When you’re collecting food, you must ensure allergen information is available.
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This will usually be labeled on the product itself if it's prepacked, or provided separately at the time of collection by businesses that change their menus regularly (such as caterers). You must not collect food when no allergen information is available. Check out our specific guidance on Allergens.
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However, loose bakery items will often be unlabelled, and you may collect them provided you follow the below instructions:
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Don't:
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❌ Never try to identify loose/unlabelled items (neither in the title nor description of your listing) if there is no name for it on the container or bag. Indeed, if you misidentify an item or if it was in contact with other products, someone could get the wrong allergen information and have an allergic reaction.
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🏬 At the collection site, ask a store colleague to bag the loose bakery for you, or use tongs or clean gloves.
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🏠 Once you’re home, please don’t handle or photograph it with bare hands. The best practice Olio strongly recommends is to keep loose bakery in its bag or packaging until the requester collects it. You can open the bag and photograph the items inside. There’s no need to sort or identify them, as loose bakery items shouldn’t be identified or named.
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That said, taking it out of the bag isn’t a rule break on its own.
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⚠️ It only leads to a formal warning if the items are placed on an unsanitary surface.

This includes any soft surface, such as a sofa, car seat, bedding, a blanket, a towel, a tablecloth or clothing, as well as the floor, a chopping board or any other surface that can’t be properly wiped clean. If you’re ever unsure, keep the items in their bag.

✅ On a clean, hard, wipeable surface, it’s fine.
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Do:
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✅ List these items specifically as "Loose bakery items". Listing these items with ANY other listing name will result in a reminder message to correctly list the items.
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✅ Ask the store to bag the items for you. If they will not do this, please use either tongs, sanitised hands and/or gloves.
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✅ Make sure that the requester is aware that you cannot identify a specific product. They should identify the items themselves using the information available on the allergen page.
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Remember that it is perfectly fine to ask the requesters to bring their own containers to collect loose bakery items.

🍞 Loose Bakery Items
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Store colleagues at Sainsbury’s should not donate loose bakery items. If they do, please report this to us immediately. For more details on what food to expect from your Sainsbury’s collection, check out our Sainsbury’s Collection Guidance.
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Why can't I use any other listing name such as 'Mixed pastries', 'Mix bakeries', etc?
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We ask our Food Waste Heros to strictly use only "Loose bakery items" in order to efficiently identify any incorrectly labelled items within our system. Using any other generic label like "Mixed pastries" or "Mix bakeries" would hinder our ability to leverage automation and necessitate manual judgment, resulting in a time-consuming and unscalable process.