Quezon City's calorie-labeling ordinance and single-use plastics ban, explained
Quezon City has gone further than Philippine national law with two ordinances of its own: mandatory calorie counts on menus (SP-3254), and a ban on single-use plastic ware for dine-in customers. Here's who each one covers, the actual rollout dates, and what's really needed to comply.
Two city ordinances, not one national law
The Philippines’ national Food Safety Act (RA 10611) requires allergen information on packaged food, but it doesn’t touch calorie counts on restaurant menus or single-use plastics. Quezon City — the country’s most populous city — has gone further on both fronts with its own ordinances. If you operate in QC, national compliance alone isn’t enough; these are separate, additional requirements enforced locally.
The calorie-labeling ordinance (SP-3254, S. 2024)
Passed in March 2024, SP-3254 requires restaurants and food establishments to display the calorie count (in kcal) per serving directly on the menu, in a font size comparable to the dish name itself.
Who it covers, and when:
- From December 2025 — chains with 5 or more branches in Quezon City
- Phase 2 — chains with 2 or more branches
- Phase 3 (year three) — all restaurants and food businesses, except barangay micro-businesses and MSMEs (ambulant vendors, hawkers, carinderia owners)
What’s exempt: daily specials, temporary menu items on the menu for under 60 days, custom orders, condiments, spices and flavorings.
This is the half of Quezon City’s new rules that’s directly a labeling/nutrition-data problem — and it’s the one CalcMenu already solves. CalcMenu calculates calories per serving from your recipe’s actual ingredients, not a manual estimate someone wrote down once. The Quezon City-specific menu display format (matching font size next to the dish name) is in development, targeting Q3 2026 — but the underlying nutrition data this ordinance requires is ready today with Nutrition & Labeling.
The single-use plastics ban (Ordinances 2868-2019 & 2876-2019)
Separately, Quezon City has banned single-use plastic bags city-wide (Ordinance 2868-2019) and, since 1 July 2021, prohibited restaurants and hotels from giving dine-in customers disposable plastic ware — cups, plates, cutlery, straws and stirrers (Ordinance 2876-2019). Takeout and delivery orders fall under a “by-request” protocol: plastic utensils and condiment sachets only if the customer asks. Penalties escalate with repeat violations, up to revocation of a business license.
To be direct about this one: it’s a service-ware and sourcing requirement, not a recipe or menu-data question, so it’s outside what CalcMenu addresses. We’re covering it here because it’s a real, currently-enforced compliance requirement for any QC food-service operator — worth knowing about even where it isn’t something a labeling platform solves.
What this means if you operate in Quezon City
Two separate compliance clocks are running: a nutrition-data one (calorie labeling, phased in from December 2025) and an operations one (plastics, already in force since 2021). Don’t assume compliance with one covers the other, and don’t assume either is covered just because you meet FDA Philippines’ national allergen requirements.
Book a 15-minute call to see how CalcMenu’s recipe-based nutrition data lines up with Quezon City’s calorie-labeling requirements: Book now
Explore CalcMenu's recipe management software for professional kitchens to see how it applies to your kitchen.
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