12-Year-Old Girl Dies After Contaminated Milkshake at London Cafe

A 12-year-old girl lost her life after drinking a milkshake that turned out to be contaminated at a cafe in London. Mia Shay St Hilaire had gone to the Pop Inn Cafe in the Bermondsey neighborhood with her aunt and sister back in August 2023.

She ordered a Twix milkshake, but the blender used to make it still held residue from a previous Kinder Bueno milkshake that contained hazelnuts. Mia had a hazelnut allergy. CCTV footage later showed cafe operator Baris Yucel preparing her drink without washing the blender first.

She only had some of it before things went wrong. She developed rapidly progressing anaphylaxis and collapsed at her aunt’s home. Emergency crews worked on her and she was rushed to the intensive care unit at Evelina London Children’s Hospital, but she didn’t survive.

On Thursday, October 8, Assistant Coroner Briony Ballard at Inner South London Coroner’s Court concluded that the milkshake had been cross-contaminated with hazelnut residue from the earlier drink made in the same unwashed blender. That contamination caused the fatal reaction.

Southwark Council had already taken the case to court. In January 2025, Yucel pleaded guilty to six offences. They covered failing to make allergen information available to customers, not managing allergen contamination during food preparation, and serving food that contained an allergen that shouldn’t have been there. He was fined £18,000 and given a 100-hour community order. His lawyer later told local media that the judge noted Yucel’s previous good character after 22 years in the food business with no earlier incidents, that he showed genuine remorse, and that he had taken steps to educate himself right after the incident. Yucel no longer owns or runs the cafe, which now holds a perfect five-star food hygiene rating.

Mia’s parents, Adrian St Hilaire and Chanel Spence, along with their lawyer Michelle Victor, have been pushing for real changes. They say the current food hygiene ratings tell people nothing about how a business handles allergies. They want a separate, clearly displayed allergy management rating so families can make safer choices when they eat out. In their words, eating out should not put families living with food allergies at risk. They believe that if the cafe’s allergy responsibilities had been properly understood and followed, their daughter would still be here. They want her legacy to be stronger protections that stop other families from going through the same devastation. They also said she was deeply loved and will never be forgotten.

Southwark Council’s Cllr Natasha Ennin called what happened a tragedy that might have been avoided if basic food safety rules had been followed. The Food Standards Agency’s Rebecca Sudworth expressed sympathies to the family and stressed that businesses must take allergen risks seriously every time and provide accurate information about what’s in their food and drinks.