For your business

Natasha’s Law for schools

A school meal served on a plate is not PPDS. A sandwich, pasta pot or cake in a bag that pupils pick up already packed is. Those packs need the name of the food and a full ingredients list with the 14 allergens emphasised, the same as a high-street café.

Reviewed 21 September 2026 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 schools business that usually splits like this.

Needs a label

Sandwiches wrapped before the break
Yoghurt and granola pots assembled in the kitchen
Cookies bagged for the tuck counter

Doesn’t

Hot mains plated on the servery
Salad bar items pupils serve themselves from open bowls

Allergen information still has to be available for these — just not as a printed label on the pack.

Typical products: grab-and-go sandwiches and wraps, pasta and rice pots lidded before service, cakes and cookies bagged for the counter, trip and fixture packed lunches made on site.

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 different bread

The gluten-free loaf and the malt bagel are different allergens. Yesterday’s label cannot move with the bread.

Dessert biscuits in a packed lunch

Digestives bring wheat and often barley. A gluten-free main does not make the biscuit gluten-free.

Bought-in versus made here

A manufacturer’s wrapped bar keeps its own label. Food you pack on site needs yours.

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.

Ingredients label · 70 × 50 mmExample

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.

Example Café

Full worked example

Ingredients label · 50 × 30 mmExample

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.

Example Bakery

Full worked example

How it fits into the day

List the grab-and-go, not the menu

The PPDS list is the food in packaging before a pupil chooses it, not every dish on the servery.

Tie labels to recipes

When the sandwich filling changes for an allergen-aware menu, the pack label changes with it.

Trip food is still your food

Lunches you pack for a fixture need the same ingredients list as the counter version.

Label size and printing

Print before service, not during the queue. A 50×30 mm label fits a sandwich packet if the ingredients 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.