Know exactly which allergens are in every recipe you make
Tag each ingredient with its allergens once. MenuCost automatically builds the full allergen profile for every recipe that uses it — so your menu is always accurate and your team is never guessing.
WHY THIS MATTERS
A customer with a food allergy trusts that your menu information is correct. It needs to be.
For customers with food allergies, allergen information is not a preference — it is a safety requirement. A customer with a severe wheat allergy asking whether a dessert contains gluten is making a medical decision based on your answer. Getting that answer right every time is both a duty of care and, in many markets, a legal obligation.
The challenge for bakeries and cafés is that allergen information lives at the ingredient level, not the recipe level. A butter croissant contains gluten, dairy, and eggs — but that's only obvious if someone has checked every ingredient and traced which allergens each one carries. When a recipe is modified, when a supplier changes a product formulation, or when a new item is added to the menu, the allergen profile needs to update with it. Without a system, that tracking falls to memory and manual checking — which is where mistakes happen.
Example: A café introduces a new house granola bar using oat flour from a new supplier. The previous oats were certified gluten-free; the new ones are not. Without allergen tracking tied to ingredients, this change is invisible — the granola bar still appears wheat-free on the menu. MenuCost would flag the change at the ingredient level and update the recipe's allergen profile automatically, so the menu reflects the real formulation.
Allergen Management gives you a single, reliable source of truth for what's in every recipe — built from your actual ingredients, not a separate spreadsheet or a note someone filled in once and never updated.
COVERAGE
All 14 major allergens tracked across every recipe
MenuCost tracks the 14 allergens recognised under international food labelling standards — the same set required for disclosure across most markets the GCC food industry exports to or operates within.
- Gluten
- Fish
- Milk/Dairy
- Mustard
- Lupin
- Crustaceans
- Peanuts
- Tree Nuts
- Sesame
- Molluscs
- Eggs
- Soybeans
- Celery
- Sulphites
For each allergen, an ingredient can be marked as Contains (present in the formulation) or May contain (trace risk from shared production). Both are tracked and surfaced in the recipe allergen profile.
HOW IT WORKS
Tag ingredients once — every recipe updates automatically
Tag each ingredient with its allergens
In your ingredient library, mark which of the 14 allergens each ingredient contains or may contain. Whole milk gets tagged as Dairy. Bread flour gets tagged as Gluten. Sesame paste gets tagged as Sesame. You do this once per ingredient — not once per recipe.
MenuCost builds the recipe allergen profile automatically
When you add ingredients to a recipe, MenuCost reads their allergen tags and compiles the full allergen profile for that recipe. If any ingredient contains or may contain an allergen, that allergen appears in the recipe's profile. No manual summary needed.
Changes at the ingredient level flow through to every recipe
If a supplier changes the formulation of an ingredient — or you switch to a different product — update the allergen tags on that ingredient. Every recipe using it instantly reflects the new profile. A change made once ripples through your entire menu.
View the full allergen profile for any recipe at a glance
Inside each recipe, the allergen profile shows which allergens are present and which are trace risks — listed by ingredient so you can see exactly where each allergen comes from. There's no ambiguity about which ingredient is responsible for a flag.
See allergen coverage across your full menu
The menu allergen view shows every item on your menu with its allergen flags in a single table — so you can see at a glance which items contain which allergens, identify which items are free from specific allergens, and answer customer questions with confidence.
REAL EXAMPLE
What the allergen profile looks like inside a recipe
A classic butter croissant — each ingredient's allergen tags visible, with a full "Contains" and "May contain" summary compiled automatically at the bottom.
The allergen profile was built entirely from the ingredient tags — no separate entry, no manual summary. If the butter supplier is changed to one with a nut-processing facility, updating the butter ingredient tag updates this profile and every other recipe using that butter.
WHAT YOU GET
What changes when allergens are tracked at the ingredient level
- Accurate allergen information for every recipe, always. Because allergen profiles are built from ingredient tags rather than entered manually per recipe, they stay correct as your menu evolves. Add an ingredient to a recipe and its allergens are included automatically.
- Supplier changes don't create silent allergen risks. When an ingredient changes — new supplier, reformulated product, different production facility — update the allergen tags on that ingredient once. Every recipe using it reflects the change immediately. Nothing slips through.
- Fast, confident answers to customer questions. When a customer asks whether something contains nuts, sesame, or dairy, your team has one place to check — not a folder of spec sheets or a spreadsheet last updated six months ago. The answer is current and it's reliable.
- A foundation for menu labelling and compliance. If your business needs to produce allergen declarations for packaging, export documentation, or food service contracts, the allergen data in MenuCost gives you an accurate starting point — built from the actual recipes you use, not a separate process.
QUESTIONS
"Contains" means the allergen is present in the ingredient's formulation — for example, butter contains milk. "May contain" means the ingredient is produced in a facility that also handles that allergen, creating a trace risk through cross-contamination — for example, a sugar packaged on shared equipment that also handles nuts. For customers with severe allergies, both flags matter. MenuCost tracks and displays them separately so the distinction is always visible.
You should tag every ingredient — including the ones you expect to be allergen-free. An ingredient marked as allergen-free is an explicit confirmation, not an omission. If you leave an ingredient untagged, MenuCost cannot include it in the recipe's allergen profile, and the profile will be incomplete. Tagging everything — even just to confirm "no allergens present" — gives you a complete and trustworthy record.
For compound ingredients — ready-made pastes, sauces, pre-mixed dry blends — tag the allergens based on the product's own allergen declaration from the supplier's packaging or specification sheet. The same tag-once approach applies: set it on the ingredient, and every recipe using it inherits those flags. If the supplier reformulates the product, update the tag once and all recipes update with it.
MenuCost gives you the accurate allergen data — what each recipe contains and may contain — which you can use as the basis for packaging labels or documentation. Formatting that data into a specific label format for your packaging is a step you'd complete separately, using the allergen information MenuCost provides. Always verify declarations against your local food labelling regulations before use.
Yes. Because allergen profiles are built at the recipe level, every item you include in a catering quote already has its allergen information attached. If a catering client needs a list of allergens for every item in their event order, you can pull that information directly from the recipes in the quote — there's no separate allergen check required for catering jobs.
Know what's in every recipe — before a customer has to ask
Join bakeries and coffee shops that manage allergens with confidence.
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