October 22, 2025 • 28 mins
A significant challenge of allergen disclosure is that ingredient information is fragmented and frequently changing, while supply-chain tracking isn’t where it needs to be, Foodini cofounder and COO Erica Anderman tells Bloomberg Intelligence in this episode of the Choppin’ It Up podcast. Anderman and cofounder and CEO Dylan McDonnell sit down with BI senior restaurant and foodservice analyst Michael Halen to discuss the impact of California’s new law requiring restaurant chains to disclose major food allergens and how technology can help ease the transition. They also comment on the size of the food-allergy problem, differing regulations around the globe and which states are expected to pass allergy-disclosure legislation next.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to Chopping It Up. I'm your host, Mike hallon
the senior restaurant and food service analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Our research and that a bi's five hundred analysts around
the globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal.
If you enjoy the PODDOMI a solid and give us
a five star review on Apple or Spotify. Today we're
joined by Dylan McDonald, founder and CEO, and Erica Anderman,
(00:35):
co founder and COO at Foodini.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Foodini is a.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Dietary intelligence platform that leverages AI to create ingredient and
transparency solutions for food service venues. Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Sure things. So, I'm excited to talk about food allergiens today.
Not only is it a hot topic, but I've mentioned
to you too that my nephew slash god son, suffers
from pretty terrible food allergies. So this one's close to
my heart. Yeah, looking forward to Yeah, man, what inspired
you to start Foodini?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
So I come at this very much from the consumer angle,
not too dissimilar to your godson. So quick background. I
was born in Philly, grew up in Ireland. As the
accent probably betrays. I was in the legal world prior
to this as well, so worked in big law for
a few years with the kind of big tech companies.
So this was definitely a bit of a pivot for
(01:31):
me to solve a problem that obviously I experienced myself
diagnosed as celiac when I was ten years old. And honestly,
it was just the like twenty odd years of trying
to navigate dining out of home or like ordering online,
any scenario where I wasn't cooking food myself, and just
the amount of times I could not find the food
(01:53):
I was looking for, amount of times that I would
go out with friends or colleagues and end up sick
that night or the next day because I was given
incorrect food, even after you know, doing all the right things.
And yeah, as time went on, I just got more
and more frustrated and thought that there had to be
a better way, and then started digging into just how
big this problem was and the reasons why it existed.
(02:16):
And yeah, that's kind of a spouse where the inspiration
came from just trying to solve a problem that so
many people suffer from.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it's such a growing problem, and we'll talk about
the size of it as we get into it. Erica,
how did you two meet and what strengths to each
of you bring to the business.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yeah, so both came from literally different parts of the
world and industries. For me, I've been in the restaurant
take industry a long time. I got my start in school,
started a company called Campus Food back in the day,
so one of the first players in online ordering. And
then I met the founders of Seamless in New York
who were starting a new company called Single Platform. So
(02:53):
Single Platform we essentially built kind of the plumbing for
menu data on the internet prior, when you look up
a restaurant, it's name, address, phone number, and then a
PDF of the menu if you're lucky. And what we
did is we turned that into an actual menu schema
that we would syndicate out. All the major search engines,
review sites, all the different platforms that were listing restaurants
(03:17):
online now had actual menu data. And so after that,
I was at Slice, a local pizza app, and many
different online ordering platforms. And from being in that world
of menus and online ordering, you know, I knew a
lot about menus and so we got introduced through a
mutual friend. Dylan at the time had started the company
from a consumer lens and was actually struggling with working
(03:40):
with restaurants in terms of how to get this data
from restaurants. And once I met him and started really
talking through the problem, it became clear.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
To both of us, like this was just such a
huge gap.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
From my perspective, it's really on the restaurant industry, knowing
that online ordering today and menus still don't.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Actually have this data.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
It's very manual, and so we realize there's a huge
opportunity to really help the industry to be able to
make it easier for restaurants.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
To document this and put it in front of consumers.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Very cool, Dylan, How big is the food allergy problem
here in the US and globally?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
You know, when I first started looking into this, you
kind of assume you live in your own little bubble,
and you know, there's a few other people impacted, and
no one was kind of horse shocked than I was
when I started digging into the numbers. But in terms
of food energies, so just food energies, there's thirty three
million Americans have a diagnosed food energy, which is much
much larger than I expected.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And just another little stat.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Within that, but forty percent of the children who fall
in that bracket have more than one food energy, so
it tends to be especially amongst kids if they've won,
they have multiple Over the top of that, then you've
bought another fifty million Americans who have a food intolerance,
which is something essentially that you react negatively to the food,
but it's not a diagnosed the allergy. Then you have
(05:01):
another seventy million Americans who fall into the bracklet of
a lifestyle diet. So think you're vegan, you're vegetarian, your keto,
you're paleo, your low thoughd map so many different I
suppose diets that continue to come out, and so we
usually have the tam in and around one hundred and
seventy three million, and so again, like in terms of
dietary needs, holistically, it's a massive consumer segment and it
(05:23):
just continues to grow year on your boat in terms
of prevalence, but also the complexity of the consumer diets
that people wish to follow.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And do you have any data about how big the
problem is globally? I'm just curious if this is a
bigger issue in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
It's funny it's different. Different regions seem to have different
prevalence to certain things. So for example, celiac disease, which
is gluten free, that's what affects me. Italy has the
number one highest rate of Celia act disease in the world.
