Food allergies and intolerances in restaurants

– Hello good morning, could you bring me the allergen chart please?
- Emmm... excuse me, we don't have any, if you look at the menu I can go to the kitchen to see if the dishes you want have allergens... If not, we can always make you a salad.

If you have any food sensitivities such as an allergy, intolerance, restriction or follow a diet, the above conversation will sound familiar.

How many times have you been to a restaurant and they couldn't tell you if the dish contained allergens or the waiter couldn't give you what you considered a good experience? We can answer for you: many.

Although the EU Regulation 1169/2011 in force regulates the information provided to consumers and/or diners, the reality is different. There are many of us who have problems when we go to restaurants in search of a satisfactory experience, and it becomes a jungle full of obstacles that often makes us uncomfortable, as it makes us be very alert about what we order and what we finally eat.

The order to the kitchen, in 3 (awkward) steps

  • Step 1: You should have your first choice of dishes along with 2 or 3 variants in case when we place the order to the waiter, we see that in our first choice there is any incompatibility.

  • Step 2: When we have the waiter at our table, we will ask dish by dish if it contains the ingredients we want to avoid and, if it does, we will ask for our 2 or 3 alternatives. At this point, we will see if the waiter should go to the kitchen to make some consultations...

  • Step 3: last but not least, it is important to visually check whether or not the dish that has arrived at the table contains the ingredients to be avoided.

Conclusions

Refoodlution's technology solves this problem by avoiding the diners having to go through these 3 steps, making it the restaurant manager or headwaiter who must do it and it only has to be done once for all customers.

Obviously, we are in an era where technology and digitalization are part of our daily lives, and that is why analog problems such as those that currently exist in restaurants should become less and less.