CHICAGO, November 10, 2025 — New York City is reminding chain restaurants within its borders that they have until Jan. 1 to update their menus and menu boards with icons that flag certain items containing at least 50 grams of added sugar.
After that date, units of chains with at least 15 stores nationwide will be hit with $200 fines for failing to post the warning icons, an image of a spoon inset within a triangle.
The new menu-labeling requirement seems aimed primarily at labeling sugary soft drinks, including energy drinks. It applies only to menu items that are also sold in packaged form within retail food outlets like supermarkets or convenience stores. The example given is a fountain beverage that customers could also buy in bottled or canned form at their local grocery store.
The mandate could also apply to baked goods that are sold piecemeal as desserts within a restaurant but can be found in identical form on supermarket aisles. The key determinant is whether a nutritional breakdown is provided on the retail version in the familiar Nutrition Facts graphic now required on virtually all packaged foods.
The limitation of the requirement to goods also available in packaged form was apparently intended to spare restaurants from having to conduct a detailed new analysis of their highly sugared menu items. Those options have already been analyzed to determine nutritional attributes like calorie content.
The trigger threshold that qualifies an item for coverage is an added-sugar content of at least 50 grams. The consensus among health officials is that someone on a normal diet should not consume more than that amount of sugar per day.
The new requirement marks the second time that federal menu-labeling requirements have been expanded by a jurisdiction in the last month. California recently updated its standard with a mandate that items containing any of nine major allergens be flagged.
The New York city law was passed in 2023 but did not take effect until Oct. 4 of this year. City officials have indicated that they’ll work with restaurants until Jan. 1 to help them abide by the new requirement.
The city was the first jurisdiction in the nation to require the disclosure of nutritional elements on restaurant menus. The mandate it implemented in 2008 was copied by other areas from coast to coast. The disclosure standards set in New York became national requirements with the passage of the Affordable Care Act during the Obama Administration.
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.