainty, while a preference is about an equal alternative that tastes as good as the rest.

So pass them on separately, and as concretely as you can. "Two vegetarians and one nut allergy" is usable. "A few people don't eat meat and there's something with nuts" is not.

When should you pass dietary requirements on?

With the enquiry, even if you do not know them all yet. We build them into the proposal rather than improvising a solution in the week of the event, which saves improvisation, and improvisation is exactly what you do not want around an allergy.

If more come in later, that is no problem; guest lists always shift. The point is that the menu is built around them rather than something being invented around it afterwards.

How do you avoid someone eating apart from everyone else?

By making the alternative part of the menu instead of an exception to it. No two events are the same and neither are two groups of guests; we agree every dietary requirement and allergy with you in advance, so everyone can enjoy the evening without a second thought.

At a Walking Dinner that works naturally: the courses come past, and a guest with their own version of the same course does not stand out. If a group needs more than a variant here and there, Custom Catering is the route: the requirements then sit in the design of the menu rather than on top of it.