The inquest into the death of Mia Shay St Hilaire, a 12-year-old girl who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after drinking a milkshake mixed in an unwashed blender at a south London cafe, concluded Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, at Inner South London Coroner’s Court — with the coroner identifying failures and missed opportunities in the way the child’s allergy had been managed.
Mia, who lived in Sydenham in southeast London, had a hazelnut allergy. In August 2023, while out with her aunt and sister, she ordered a Twix milkshake at the Pop Inn Cafe on Southwark Park Road in Bermondsey. She died in the hospital on Aug. 30, 2023.
What the Coroner Found
Assistant coroner Briony Ballard, who heard the evidence before publishing a narrative conclusion, found that Mia drank part of a Twix milkshake Ballard said had been “cross-contaminated with hazelnut residue from a Kinder Bueno milkshake previously prepared in the same unwashed blender.”
Anaphylaxis set in rapidly, the coroner found, and Mia collapsed at her aunt’s home. She was given extensive emergency treatment and transferred to intensive care at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, where she died.
Closed-circuit television footage showed that Baris Yucel, the Pop Inn Cafe’s food business operator, had not cleaned the blender before making Mia’s drink. Ballard said she would issue a Prevention of Future Deaths report to the Food Standards Agency, Southwark Council and the cafe.
Guilty Plea and £18,000 Fine
The criminal case ended well before the inquest. Yucel, then 47, pleaded guilty to six food safety offenses brought by Southwark Council. They included failing to make allergen advice available or visible to customers, failing to manage allergen contamination during food production, and serving food that contained an allergenic ingredient that was not meant to be in it. He was fined £18,000 and handed a 100-hour community order at Croydon Magistrates’ Court on Jan. 24, 2025.
The council said at the time that it believed hazelnuts and almonds were present in the drink. Natasha Ennin, a Southwark councilor, said in January 2025 that the death might have been avoided had the cafe operator followed basic food safety rules, and that officers would keep working with local businesses so the rules are followed across the borough. The council said an enforcement officer had made several visits to the cafe to check that procedures designed to prevent a similar incident were being maintained.
A lawyer for Yucel said the judge had described him as a man of previous good character with no previous incidents reported against him in 22 years, that he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and took immediate steps to educate himself in September and October 2023, and that he thinks of Mia and her family every day.
A Call for Allergy Ratings
Mia’s parents, Adrian St Hilaire and Chanel Spence, thanked the coroner for what they called a careful and thorough investigation and said they were grateful that their daughter’s voice had been heard. “Mia was, and is, deeply loved and she will never be forgotten,” they said in a statement.
Their central demand is a new mark on the cafe window. Food hygiene ratings, the couple argued, tell diners nothing about how a business handles allergens, and they want a separate, clearly displayed allergy management rating alongside the hygiene score so that people living with allergies can judge for themselves where it is safe to eat. Had the local authority made sure the cafe understood and carried out its allergy responsibilities, they said, they believe Mia would still be alive.
The family is represented by the food safety team at the law firm Leigh Day, led by partner Michelle Victor, who said the evidence raised serious concerns about how food allergies are understood, managed and monitored across the food service industry. The family, she said, is urging the Food Standards Agency and other authorities to review the framework governing allergy safety and consider substantive reform. In a statement issued after the sentencing in January 2025, the parents had said they hoped the conviction and fine would signal to food businesses nationwide the consequences of failing to take food safety seriously.
Tanya Ednan-Laperouse, founder of Natasha’s Foundation — whose daughter, Natasha, died at 15 after an allergic reaction to sesame in a Pret baguette — said the inquest showed how much ground remains to be covered on awareness, understanding and regulation of food allergies. Allergies, she said, are not a preference or a choice but a serious and unpredictable medical condition.