For your business
Natasha’s Law for nurseries
Lunch served to a child in your care is not a PPDS product. Snacks, cakes and party bags you pack before a parent chooses them — including items in a reception shop — need the name of the food and a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised.
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 nurseries business that usually splits like this.
Needs a label
- Biscuit bags made up in advance for a sale
- Cake in a box on a table for parents to choose
- Party-bag cookies packed before the collection
Doesn’t
- Meals and snacks you serve to the children in the room
- Food plated for a named child as part of the day
Allergen information still has to be available for these — just not as a printed label on the pack.
Typical products: party bags assembled before the day, cake slices boxed for parents to buy, snack bags you pack and label, fundraising bakes sealed before the sale.
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 ‘plain’ biscuit
Digestives and rich tea contain wheat, and often barley. Chocolate versions add milk and soya.
Birthday cake from the kitchen
If it is boxed before parents choose a slice to take home, that box is PPDS.
Home-baked donations
If you repack them for sale, you are responsible for the ingredients list. If you cannot get one, do not pack them for sale.
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.
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
Victoria Sponge
Ingredients: WHEAT flour, Caster sugar, Free range EGGS, Butter (MILK), Raspberry jam (sugar, raspberries, gelling agent: pectin, acidity regulator: citric acid), Baking powder.
Full worked example
How it fits into the day
Do not mix the room and the sale
Food served in the room is a care record. Food packed for a parent to choose is a label.
Only sell what you can list
No ingredients list, no packed sale. That includes well-meant donations.
Keep party food on the same recipes
The cookie in the party bag should be the cookie whose label you already trust.
Label size and printing
Parents read labels quickly. A clear product name plus a full ingredients list beats a decorative sticker with no ingredients.
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 nursery lunches need PPDS labels?
Can we sell a parent’s homemade cake?
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.