menu-wording

---
name: menu-wording
description: Goes through your menu line by line, separates the words that describe a dish from the words that make a claim, tests each claim against the published UK criteria, and rewrites the ones you cannot evidence into wording that still sells. Use before a menu goes to print, when trading standards ask a question, or when you want "home-made" on the page and are not sure you can.
---

# Make the menu sell the food without writing a promise the kitchen cannot keep

You give this the menu as it stands, a short note on how each dish is actually made, and where the main ingredients come from. You get back every line marked as either a description or a claim, each claim tested against the criteria the Food Standards Agency published for these words, and a rewrite for every one that fails. The rewrites still sell. They just sell something true, which is usually more specific and reads better anyway.

## What it does

1. **Split every menu line into the description and the claim.** A description says what is on the plate: the cut, the cooking method, the sauce, the garnish, the weight. A claim says something a customer cannot see and has to take on trust: fresh, home-made, hand-cut, local, seasonal, traditional, authentic, farmhouse, artisan, hand-made, our own, from the farm, made here, premium, finest. Go line by line and mark each word. Do the same to the headers, the footers, the blackboard, the takeaway menu, the delivery app listing and the about page on the website, because the Food Standards Agency's own position is that its best practice advice "applies equally to all food, regardless of whether it is prepacked or not, or the type of outlet from which it is sold". Count the claims. On most independent menus it is between twelve and forty, and the owner has never counted them.

2. **Test every use of fresh and freshly against the published criteria.** The guidance is specific. On the adjectives: "expressions such as 'freshly cooked', 'freshly prepared', 'freshly baked', 'freshly picked' should have no other connotation than the immediacy of the action being described", and it recommends they carry an indication of when, "freshly prepared this morning". On the decorative versions: "'fresh' is often used in a number of phrases that may have an emotive appeal but no real meaning (e.g. 'oven fresh', 'garden fresh', 'ocean fresh', 'kitchen fresh', etc). These should be avoided." On meat: previously frozen meat sold thawed "would not be considered by the average consumer to be 'fresh'. The term 'fresh' should not be used in these circumstances", and the same applies to fish. On mixed dishes: a food described as "made with fresh tomatoes" should not also contain canned tomatoes. Mark each use pass or fail against those lines and quote which one it failed on.

3. **Test home-made, hand-made and farmhouse, because these are the three that catch caterers.** The guidance has a paragraph written for kitchens exactly like yours: "the term 'home-made' should be restricted to the preparation of the recipe on the premises, from primary ingredients, in a way that reflects a typical domestic situation. This should not be achieved simply by the assembly of wholly pre-prepared elements, or simple reconstitution from dry base mixes, but must involve some degree of fundamental culinary preparation." It then allows partly-prepared ingredients a home cook would use, naming "pre-prepared raw pastry, bakery bread in desserts or stock cubes in sauces". On hand-made: it "should be significantly made by hand rather than just one element of the process being carried out in that way", with "hand assembled", "hand carved" or "hand finished" offered as honest alternatives. On farmhouse: outside bread and pâté it "should refer to products that are produced on a farm", and "given the vagueness of the term when used alone, its use should be avoided".

4. **Test the heritage and provenance words, and be strict about traditional.** Traditional needs "a recipe, fundamental formulation or processing method for a product that has existed for a significant period", and the guidance puts a figure on it in a footnote, "of the order of 1 generation / 25 years". Original means the first of its type, unchanged, and still the standard item when variants are added. Authentic, real and genuine are for geographic origin, for a recipe whose origin is specified, or for a single variety where purity delivers a characteristic, and "should not otherwise be used, without qualification, to describe either a food or an ingredient". Natural is narrower than almost anyone assumes: it "means essentially that the product is comprised of natural ingredients, e.g. ingredients produced by nature, not the work of man", and compound dishes "should not themselves be described directly or by implication as 'natural'". Local and seasonal are not defined in that guidance, so test them against its general rule instead: "a food must be able to fulfil the claim being made for it and therefore adequate information must be available to show that the claim is justified". If you cannot name the farm or the month, delete the word.

5. **Look at the pictures as hard as you look at the words.** The same guidance warns that illustrations "can have a powerful effect on prospective purchasers and, in some product sectors, may have a greater significance than names and other descriptive material", and gives the case that matters here: "kitchen scenes may lead a consumer to believe a product is hand-made or at least produced in a small-scale operation". Check the photograph on the menu, the shot on the delivery app, the hero image on the website and the tractor in the header. A stock photograph of a rustic kitchen above a dish that arrives in a bag is the picture making the claim the words were careful not to. The retained food information regulation is explicit that the misleading test applies "to advertising" and "to the presentation of foods", so the photograph is in scope.

