For your business
Natasha’s Law for forecourt shops
A petrol-station kitchen that packs sandwiches, pastries and pots before they go into the cabinet is making PPDS food. Manufacturer-wrapped bars keep the manufacturer’s label. Food you pack yourself needs yours, including at 6am when the cabinet is filled.
Reviewed against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.
Which of your products need a label
PPDS applies to food that is in packaging before the customer chooses it. For a forecourt shops business that usually splits like this.
Needs a label
- Sandwiches wrapped before they are loaded into the fridge
- Croissants bagged in the on-site kitchen
- Porridge pots lidded before the morning rush
Doesn’t
- A breakfast roll made to order at the hatch
- Manufacturer-packed crisps, drinks and confectionery
Allergen information still has to be available for these — just not as a printed label on the pack.
Typical products: sandwiches and wraps packed on site, pastries bagged in the kitchen, porridge and yoghurt pots you assemble, hot-hold bakery that was bagged before display.
What catches people out
Almost every wrong label in this trade comes from the same handful of ingredients — the ones with their own ingredients inside them.
A central kitchen and a local cabinet
If another site packs for you, check whether the food is PPDS or ordinary prepacked — the label duties are not identical.
Night-shift packing
The person who packs at 4am needs the same ingredient library as the day manager.
A swapped pastry
An all-butter croissant and a margarine pastry are different milk and soya labels.
The general rule behind all of these: how to label compound ingredients.
Example labels
Produced by the same engine that runs our free generator, so they show what the product actually does rather than an idealised mock-up.
Chicken & Pesto Sandwich
Ingredients: Bread (WHEAT flour, water, yeast, salt), Cooked chicken breast, Pesto (basil, sunflower oil, CASHEW nuts, hard cheese (MILK), garlic, salt), Mayonnaise (rapeseed oil, EGG yolk, vinegar, MUSTARD), Rocket.
Full worked example
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Ingredients: WHEAT flour, Butter (MILK), MILK chocolate chips (sugar, cocoa butter, whole MILK powder, cocoa mass, emulsifier: SOYA lecithin), Caster sugar, Soft brown sugar, Free range EGG, Bicarbonate of soda, Sea salt.
Full worked example
How it fits into the day
Separate bought-in from packed here
Leave manufacturer labels alone. Print labels only for food your kitchen packed.
Load the cabinet with labels on
Do not put an unlabelled sandwich in the fridge and plan to sticker it at the till.
One library across shifts
A recipe change has to reach the night pack before the next cabinet fill.
Label size and printing
Cabinet lights and small packs still need a readable ingredients list. Do not rely on a code the cashier can look up.
More on sizes and print formats: the PPDS label template.
What LabelClear doesn’t do
It organises what you tell it and keeps it consistent across your products. It cannot know about cross-contamination in your kitchen, a substitution made on a busy day, or an allergen a supplier added without saying. The checking is still yours.
Questions
Do petrol stations have to follow Natasha’s Law?
Is a breakfast roll PPDS?
Official sources
Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.
- Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS foodFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
- Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food productsFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
Similar businesses
Try it on one of your products
Paste the ingredients for whichever product is the most annoying to label. That is where this earns its keep.