I Visited a Dozen Local Restaurants to Talk About Food Allergies: Here’s What I Found
Welcome back to the Safe Plate Alliance blog! A few months ago, I surveyed dozens of local restaurants on delivery apps and found that roughly 80% weren’t using the merchant allergy tools available on Uber Eats and DoorDash.
These tools include allergen labels, which let restaurants identify allergens in individual menu items, and allergy intake forms, which give customers a dedicated way to communicate their specific allergies instead of using the generic comment box.
These features can also give customers more confidence that a restaurant is aware of food allergies and is prepared to handle them. One study found that 25% of people with food allergies avoided restaurant takeout altogether.
The Listening Tour
I started by writing to local restaurants to encourage them to turn on the delivery allergy tools. But I didn’t get as much response as I had hoped for, and some restaurants didn’t even have published email addresses. So, I decided to go visit restaurants one by one on a “listening tour.”
On my visits, I gave each restaurant a flyer explaining the importance of these features and how to turn them on. More importantly, I wanted to understand why restaurants weren’t using these tools in the first place. I found two issues.
Restaurants Don't Always Know About the Tools
The first problem is that many restaurants aren’t aware of the tools or why they might matter to customers. One of my most memorable conversations was at a local restaurant which I like a lot. The manager’s position was that the allergy tools weren’t necessary. He showed me that when a customer puts an allergy in the generic comment box, it already shows up on the restaurant’s screen.
But customers don’t necessarily know that their allergy note in the generic comment box is getting read by the restaurant. For example, have you ever had the experience of requesting dressing on the side in that box, and then your salad arrives with the dressing mixed in anyway? From my perspective, a potentially life-threatening allergy is being put in the same communication channel used to ask for extra napkins. In contrast, the dedicated form tells the customer that the restaurant is aware and knows how to handle these requests.
Several other restaurants I spoke to also told me that allergy information, when placed in the generic comment box, showed up on their screens. But none of them had considered that diners might avoid ordering from them at all because they didn't see these features being used. Those customers are invisible to the restaurant.
Enabling Allergy Features Takes Work
My conversation with a manager at another restaurant in town revealed a second problem. This time, he knew about the allergy features. But he told me that enabling the features required a difficult Uber Eats onboarding process that he didn't want to have to deal with.
Another restaurant manager explained that he wanted an easier way to transfer his menu ingredients into the delivery apps so customers could see what was in each dish.
The second issue is that restaurants are constantly busy taking orders and preparing food. They don’t always have the time or technical know-how to set up delivery platform features, but might use them if they were more accessible.
What I Learned
I was excited to see that one restaurant I visited ended up turning on allergy features after our conversation, which showed that this type of change is possible.
But more importantly, these conversations helped me see the problem from the restaurants’ side and not just the customer’s. Almost every restaurant owner or manager I spoke to was friendly, well-meaning, and cared about their customers. But they often weren’t aware of the tools’ impact or found them difficult to enable or use.
That changed my thinking about what the Safe Plate Alliance should do next. I still want to raise awareness among local restaurants about allergy features on food delivery apps, but I am now also focused on working with national organizations to make this problem more widely known. I am also looking at ways to work directly with the delivery platforms to make the tools more prominent and easier for restaurants to use.
Closing Thoughts
I encourage you to speak to restaurants in your own community and ask them to enable these allergy features. You can use the Safe Plate flyer.
Contact me at safeplatealliance@gmail.com if you have any other thoughts or suggestions. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
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