Arland is number two per head of capita. And side
story but that they say that's the back to the
potato famine and that when the pileato crop got wiped out,
(06:03):
they imported a load of we eat into Ireland and
that's kind of what the came down through the generations
and why there's such a high prevalence there. Australia, Melbourne
is the food allergy capital of the world. They have
the highest rate of food allergy of any city in
the world. A lot of Asian countries there's an extremely
high prevalence towards lactose. So it's one of these ones
(06:23):
where there's definitely definitely different regions have different propensities to
certain allergens, but it is a global problem. And the
only reason certain regions we don't have a lot of
data from is just aware like awareness and diagnosis, Like
not everyone has access to the medical requirements that they
need to actually figure out why am I getting sick
(06:43):
all the time and what food is causing that?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, it's it's really interesting and clearly difficult to track. Erica,
how our food allergies currently handled in online ordering?
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Yeah, so in the online ordering space, I think this
has become more and more of a growing problem. Right,
So it's it's you see it more prevalent in kids,
and I think over the past call it fifteen twenty years,
as online ordering has grown, most of it has been
done reactively. And so because menus have that same schema
you know we built back then it's menu title description.
(07:17):
The way the industry has handled that is through adding tags,
and so the challenge with that is that when you
add tags, it's manual and not consistent. And so whether
it's first or third party ordering, it's the restaurant that
has to go and add those tags, and they're not consistent.
So on some platforms it might say add a tag
(07:40):
of gluten free, but on another it contains gluten. So
now it's confusing to the consumer of like, what exactly
does that GF? You know, what is exactly does it
mean because there's no consistency across the different online ordering platforms,
and then from an online ordering perspective, those companies also
because the data is consistent and you can't query based
(08:03):
off of it. So for online ordering, who want to,
you know, focus on personalization and being able to put
the right results in front of the right people. Without
that data, it's really difficult for them to be able
to deliver on.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
That sounds like a mess pretty much exactly, Yeah, Dylan.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Regulations around alergen labeling vary across the globe. So which
countries right now are ahead of the curb curve and
what are they requiring from restaurants?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Yeah, so Europe is probably the furthest ahead right There
was the EU brought in European wide regulation matt like
around food Atrogen's boat on package goods, but also in restaurants.
The implementation on a country by country level can be
slightly nuanced.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
In Europe.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
The countries that are most ahead of of the curve
are Germany, Austria, Ireland. The UK is pretty is pretty
good as well. Australia has regulation around this as well.
It's a little softer than the eure in regulation it's
more around everything has to be documented on premise, but
it doesn't necessarily have to be on every menu. But yeah,
(09:08):
it's the likes of Austria, Germany and Ireland for example,
that have the kind of most comprehensive allergen labeling laws
when it comes to restaurants and menus.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Okay, and the US is behind the curve, but there
is some movement.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
SB sixty eight in California has been passed by the
state legislature and as a waiting Gavin Knew some signature.
What does it mean for restaurants in the Golden State
and how do you think it will influence dining trends
in consumer behavior?
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Yeah, so this is I suppose big for the allergy
community in terms of it's the first piece of allergen
legislation to come to the United States. As right, it's
to restaurants. Just I suppose quick bullet points on it.
