Allergy Strategy 2025 Purpose We aim to create a welcoming and inclusive pub environment where everyone, regardless of allergies, can enjoy a safe and delicious drinking and dining experience.
We believe by implementing a comprehensive allergen strategy, we can create a more inclusive dining experience, build trust with guests, and mitigate the risk of allergic reactions.
We achieve this through:
Offering a variety of menu options to cater to the different dietary needs of our guests.
Ensure clear and accurate allergen information is readily available for all guests.
Training our team effectively on allergen management procedures.
Continuously improving allergen awareness and practices within the company.
We will ensure that appropriate resources are made available to ensure that our allergy management safeguards are maintained.
We will ensure that there are clear and effective lines of communication to enable all our people to both be given information that will allow them to work safely and to allow them to raise any issues that they believe may require action.
Food and drink products will be sourced following strict protocols with the objective of reducing allergens where possible where they do not add anything of benefit to the final dish.
Dishes will be created using products from approved suppliers. These suppliers will provide product specifications (using the Smart Supplier system) declaring the presence of allergens and any precautionary allergen labelling (PAL).
These product specifications will be checked and approved by the Marston's Technical Team. They will then be fed through to the StarChef system.
The Food Development Team will create our menus from these approved products. As the recipes for each dish are developed, the allergen information for each ingredient will be used to produce an overall dish allergy declaration.
Marston's PLC
St Johns House, St Johns Square, Wolverhampton WV2 4BH
Marston's PLC is registered in England No 31461
This information will then be fed through to the menus on the pub web pages (using Ten Kites). This provides live information from the supplier to the guest. Guests can then apply a filter to highlight any of the 14 legally defined allergens plus the seven non-mandatory common allergens we have added, allowing them to see the food and drink options that do not contain the allergens they have selected.
Our pub teams will follow a Front of House and Back of House Guest Journey.
Front of House - this will ensure that any guest with a food allergy is identified and directed to the allergy information on the pub website so that they can make an informed choice. Once the choice has been made, their order will be captured on the till system recording the guest's allergy requirements which will then be communicated to the kitchen team. Back of House - good hygiene practices will be maintained to prevent the risk of allergen cross contact of food products in storage. All food orders will be checked for allergen requirements. When preparing food for a guest with allergies, additional controls will be implemented to minimise the risk of allergen cross contact during preparation and cooking and to ensure that the dish is identified so that the correct meal can be served to the guest with the allergy requirement.Comprehensive allergen training programmes for all team members have been developed for our pub support centre teams, operations teams and our managed and partnership pub teams including kitchen, servers, and bartenders so that they can effectively exercise their responsibilities in ensuring that a safe environment is maintained for all our guests.
We will train our team on allergen knowledge, best practices for handling allergens, cross contact prevention, and communication with guests. This training will be regularly refreshed.
General Managers and Pub Partners will ensure that their teams fully complete the allergy training during their induction and the refresher training as and when this is deployed.
Individuals will be encouraged and expected to take personal responsibility to ensure that appropriate practices are always correctly implemented.
We will ensure that we listen to guest feedback and thoroughly investigate and respond to any allergy complaints.
We will ensure that the performance of our teams in implementing our allergy management safeguards is monitored on a regular basis and where appropriate, effective corrective action is taken when necessary.
Failure to follow company policy whether highlighted by internal monitoring, guest feedback or an enforcement officer visit may be subject to sanction through disciplinary procedures for company employees or breach of agreement procedures for partnership pubs.
Marston's PLC
St Johns House, St Johns Square, Wolverhampton WV2 4BH
Marston's PLC is registered in England No 31461