Handling allergens

Declare every allergen, on every listing, every time. An allergen left off a listing is treated as the most serious class of product recall, because for the wrong person it genuinely is that serious.

The ones to think about

Milk and dairy. Eggs. Tree nuts. Peanuts. Wheat and gluten. Soy. Sesame. Fish and shellfish, if you work with them.

Where people slip up

The ingredient inside an ingredient. The chocolate that contains soy lecithin. The bread crumbs in the cutlet. The ghee in what you listed as a vegan sweet. Read the labels on what you buy, not just what you add.

Shared equipment. If you make a nut cake and a plain cake in the same kitchen with the same tools, say so. "Made in a kitchen that also handles nuts" is a normal and respected line, and customers who need to know will thank you for it.

The eggless question. In India this gets asked constantly and answered carelessly. If a cake is eggless, say eggless. If it has egg, say so clearly rather than leaving it out and hoping.

The kitchen side of it

Declaring allergens is half the job. Keeping them apart in the kitchen is the other half. See Hygiene expectations

Why it is worth being almost annoyingly thorough

A customer with a real allergy is not browsing casually. They are reading your listing word by word, deciding whether to trust you with something that could put them in hospital.

A thorough allergen declaration is the clearest possible signal that you know what you are doing. It wins you that customer rather than losing them.

If you realise one is missing from a live listing

Fix the listing immediately. If you have already sold that product to someone, treat it as a safety issue and follow I think something I sold may be unsafe.