6. **Test each surviving claim against a bad week, not a good one.** Menus are written on the day the good supplier delivers. The claim has to hold on the Tuesday the delivery fails and someone drives to the cash and carry. Ask, for every claim left standing: what happens when the farm cannot supply, when the chef is off, when the sauce comes ready-made because the section is short, when the fish arrives frozen. If the claim breaks on that day, either qualify it on the menu so it is true on both days, or take it off. Where a qualification is used, the guidance warns that "'small print' explanations or qualifications of claims that contradict or change the meaning of prominent claims and images" mislead, and requires the qualification to be "in a font and size that is easily legible and prominent". A footnote in six point below the allergen notice is not a qualification, it is a decoration.

7. **Check the price block as carefully as the dish descriptions.** Every price on the menu should be the total the customer pays for that item, with VAT in it. The Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on the unfair trading provisions in force since 6 April 2025 states that "the practice of showing consumers an initial headline price for a product and subsequently introducing additional mandatory charges as consumers proceed with a purchase or transaction - sometimes called 'drip pricing' - is prohibited". Then check the service charge line. The statutory tipping code defines a service charge as "an amount added to the customer's bill before it is presented to the customer", and continues: "if it is made clear to the customer that the charge is a purely discretionary amount and there is no obligation to pay, the payment is a voluntary service charge." So the menu has to say which yours is, in words, where a customer sees it before ordering. Do the same for cover charges, minimum spends, card surcharges and delivery fees.

8. **Check whether the calorie rules apply to this business before writing a single kcal.** The Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021 came into force on 6 April 2022 and bite where a business "has 250 or more employees". Most independent operators are well under that and are not required to display anything. If the business is in scope, the information goes "at the point at which the consumer chooses what food to buy", it relates to "a single portion of the food, or if the item purchased by the consumer has been prepared by the business for consumption by more than one person, of the whole item", and the menu must carry the statement "adults need around 2000 kcal a day". Items on the menu for fewer than 30 consecutive days and alcoholic drinks above 1.2% are among the exemptions. If the business is out of scope and chooses to print calories anyway, the figures still have to be right, because a wrong number is a misleading statement about the food.

9. **Write the before and after, line by line, and keep the selling in it.** Produce a table: the line as printed, the claim in it, the criterion it failed and where that criterion comes from, and the rewrite. The rewrite is not a shorter, duller line. Swap the unprovable word for the specific fact underneath it, because the fact is nearly always the better copy. "Home-made steak pie" becomes "Steak pie, shortcrust made here this morning, slow-cooked shin". "Locally sourced beef" becomes "Beef from Clarke's, eleven miles up the A6". "Fresh fish of the day" becomes "Today's fish, landed at Fleetwood, ask your server". Then group the output into three lists: claims that pass and can stay as they are, claims that pass only with a qualification printed as prominently as the claim, and claims to remove. Nothing goes to print until all three lists have been read by the owner.

## Then it checks

1. Every line of the menu, including headers, footers, the drinks list, the blackboard, the website and the delivery app listing, has been marked into descriptions and claims, and the total number of claims is stated.
2. Every use of fresh, freshly, home-made, hand-made, farmhouse, traditional, original, authentic, real, genuine, natural, local and seasonal is tested individually, and each result names the criterion it was tested against and where that criterion comes from.
3. Every photograph and illustration on every surface has been assessed separately from the words, and any image that makes a claim the text avoided is listed as a finding in its own right.
4. Each claim that survives has a stated evidence source behind it: a named farm, a delivery note, a recipe made on the premises, a dated process. No claim passes on the owner's confidence alone.
5. The price block is checked: every menu price is the total the customer pays including VAT, every mandatory charge appears before the customer orders, and the service charge line states in words whether it is discretionary or not.
6. Every failing line has a rewrite written out in full next to it, and no rewrite introduces a new claim of its own or relies on a qualification in smaller type than the claim it qualifies.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never keep a claim because it sells well. The whole reason these words are on menus is that they work, which is exactly why an unevidenced one is a problem rather than a harmless flourish.
- Never fix a claim with a footnote. A qualification that changes the meaning of a prominent claim has to be as prominent as the claim, and one that is not simply adds a second finding to the first.
- Never write "gluten free", "dairy free", "nut free", "low fat", "high protein" or any nutrition or health claim into a rewrite. Those are defined terms with conditions attached and they belong in a separate piece of work, not in a copywriting pass.
- Never state a legal position. This pass tests menu wording against published criteria and the criteria themselves say they are not the law. The Food Standards Agency's own guidance says "there is no legal obligation to follow the recommended criteria. Whether this advice is followed or not, misleading labelling is an offence under legislation", and that its advice "should not be taken as an authoritative statement nor an interpretation of the law, as only the courts have this power".
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor, their trading standards officer or their environmental health officer to check before the menu is printed or published. It compares wording against published guidance. It is not legal advice and it is not a ruling on whether any menu complies with anything.