It applies initially to restaurants with twenty plus locations worldwide
that have at least one restaurant in California, So one
(09:56):
location in California twenty overall you're captured. The effect of
it is also one July twenty twenty six, so it's
not that far away. And it essentially applies also to
all menus physical and digital that are in that restaurant's ecosystem.
And so the restaurants, in terms of becoming compliant, they
can do it in two main ways. On all of
(10:17):
their physical menus, so think PDF and menu boards. They
can label every individual menu item for the allergens that
are within that item, so chicken curry contains gluten eggs,
so et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Or they can
use a digital solution, so there's specific wording in there
that there can be a link out to QR code,
so a QRE code that links out to a digital
(10:38):
allergen menu. And again, are assumption is that the vast
majority of restaurants are going to go down that path
as opposed to having to you know, constantly reprint and
redo all of their physical.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Menus and menu boards.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
In terms of the impact, I suppose it will definitely
push restaurants to operate with a similar rigger around now
ingredient data to the same way they already kind of
treat food safety. You know, there'll have to be processes
in place, Recipes will need to be documented. Every substitution,
whether that's an internal substitution or a substitution met by supplier,
(11:14):
because you know they've swapped out whatever that that day
will need to be tracked, and the impact of that
swap on the allergens in every menu item will also
need to trace through all menus in that restaurant's ecosystem,
again physical and digital. And yeah, essentially menu items just
won't be able to be changed or added without the
menus being updated for that correspondent allergen. So there will
(11:35):
definitely be a pretty I think significant impact on how
restaurants think about their menus going forward.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, i'd imagine. So what states do you expect to
be fast followers of California and implement something like this.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
New York is already on train.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
So there's already a bill that's in the early stages
of going through the process that I think is even
potentially more onerous then the California one. Again, intent initially
of SB sixty it was to cover all restaurants, and
we know that the intent of the Senator got this
bill passed is also to go back and make sure
that this does capture all restaurants, not just twenty plus location.
(12:12):
So New York is next up with that bill that's
already in train, and we believe I think Illinois and
Oregon are likely to be the next two that take
this up.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Erico, what are the biggest challenges restaurants face when they're
implementing allergen disclosure?
Speaker 6 (12:27):
Yeah, I mean the challenge here is just all the
data does not live in one place, so you need
to maintain this information also across both your physical menus
as well as your digital menus.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So I think one thing that.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
We should probably also just state is like, most restaurant
operators want to do the right job here right, they
want to serve guests safely. What's holding them back is
more that the ingredient information is super fragmented and changing,
and the tracking on the supply chain is not where
it needs to be. So this is something that makes
it really difficult for them to be able to make
sure that from what the chefs are putting in that
(13:02):
dish in the kitchen is being update or first I
guess back that up what's coming off the truck, you know,
because there are things like substitutes that can happen and swaps,
So if that happens. How do we then know that
that's happening when you're now making that food in the
kitchen and then you're putting it on that plate and
the menus that are in front of consumers before they
come in or while they're sitting there. So while this
(13:24):
information is changing, the big challenge for the restaurant industry
is how do you make sure that you have it
accurate across in one place? Across you know both your
vendor spec sheets, your kitchen, your menus, and when you
add in things like limited time offers where your menu
is changing, you know, it gets tricky. So I'd say
from a how do we help right as I'm painting
(13:46):
a dark picture here, but really the goal here is
how do we make this easier? And this is a
place where technology can help the industry. While there are
still some advancements that will need to be made in
terms of better tracking across the supply chain for those
things that I talked about, as far as like products swaps,
when it comes to the restaurant industry, they can make
(14:07):
sure that they have their recipes documented, one single source
of truth that has what products are within those recipes
and what Fuudina does is we break those down. So
we take the menu, we then break it down to
the recipe. We break that down to the specific products
and ingredients used within that recipe, and even further to
the sub recipe of those products, so what ingredients are
(14:29):
used there, and that's where we tag it on the
back end for one hundred and fifty plus different diets
