Who is covered: the 20-location test
The federal rule applies to a restaurant or similar retail food establishment that is part of a chain with 20 or more locations. All three parts of the test have to hold.
- Twenty or more locations nationally. Not twenty in your state, and not twenty you own — franchised locations count toward the chain.
- Doing business under the same name. A group of twenty differently branded restaurants under one owner is not a covered chain.
- Offering substantially the same menu items. This is the phrase that does the work, and the one below.
"Substantially the same" is about the menu, not the recipe. A chain whose locations share a core menu is covered even where regional items differ and even where a franchisee adds a local special. The test is not defeated by variation at the edges; it is defeated when locations genuinely sell different menus.
Below twenty locations you may register voluntarily and then must comply in full. There is no partial version — voluntary registration is a decision to take on the whole rule, including the written-information duty later in this post.
The two required statements
These are easy to add and routinely missing, which makes them a cheap thing to get right.
- The context statement: "2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice, but calorie needs vary." It appears on every menu and menu board carrying calorie declarations.
- The availability statement: a notice that additional written nutrition information is available on request. This is what tells a guest the fuller set exists.
The second statement is not decorative. It is the menu's half of the written-information duty, and a menu that carries calories without it has declared the numbers while hiding the mechanism for getting the rest.
The full nutrition set you must supply on request
This is the requirement operators most often miss, because it is not visible on the menu. On request, at the location, in writing, you must be able to produce the following for every standard menu item.
| Nutrient | Also required |
|---|---|
| Total calories | Calories from fat |
| Total fat | Saturated fat, trans fat |
| Cholesterol | Sodium |
| Total carbohydrate | Dietary fibre, sugars |
| Protein | — |
"In writing" is satisfied by a printed booklet, a counter card, or a page a member of staff can hand over or display. What it is not satisfied by is a member of staff saying the numbers aloud, or a guest being told to look on the website later.
The practical failure is not the document. It is that the document exists in the manager's office, the manager is off, and the person at the counter does not know it exists. Treat it as a floor procedure, not a filing task.
Self-service and display foods
Buffets, salad bars, bakery cases and self-serve drinks are covered too, and the placement rule changes.
For self-service food on display, the declaration goes on a sign adjacent to the item — on or near the sneeze guard, the bin, or the case — rather than on a menu the guest may never look at. The figure is per displayed unit where the item is discrete, such as a bagel or a slice, and per common serving where it is not.
Self-serve beverages are declared for the cup size offered, without ice unless the drink is normally served with it. The awkward cases are the ones worth deciding deliberately: a fountain drink station with six sizes and thirty flavours produces a lot of declarations, and the usual answer is a chart at the station rather than a label per combination.
Estimates, ranges and variable items
The rule expects a reasonable basis, not laboratory certainty. Nutrient databases, cookbooks, laboratory analysis and nutrition software are all acceptable bases, provided you can show the method and it is applied consistently.
Variable items have defined treatments, and picking the wrong one is a more common error than getting a number wrong:
- An item with two or three flavour variants: declare each one separately.
- An item offered in a range of sizes: declare each size.
- A pizza or similar sold whole but eaten in slices: declare per serving, and state what the serving is.
- A build-your-own item: declare the base and list the additions separately so a guest can add them up.
- A combination meal with choices: declare a range across the possible combinations.
Keep the basis for every figure in a file you can produce. The question at inspection is rarely "is this number right?" and usually "how did you arrive at it?"