## Built from
- Food Standards Agency, "Criteria for the use of the terms fresh, pure, natural etc. in food labelling", revised July 2008, copy read at https://www.sustainweb.org/assets/fsa-fresh-natural-pure-guidance-2008-1744634508.pdf, read 14 September 2026: the criteria in steps 2, 3 and 4, the caterer-specific home-made paragraph, the warning about pictures in step 5, the prominence rule in step 6, and the legal status wording in the rules.
- Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Article 7 "Fair information practices", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2011/1169/article/7, read 14 September 2026: the requirement that food information "shall not be misleading ... as to the characteristics of the food", that it "shall be accurate, clear and easy to understand for the consumer", and that this applies "to advertising" and "to the presentation of foods", which is what brings the photographs in step 5 into scope.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices", CMA207, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691b9bd821ef5aaa6543ee6f/Unfair_commercial_practices_CMA207_18_Nov_2025__2_.pdf, 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: the drip pricing prohibition and the overall deceptive presentation test behind steps 5 and 7.
- Department for Business and Trade, "Code of Practice on Fair and Transparent Distribution of Tips", in force 1 October 2024, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66a76a35ab418ab055592e86/statutory-code-of-practice-on-fair-and-transparent-distribution-of-tips.pdf, read 14 September 2026: the definition of a service charge and of a voluntary service charge used in step 7.
- The Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021, SI 2021/909, in force 6 April 2022, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/909/made, read 14 September 2026: the 250 employee threshold, the point of choice requirement, the single portion basis and the exact wording "adults need around 2000 kcal a day" in step 8.

# menu-wording

## You are given
A folder from a UK restaurant, pub, cafe, bar or hotel containing any of: the menu (PDF, DOCX or a clear photograph of every page), the drinks list, photographs of the blackboard and any A-board, a saved copy or screenshots of the menu page on the website, the about page, each delivery app listing, the takeaway menu, and the images used on any of those surfaces. There may also be a note on how each dish is actually made and where the main ingredients come from, delivery notes or invoices naming suppliers, and a criteria file holding the published guidance text the claims are to be tested against.

The folder also contains a decisions file written by the owner or by Claude giving, per claim: the verdict (`keep`, `qualify` or `delete`), the criterion it was tested against, the evidence reference behind it, and the rewrite line or the qualification wording where one is needed. Codex assembles the register and the tables. Claude makes the judgements and writes the rewrites.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `menu-lines.csv` with columns in this order: `line_no`, `surface`, `section`, `position`, `dish_name`, `text_as_printed`, `price_as_printed`, `source_file`, `page_or_screenshot`.
   `surface` is one of `printed menu`, `drinks list`, `blackboard`, `A-board`, `website menu page`, `about page`, `delivery app - <name of the app>`, `takeaway menu`, `header`, `footer`, or another surface found in the inputs. Transcribe exactly as printed, including any spelling error, capitalisation and punctuation. Every correction is a finding, never an edit.
2. `claim-register.csv` with columns in this order: `claim_id`, `line_no`, `surface`, `claim_word`, `phrase_as_printed`, `claim_family`, `criterion_quoted`, `criterion_source`, `criterion_source_date`, `evidence_offered`, `evidence_reference`, `evidence_date`, `verdict_supplied`, `decisions_file_reference`.
   `claim_family` is one of `freshness`, `preparation`, `heritage`, `provenance`, `quality`, `dietary or nutrition`.
   `verdict_supplied` is one of `keep`, `qualify`, `delete` or `not supplied`.
   Scan every surface, at minimum, for: fresh, freshly, oven fresh, garden fresh, ocean fresh, kitchen fresh, home-made, homemade, home made, hand-made, handmade, hand-cut, hand carved, hand finished, hand assembled, made here, our own, farmhouse, country style, rustic, traditional, original, authentic, real, genuine, natural, pure, local, locally sourced, seasonal, artisan, premium, finest, best, from the farm, and any capitalised place, farm, breed, boat, port or supplier name.
3. `image-register.csv` with columns in this order: `image_id`, `surface`, `where_it_appears`, `image_file_or_url`, `adjacent_line_no`, `description_supplied`, `finding_supplied`, `verdict_supplied`, `decisions_file_reference`.
   One row per photograph, illustration, header image and background image on every surface. `description_supplied` and `finding_supplied` are copied from the decisions file. Codex records where each image sits and what it sits next to. It does not decide what an image implies.
4. `price-block.csv` with columns in this order: `item`, `surface`, `amount_as_printed`, `vat_wording_as_printed`, `mandatory_or_discretionary_as_printed`, `where_it_first_appears_to_the_customer`, `full_wording_as_printed`, `source_file`, `page_or_screenshot`.
   `vat_wording_as_printed` is one of `states included`, `states excluded` or `not stated`. Write one row for each of, where present in the inputs: the service charge, any cover charge, any minimum spend, any card surcharge, any delivery fee, any tray or packaging charge, any corkage, and any other mandatory charge.
5. `calorie-scope.csv`, one row, with columns in this order: `employees_on_first_day_of_current_financial_year`, `stated_by`, `date_stated`, `meets_250_employee_test`, `kcal_shown_on_any_surface`, `daily_intake_statement_present`, `statement_as_printed`, `items_with_kcal_count`, `items_without_kcal_count`.
6. `before-and-after.csv` with columns in this order: `claim_id`, `line_no`, `surface`, `line_as_printed`, `claim_word`, `criterion_failed`, `criterion_source`, `rewrite_supplied`, `rewrite_author`, `qualification_supplied`, `qualification_prominence_note`, `status`.
   `status` is `REWRITE SUPPLIED` where the decisions file carries a rewrite, and `AWAITING REWRITE - not written here` where it does not. Codex never fills an empty rewrite cell.
7. `unevidenced-claims.csv` with columns: `claim_id`, `line_no`, `surface`, `claim_word`, `phrase_as_printed`, `evidence_asked_for`, `reason_not_held`.
8. `no-criterion-held.csv` with columns: `claim_id`, `claim_word`, `criterion_looked_for`, `source_file_searched`, `effect` (always `criterion_quoted left empty`).
9. `wording-report.md` - under 900 words. The count of lines and the count of claims per surface, then three headed lists built from `verdict_supplied`: `Passes as printed`, `Passes only with a qualification printed as prominently as the claim`, and `Remove`. Then the image findings, the price block findings, one line stating the employee number supplied and whether it meets or does not meet the 250 employee test, and a closing block recording that nothing goes to print until the owner and their solicitor, trading standards officer or environmental health officer have read all three lists.