and allergens. So while the legislation is covering the top nine,
we know that you know in Europe it's fourteen Canada like,
these things continue to change and so our thought is,
let's tackle this from the ingredient level, so that no
matter what the guests allergen or dietary need is, you
(14:52):
have that covered and you can make sure that that
is communicated clearly to them in a digital format. And
we do that through personalized menu use. So we believe
that's a much better experience than these matrixes where you
can document it and make sure that it's updated. But
what we do is we create personalized menus for that
guess that tells them exactly what they can eat, what
(15:12):
they can modify, and what's not suitable for them, so
that it's really easy and convenient for them to know
what they can order before they died it.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I mean, it sounds like the restaurants need a lot
of help from their food service distributors, and the food
service distributors need help from their suppliers right up and
down the chain to get this done, right. Can you
speak to how Fuudini gathers, verifies, updates their ingredient data.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
So we design this to make it, you know, manageable,
something that can be managed ongoing instead of this one
time compliance project, which I think is a mistake that
some restaurant operators have made, is they treat it like
we need to hire someone to just put together this
allergy matrix. Well, ultimately, this is as you said, it's
it's maintenance that needs to happen, and we need to
(16:02):
make sure that information is updated as you update menus,
because we also want restaurants to be restaurants. We want
new menu items, we want seasonal items, right like, we
don't want to create a world where we're scared to
change a recipe. So what we do is we integrate
with back of house systems and the vendor databases. So
what the restaurants are buying from the major food suppliers
(16:25):
we'll go in there. We have those product databases documented
so that we can gather the recipe and ingredient data
automatically from them, so they just tell us, basically, here's
our recipe and a lot of especially once you get
to the larger chains, this is more difficult for the
small business restaurants where a lot of this is offline,
but for most mid market and chains, they're using an
(16:46):
inventory management recipe management system, so we'll pull that from there,
we pull the product data, and from there our engine
basically standardizes and tags every item against those major allergens
and dietary needs and so on the restaurant side, it's
really just giving us access to the data and we
take it from there so that they're not needing to do,
you know, these massive projects.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I'd imagine it's helping create safer kitchens exactly.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
I think the biggest thing that IRIS tell restaurants is
it's just or what I hear. I guess also when
we talk to restaurants is having that single source of
truth for everyone, both the guests, sure, you know that's
the guests love getting access to this information, but also
your staff. I think that's one thing that we hear consistently.
Is the staff is so relieved to have this documented,
(17:34):
both the kitchen staff and the wait staff, because now
there is a place to refer to that everyone is
consistent on. So if you have someone that started two
weeks ago, they don't have to be an expert at
every single ingredient on the menu, and the chef knows,
and it's a system that everyone is using so that
we know if we're changing a recipe, if we're swapping
an ingredient. We're all going to keep this information updated
(17:56):
together in this one place, so it's safer for ever
everyone involved where information doesn't get lost through you know,
word of mouth. We're not holding up, disrupting service, answering questions,
but we really have this one source of truth should
refer to.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, that's great and it's uh, you know, we'll go
create more opportunities for people like my nephew to actually
eat and not have to bring food with them wherever
he goes. Right, Dylan, what other benefits are your customers
seeing outside of of, you know, easing pressure on the
wait staff.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, like it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
On the just to double down on the point, Derek committed,
it's culture, right, it's like up to nown a lot
of white stuff, and I suppose organized like there's not
that people don't necessarily understand the potential consequences of one
slip up by forgetting that there's sesame and the whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And so, again just doubling down what Erica said, the
cultural shift of having, you know, technology that's in front
of consumers, that everyone knows is in front of consumers,
It just shifts the mindset in terms of what we
can't take a shortcut here, We do need to do
this the way because the consequences could be terrible.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But in terms of your question.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
I think one of the big ones is the ability
to attract more loyal customers, Like you'll know right, I
can guarantee your nephew in his area has a handful
of restaurants when they do eat out that they'll always
go to. I'm the exact same. I know the ones
in my area. I know they can cater for me.
