A guest asks whether the braised beef contains celery. Every server, on every shift, should give the same answer, and it should be right. An allergen matrix makes that possible: every dish in a row, the 14 allergens in columns, and each cell marked contains, may contain or left empty.
The 14 allergens
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 lists 14 allergens in its Annex II. Food businesses in the EU must give allergen information on these for the food they serve, including food sold unpackaged. National rules decide how you give that information to guests, and they differ by country, so check what applies where you trade.
- Cereals containing gluten: wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt
- Crustaceans: prawns, crab, lobster
- Eggs
- Fish, including anchovy in dressings and fish sauce
- Peanuts
- Soybeans: soy sauce, tofu, soy lecithin
- Milk: butter, cream, cheese
- Nuts: almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamias
- Celery, including celeriac, and often in stock
- Mustard, often in dressings and marinades
- Sesame
- Sulphites (sulphur dioxide) above 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/litre: wine, vinegar, dried fruit
- Lupin: lupin flour in some breads and pastries
- Molluscs: mussels, clams, squid, octopus
Contains or may contain
Contains (C) means the allergen is in the recipe, including everything in the sub-recipes: stock, sauce, dressing, garnish and frying oil. May contain (M) means a cross-contact risk you cannot rule out, such as a supplier's may-contain label or a shared bakery. Use M for real risks only. Marking everything M protects nobody and leaves a guest with an allergy very little to order.
Take every answer from recipe cards, ingredient labels and supplier specifications. Rows from the sample bistro's matrix:
| Dish | Contains | May contain | Kitchen note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soup of the day (tomato & basil) | Milk, celery | Made with vegetable stock. Check the stock label. | |
| Mixed leaf salad, house vinaigrette | Mustard, sulphites | Dijon mustard and wine vinegar | |
| Bread with butter | Gluten, milk | Sesame | Bakery also makes sesame rolls |
| Braised beef with mashed potato | Milk, celery, sulphites | Red wine and beef stock | |
| Roasted duck with red cabbage | Celery, sulphites | Red wine in the sauce | |
| Penne pomodoro | Gluten | Eggs | Factory also handles egg pasta |
| Chocolate tart | Gluten, eggs, soybeans, milk | Nuts | Soy lecithin in the chocolate |
| Crème brûlée | Eggs, milk |
Most of the allergens on this menu come from stock, wine and dressings. Nobody sees the celery in a braised beef, which is exactly why it belongs on the matrix.
How the floor uses it
The full grid works at the pass. On the floor, a server needs one question answered: what can this guest eat? So turn the matrix around by allergen. For milk, the sample menu of 15 dishes has 10 that contain it and 5 free from it: the salad, the duck, the penne pomodoro, the vegan stuffed peppers and the lemon sorbet.
- The server asks about allergies when taking the order.
- The server checks the allergen sheet and tells the guest which dishes contain the allergen, may contain it or are free from it.
- The allergy goes on the order ticket, written in full.
- The kitchen confirms before the dish leaves the pass.
Any change to a dish needs the kitchen's agreement. The garlic prawns without bread lose the gluten from the bread, and the head chef still decides whether the rest of the plate is safe for that guest.
Keep it current when suppliers change
A matrix is right on the day it was checked. After that, every change can make it wrong:
- A new recipe, or a change to an existing one.
- A new brand of stock, bread, chocolate or sauce. A different stock can bring celery, and a new bakery can bring sesame or lupin.
- A substitution on a delivery. Suppliers love a substitution. They rarely send a note about the mustard.
Check the label on the first delivery of every new product, update the matrix the same day, and reprint the sheets. Review the whole matrix against recipe cards and labels at least every three months, and record the date and who did it. The sample matrix was last reviewed on 1 October 2026 by the head chef.
One matrix for the kitchen and the floor
The Allergen Matrix has one row per dish and a column for each of the 14 allergens, where you choose C or M. It lists the allergens in each dish in plain words, with may-contain items shown separately, next to notes from the kitchen. On the Allergen Check sheet, servers choose an allergen and see every dish marked Contains, May contain or Free from, with the date of the last review at the top. Both sheets print for the pass and the floor. It works in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.
Related
- Read: Standard Recipe Cards: What to Include
- Read: HACCP for Small Restaurants
- Also useful: Standard Recipe Cards, the ingredient lists the matrix is built from
Every template in Restaurant Notes is in the Complete Restaurant Collection: 25 tools in one download.