Allergens & Food Safety
All nine major allergens, labelled item by item — plus an honest account of what a shared board cannot guarantee.
Draft for review. This document was prepared as part of the CravePlatter site build and has not been reviewed by counsel. Confirm the entity details, retention periods, insurance limits and governing-law clauses with your lawyer, and the food-safety claims with your local health department, before launch.
Charcuterie is one of the harder things to serve safely, because a board is shared by definition: everything touches, and one guest’s dinner sits four inches from another guest’s allergen. This page sets out exactly how we handle that, what we label, what we can guarantee, and — importantly — what we cannot.
1. The nine major allergens
US federal law recognises nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Sesame joined the list under the FASTER Act in January 2023 and is frequently missed by caterers who have not revisited their labelling since; we label it.
Every board ships with a printed card that lists all nine allergens item by item. Not “may contain”, not a blanket disclaimer at the foot of an invoice — a grid, with each item on the board down one axis and the nine allergens across the other. The same card is emailed to the person who placed the order the morning of delivery, so it can be forwarded before anyone arrives.
2. How we handle a declared allergy
- Nut-free builds are prepped on a separate bench, with separate boards, separate knives and separate cloths, by staff who have changed gloves and aprons. They are built first in the day, before any nut product is opened.
- Gluten-free builds substitute seeded crackers for bread, and the bread is not carried on the same board.
- Dairy-free and vegan builds use cultured nut or oat cheeses; note that a vegan board is usually not nut-free, and we will say so when you order rather than let you assume.
- Where one guest has a serious allergy and the rest of the room does not, we recommend a separately boxed portion rather than a shared board, and we do not charge extra for it.
3. What we cannot guarantee
This is the part most caterers bury, so we will be direct.
CravePlatter operates a single kitchen that handles all nine major allergens. We take the precautions above and we take them seriously, but we cannot certify any item as free from trace cross-contact. If a guest has an anaphylactic allergy, please tell us at the point of order and take our advice on a boxed portion — and understand that we will tell you honestly if we do not think we can serve them safely. We would rather lose the order than be wrong about this.
We also cannot control what happens after delivery. A shared board is shared: guests move serving utensils between items, and that is outside our hands.
4. Temperature and time
| Stage | Standard | How it is verified |
|---|---|---|
| Cold storage | At or below 38°F | Logged twice daily, digital probe |
| Build bench | Under 30 minutes out of refrigeration | Timed per board, recorded on the build sheet |
| Transit | Insulated crate, at or below 40°F | Probe reading logged at load and at handover |
| Your room | Serve within 2 hours of arrival | Yours to manage — 1 hour if the room is above 90°F |
If a van breaks the cold chain, the board is destroyed and remade. We do not deliver a board we would not eat, and we would rather be late than unsafe. This has happened four times since 2021 and we refunded the delivery fee on all four.
5. Traceability
Every item in the larder carries a supplier, a lot code and an intake date, and every build sheet records which lots went onto which board. If a supplier issues a recall we can identify every affected order within an hour and reach the customers who received them. Our sourcing list is published at Sourcing.
6. Credentials
- Permitted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a food service establishment.
- All kitchen staff hold a NYC Food Protection Certificate; at least one certificate holder is on the bench whenever we are building.
- HACCP plan in place, reviewed annually.
- $2m general liability and $1m commercial auto cover; certificates naming your building as additional insured are available on request.
7. Ask us
If you are ordering for someone with a serious allergy, call +1 (718) 555-0142 rather than relying on a form. We would rather spend five minutes on the phone than get this wrong.