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Allergens on an online menu: what the law says for a restaurant's website
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One in five restaurants in Italy has a website. For that one in five, there's an obligation that touches the menu long before any conversation about design or bookings: allergens. It's a law that has existed for years for the physical venue, but that changes shape, and in one point substance too, once the menu goes online.
The obligation comes from the dish, not the website
EU Regulation 1169/2011 requires that, for non-prepacked food, which is almost everything served in a restaurant, at least the 14 allergens listed in Annex II must be indicated (art. 44). Legislative Decree 231/2017, which in Italy sets out how and with what fines, says this indication has to be given for each dish, before it's served, on a menu, register, sign or "other equivalent system, including a digital one" (art. 19, paragraph 8). If a digital system is used, the decree adds a precise condition: the information still has to be backed by written documentation, easy to find for both the customer and inspectors.
This already applies today, with or without a website: a restaurant with only a paper menu still has to indicate allergens. Publishing the same menu online doesn't create a new obligation, it simply moves it to another medium, which has to meet the same rule.
What changes when the website sells, not just shows
The point where the rule genuinely changes concerns distance selling. Art. 14 of Regulation 1169/2011 states that, when a purchase is concluded without the customer's physical presence, the mandatory information, allergens included for non-prepacked food, has to be available before the purchase is concluded, and again at delivery. The definition of "distance selling" (art. 2) is anchored to the conclusion of a contract: a takeaway order from the website, a booking with a deposit, any payment concluded online falls into this case. Here allergens can't just show up when the dish arrives: they have to appear before the customer pays.
A website that only publishes the menu so it can be read, with no way to order or book with payment, is a different case. Reading the law, it doesn't fall under the definition of distance selling, because no contract is concluded there: the general obligation to indicate allergens still stands, but it applies once the customer is at the restaurant, as with any paper menu. In fairness, I haven't found any official Italian guidance, either from the Ministry of Health or from case law, that spells out this boundary explicitly for the specific case of a showcase-only website: it's a reading of the law, solid in the text, not a point a ruling has already settled. The practical difference matters most for anyone who has added, or is thinking of adding, table bookings to the website: if it only takes a phone number, nothing changes; if it requires a deposit or a payment, it triggers the obligation to provide the information in advance, as I explained writing about a website with online booking.
The fines, and what reduces the risk
| What happens | Rule | Fine |
|---|---|---|
| Failure to indicate allergens | Art. 23, paragraph 2, Legislative Decree 231/2017 | 3,000 to 24,000 euros |
| Information provided in a non-compliant way | Art. 23, paragraph 3, Legislative Decree 231/2017 | 1,000 to 8,000 euros (500-4,000 if the violation is only formal) |
| Microenterprises (fewer than 10 employees, turnover or balance sheet up to 2 million) | Art. 27, Legislative Decree 231/2017 | Reduction of up to a third |
For a first violation that can still be fixed, the inspector can issue a formal warning with 20 days to comply, before moving on to the actual fine. It isn't a mechanism designed to punish an isolated formal slip, it becomes one for whoever, once warned, changes nothing.
Where to start
Before worrying about how the menu looks on the website, there's only one question that matters: does that written allergen documentation already exist, updated dish by dish, and is it easy to find for whoever works the floor and for whoever runs a check? If the answer is yes, publishing the same menu online is just another place to show it, with the same care. If the website allows ordering or booking with payment, that documentation has to appear before the customer pays, not after.
It's one of the few things worth sorting out before thinking about the rest of the website, because unlike almost everything else it carries a real fine, not just a missed opportunity. It also remains true that, in Italy, a website is among the least adopted digital tools in the sector: I've written about it, with the other numbers on the industry's digitalisation, in restaurant digitalization in Italy.
If you want to work out how to fit menu, allergens and maybe bookings too into the same website, write to me and tell me how your place works today: I'll tell you what you actually need, even if the answer is that today it's enough to put order into what you already have.