A candy cart or doughnut wall can work for guests with food allergies if you plan it from the start. Ask guests about allergies when they reply to the invitation, keep the packet or ingredients list for everything on the cart, and put a small label on each jar or row naming the allergens it contains. Give every jar its own scoop, and keep anything with nuts away from the rest or leave it out altogether.
That approach follows the Food Standards Agency's guidance for buffets, which asks for allergen information to be given for each item separately rather than for the spread as a whole, and the hosting advice from the charity Anaphylaxis UK. Loose sweets and unwrapped doughnuts lose their labels the moment they come out of the packet, so the information has to travel with them.
Why a sweet table needs extra thought
On a supermarket shelf, every bag of sweets carries its ingredients and allergens. Pour those sweets into a glass jar on a cart and that information disappears. The same goes for doughnuts lifted out of a bakery box and hung on a wall.
The Food Standards Agency's allergen guidance for food businesses deals with exactly this kind of loose, unpackaged food. Businesses must supply allergen information for every item that contains one of the 14 regulated allergens. For a buffet, that information must be given for each item separately, not for the buffet as a whole, and it must be visible, clearly legible and easily accessible.
Those rules are written for food businesses, but they are a sensible standard for any host. A guest with an allergy cannot tell from looking at a jelly sweet or an iced ring doughnut what is in it.
The 14 allergens to look for
The Food Standards Agency's advice for consumers lists the 14 allergens that food law identifies as the most potent and prevalent.
- Celery
- Cereals containing gluten, such as wheat, barley and oats
- Crustaceans
- Eggs
- Fish
- Lupin
- Milk
- Molluscs
- Mustard
- Peanuts
- Sesame
- Soybeans
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites
- Tree nuts
Sweets, doughnuts and toppings can contain any of them, so the label on each packet is the only reliable guide.
Ask your guests first
Anaphylaxis UK's advice on hosting an allergy-friendly party starts with the simplest step. Always ask whether anyone has allergies, and how they would like to be catered for. Some guests will be happy to choose from labelled jars, others would rather bring their own treats or have one allergen left out entirely.
A line on the invitation or the RSVP form does this without fuss. It also gives you time to change the sweet list before anything is bought.
Keep the packets and label every jar
The same Anaphylaxis UK guidance suggests keeping food packaging so guests can double-check ingredients for themselves, and labelling dishes that contain any of the 14 allergens, including precautionary "may contain" warnings.
On a candy cart, that can be as simple as a small card in front of each jar.
- The name of the sweet, so guests can match it to the packet
- The allergens it contains, taken straight from the packet
- Any "may contain" warning on the packet
The Food Standards Agency explains that these warnings are "commonly seen as ‘may contain [allergen]’ or ‘not suitable for people with a [x allergy]’", so copy them across with the rest.
Keep the packets in a box behind the cart for the whole event, so anyone who wants to check can see the original.
Scoops, tongs and cross-contamination
Anaphylaxis UK's advice is to keep foods separate, use separate utensils and clean preparation surfaces thoroughly. On a sweet cart, that means one scoop or pair of tongs per jar, never one shared scoop moving between jars.
It also helps to think about where each jar sits. The simplest choice is to leave sweets containing nuts off the cart altogether, because loose sweets can fall from one jar into the next as guests help themselves. If you do want them, give them their own clearly labelled spot, away from everything else.
Planning a doughnut wall
Doughnuts are not supplied with our doughnut wall as standard, although we can arrange them on request. If you order them from a bakery, the bakery is a food business and has to provide allergen information for what it sells. Ask for it for each flavour, because fillings, glazes and sprinkles can all add different allergens.
Our doughnut wall comes in a standard size or a large one for weddings and bigger celebrations, and the wall in our corporate package holds up to 48 doughnuts. Personalised signage is one of the options, and it is an easy place to list the flavours and their allergens in the same style as the rest of the wall.
If a guest cannot eat any of the doughnuts, set aside a separate plate of treats they can eat, kept away from the wall, rather than one or two doughnuts hung among the others.
Hot chocolate bars and winter carts
Our candy cart can also be set up as a hot chocolate bar with marshmallows, toppings and syrups, and at Christmas as a pancake bar or a festive dessert display. Milk is one of the 14 allergens, so it is worth offering a plant-based milk alongside dairy, with its own jug and its own label. Check the packets for the toppings and syrups too, and label them the same way as the sweets.
The candy cart becomes a hot chocolate station in our Christmas party package, and at a work party its cost counts towards HMRC's £150 per head limit for a staff Christmas party along with everything else. It suits a baby shower too, alongside an alcohol-free prosecco wall.
If someone feels unwell
The Food Standards Agency's advice is that anyone who feels ill or has an allergic reaction after eating should seek medical help immediately, and that it is important to use an adrenaline auto-injector if an allergic reaction is suspected. If you know a guest carries one, it is worth knowing where it is kept.
How we can help
The candy cart can be hired as a prop only, for you to decorate and stock yourself, or filled with a selection of sweets. Corporate events can have it decorated and stocked with sweets for up to 100 guests as part of our Gold corporate event package. Whichever you choose, mention any allergies among your guests when you get in touch. You can see how we have styled carts and walls before in the gallery, and see where a cart fits in a wedding styling and prop hire budget.
To plan a candy cart, hot chocolate bar or doughnut wall for your event in Kent or Sussex, contact us, or find Flash of Elegance on Google.