The fourteen regulated allergens
French and European law requires fourteen allergens to be declared: cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin and molluscs.
Every menu on our site lists the allergens present. Where none of the fourteen is used, that is stated explicitly rather than left blank, which is a meaningful difference when someone is scanning a page for reassurance.
What no declaration can exclude is traces. Preparation happens in a shared environment, so a severe allergy has to be raised when you order rather than assumed to be covered by the allergen list. That is the honest position, and it is the one a guest with a serious allergy needs to hear.
What is standard, and what needs notice
A vegetarian hot dish is included as standard on every buffet, at no extra cost. It is not an option you add; it is part of how the buffet is built.
Vegan, gluten-free and pork-free variants are available at no extra charge, and they need notice rather than money; halal is a menu in its own right, from €18.90 to €44.30 per person. They are composed as part of the order, which means they are decided at the point you confirm the headcount, not on the morning.
Pork-free is worth calling out separately. A large share of our menus are pork-free by default, which matters in an international office and is often assumed to be a special request when it is not.
Send the dietary requirements with your headcount and we will build them into the quote, at no extra cost.
Tell us your requirements →How to collect requirements without a mess
Ask once, in the invitation, with a closed list: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, pork-free, halal, severe allergy with the allergen named. An open text box produces answers you cannot act on and a spreadsheet nobody can total.
Collect by name, not as a count. For meal trays this is essential, because an unnamed vegetarian tray is taken by the first person who fancies it. For a buffet it matters less, but it still tells you whether to scale the vegetarian dish up.
Set a deadline that sits before the ordering lead time, not on it. Requirements arriving at 17:00 the day before a 09:00 delivery cannot be honoured, and that conversation is more unpleasant than the deadline was.
Sizing the dietary options
Plan on ten to fifteen percent of a French corporate group taking the vegetarian option, and more in a young or international team. Size it for that, not for the declared vegetarians, because it is taken by people who simply prefer it.
Gluten-free and vegan portions are counted exactly against the names you give. Over-ordering them is not a safety margin: it is food that will not be eaten, because guests without the requirement generally leave those items alone once they are labelled.
Labelling is what makes the whole system work. A clearly labelled buffet lets people serve themselves without asking anybody, and that is the entire point.
What to tell your guests
Tell them what is available before the event, not at the table. A guest who knows there is a vegan main course arrives relaxed; a guest who has to ask in front of forty colleagues does not.
Be precise about traces. Saying that the menu contains no nuts is different from saying that no nuts were present in the preparation environment, and only the first is something we can state.
For religious requirements, be specific about what is being asked. Pork-free, no alcohol in the cooking, and certified halal are three different requests, and they are met in three different ways. Asking the right one is what gets it honoured.