What it takes to trust a kitchen...

Anyone with a severe food allergy has an entirely different experience when it comes to eating out. Most of your customers can rock up to your venue without pre-checking the menu, and order without worrying too much about what’s going on in your kitchen.

But for guests with allergies, the process is much more difficult. They have to check menus and allergen matrices, and then they have to put a great deal of trust in establishments that those menus and allergens are up to date. It’s tiring. And it doesn’t have to be.

We’ve recently partnered with Served, and their co-founder and CEO, Eve, shared her experience living with a severe allergy:

“I’ve lived with severe peanut and tree nut allergies all my life, so I know how much trust a guest puts in a restaurant every time they order. Around 2.4 million UK adults have a confirmed food allergy, and more than 87% say they’d leave a restaurant if they weren’t confident in its allergen information. Menus and suppliers change constantly, so that information has to be accurate, up to date and easy for both guests and staff to find. Get it right and guests relax. Guests with allergies and dietary requirements become some of your most loyal customers, coming back time and time again with family and friends. There are a lot of us, and we’re often the ones who decide where the group eats. I know, because I’m usually that person myself. ”

That experience is part of what inspired Eve and her co-founder Alana to start Served, an allergen management platform for hospitality where operators keep their allergen, ingredient and nutrition data in one place and publish live, filterable digital menus, so guests with allergies can see exactly what's safe to eat and teams can update changes in seconds.

The trust part is what sticks out to us at Labl.it. Because building trust takes time and, above all else, consistency.

Consistency is exactly what Labl.it helps with. Prep and PPDS labels that show the allergen information of every food item in a kitchen and pre-packed for sale, reassuring both customers and the kitchen team that allergens are correctly labelled.

It can’t remove every risk from a kitchen, but it does take handwriting and memory out of a job where small slips matter.

Try Labl.it free for 14 days and see how it feels on your next shift.

Sources: Food Standards Agency / University of Manchester et al., “Patterns and Prevalence of Adult Food Allergy (PAFA),” 2024; Anaphylaxis UK / Serve Legal, “Survey reveals young people living with food allergies face significant difficulty and disruption when trying to eat out in the UK,” 2023.