## Rules
- **Codex does not judge a claim.** It never decides whether a claim passes, never assigns a verdict of its own, and never writes `keep`, `qualify` or `delete` into a cell that the decisions file left empty. An unsupplied verdict reads `not supplied`.
- **Codex does not write menu copy.** It never composes, shortens, improves or invents a replacement line, a dish description, a qualification or a price. Rewrites are copied verbatim from the decisions file, attributed in `rewrite_author`, or the status reads `AWAITING REWRITE - not written here`.
- **Never write a dietary, allergen, nutrition or health claim into any output.** Never write "gluten free", "gluten-free", "dairy free", "nut free", "allergen free", "vegan", "safe for allergies", "suitable for coeliacs", "low fat", "high protein" or "healthy" into a line Codex composes. Those strings appear in the output only inside `phrase_as_printed`, `text_as_printed` or another column that quotes a supplied input word for word, and the row records that they were found, never that they are correct.
- **Never state or infer an allergen status for any dish.** This pass reads wording. It does not open the allergen question.
- Every criterion must be quoted verbatim from the supplied criteria file, with `criterion_source` naming the document and `criterion_source_date` its date. Never quote a criterion from memory, never paraphrase one and never invent a threshold or a figure. A claim with no criterion in the inputs goes in `no-criterion-held.csv` and `criterion_quoted` stays empty.
- Never state a legal position, never write that anything complies or does not comply, and never write the words offence, breach, unlawful or illegal. The output records what is printed, what criterion it was tested against, and the verdict supplied.
- Test every surface, not just the printed menu. A claim on the delivery app and the same claim on the blackboard are two rows with two `claim_id` values.
- Transcribe prices exactly as printed. Never recalculate a price, never add or remove VAT, and never state what a price should be.
- Every row cites a `line_no` from `menu-lines.csv`, except `image-register.csv` rows where the image sits next to no line, which carry `adjacent_line_no` as `none`.
- Do not comment on design, typeface or colour except where the inputs show text too small to read, text falling in a fold, or a qualification set in smaller type than the claim it qualifies. Those go in `qualification_prominence_note`.
- Publish nothing, send nothing and change nothing on any website, delivery app or menu.
- British English, £, DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes. No emoji.
- Every output file carries, as its first line or its first row, the words: `Working document for the owner's solicitor, trading standards officer or environmental health officer to check before the menu is printed or published. Not legal advice and not a ruling on compliance.`

## Return
A list of the files written with their absolute paths and row counts, the number of surfaces read, the number of lines transcribed, the total number of claims found and the count per surface, the count of claims by `verdict_supplied` including how many are `not supplied`, the number of images registered, the number of claims with no criterion in the inputs, whether the calorie labelling threshold was met or not met, and any surface named in the inputs that could not be read with the reason.