For your business
Natasha’s Law for sandwich shops
A sandwich made in the morning, wrapped, and put in the fridge for customers to choose is PPDS. The label needs the name, the full ingredients and the allergens in the bread, the spread and the filling — not a sticker that only says the filling.
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 sandwich shops business that usually splits like this.
Needs a label
- Anything sealed before it goes into the grab-and-go fridge
- Meal-deal pots you fill and lid in advance
Doesn’t
- A baguette made to order at the counter while the customer watches
Allergen information still has to be available for these — just not as a printed label on the pack.
Typical products: wrapped sandwiches and baguettes, pre-made wraps, filled bagels packed before the rush, side pots of slaw or sauce in the same meal deal.
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.
Mayonnaise
Egg and mustard sit in the spread, including a thin layer. Vegan mayo is often soya instead.
The bread
Malted bread and a plain tin loaf are different. Sesame on the crust is sesame.
Pesto, hummus, tikka
These fillings add milk, sesame or mustard that a ‘chicken sandwich’ name does not show.
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.
How it fits into the day
Build a bread and spread library
Most of the label repeats. Store breads, butters and mayonnaises once, then add the filling.
Print in the morning
The label is part of making the sandwich, not a job for the afternoon when the spec has already changed.
Retire a label with the ingredient
If you open a different mayonnaise, stop using the old sandwiches’ sticker.
Label size and printing
A sandwich skewer or a back-of-pack sticker both work if the type is large enough and the list is complete.
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
Is a made-to-order sandwich PPDS?
Do meal-deal crisps need my label?
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.