I go there every day for lunch, same thing, right,
And so just giving that clarity to someone with an
(19:27):
allergy that they can eat there is going to attract
that new customer and they're going to stay with you.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The other big point there is the veto vote. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
It's if you're organizing the friend group dinner or the
work Christmas party, if you can't clearly see that there's
an option for the people in your group that have
anot allergy or that are grouten free or whatever, you
can't go there, right, that person becomes the veto, and
all of a sudden, you take your business to the
place down the road that can cater for the group
of ten with the two celiacs.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
In terms of the you mentioned the staff questions, we're
seeing about a sixty percent reduction in the number of
questions being asked to staff by just putting this information
back and front customers. So that's pretty pretty significant. And additionally,
it's in tandem with that is the reduction in the
number of mistakes fifty three point nine percent to be specific,
of allergy incidents that our current restaurants occur after the
(20:14):
staff have been notified of the allergen. And so that
just tells you that the system as it is today,
for the most part, is broken and not working. And
again coming back to just having that single source of
truth takes that largely out of play and The last
piece then, is around consumer data. Right now, every time
a conversation happens between a member of staff and a
(20:34):
consumer or someone clicks into that PDF, that's a last
data point. You don't know that there was a gluten
free customer or a not allergy customer. You can't connect,
can't tie us together. You can't use that data to
optimize your menu. You don't have the ability to potentially
personalize your marketing effort's towards that consumer knowing that they
have X allergen. So there is the consumer data we
(20:55):
believe and our customers are telling us is extremely valuable
to them in a multitude of different ways.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, and you mentioned the veto vote, which you know,
with ten percent of the population with documented allergies and
way more people with sensitivities, that veto vote is growing
larger and larger by the day.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
You know, I know some restaurant tours that are pretty
careful about the allergens on their menus, but they don't
want to promote themselves as allergen free because you know,
they don't want to be at risk of cross contamination
or an ingredient swap. What would you say to those
restaurant owners.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, it's like, well, there's two points around that. I suppose.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
One there's the compliance the legal aspect now, which kind
of takes a little bit of that out of their
hands in terms of, you know, the groups that are called.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
By SB six D.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I will have to label for allergens now, But I
think there's an in between, right. It's like you don't
need to go around and shout from the rooftops that
everything on your menu is free from X allergens or
gluten free or vegan or whatever it might be. But
it's funny like people who have these problems will pick
the words out very quickly. Like every time I see
gluten free anywhere on the menu, it's like my eyes
just go straight to instantly, because it's that is what
(22:09):
I'm looking for as that consumer. And similarly, you know,
if you have your allergen menu, which is separate to
your to your regular menu, consumers that have an allergen
will spot that straight away and they will go there.
The consumers that don't have the problem don't even see
it on the page. They just glay straight over it
because they never have to think about that in their lives.
But you know, it doesn't impact their experience. So that's
(22:30):
the way we've always looked at it is having to
kind of keep your regular experience for the guests that
don't have any of these issues, but then have a bespoke,
personalized experience for those that do that still makes them
feel included and not you know, like a priya and
a nuisance.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
For sure, Erica, how do you help restaurants manage the
balance between being transparent and then the operational complexities of
running a restaurant like being you know, out of stock,
like the food service distributor being out of stock on
an item and that causing a last minute ingredient switch.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Yeah, so I think the reality is this is already
happening today, right, and so it's it's something that when
we talk to you know, different restaurants and food safety
teams right now, they're managing this all manually, and the
challenge is they're updating their systems manually and rarely updating
any menus, and so the information isn't getting to the consumer.
(23:24):
So I think the big thing that's also you know,
the elephant in the room, we'll call it, and this
is the fear of liability right where restaurants are just
so scared of if I put it in writing, then
if there's a swap or there's a mistake, then they're
going to come out for me with the pitchforks. But
I think if we wait for this to be perfect
in terms of tracking from when the you know, lettuce
(23:46):
leaf is picked from the farm to when it's mixed
in with the salad, and you know we're going to
be it's we're at least probably five to ten.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Years out at least.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
So where we are today is this population is so
so large, and this group of people is so frustrated,
and does they want basic tracking of what is meant
to be in the dish. We protect the restaurants with disclaimers.
We do make sure that we say that this is
what is meant to be, but there are product swaps
and that this is to the best knowledge, and there
(24:18):
are ingredients that can change. We're not trying to dissway.
If you are someone with a food allergy, if your
nephew is going out to eat, he's still going to
let them know he has a food allergy, because that's important.
But what we are trying to do is at least
make sure that he knows before he goes that this
restaurant has some options for him, so that he doesn't
skip them and keep going to those same few places,
(24:39):
or not go out to eat because he's too nervous.
So I think we just need to be a little
bit more comfortable with getting it out there that it's
not perfect, but we're all doing our best effort to
at least document it so that we have that transparency
for both their staff as well as the guests.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And to add to that, the SB sixty eight legislation
also had had a few amendments to kind of capture
that they added in the wording around when it comes
to a liability for restaurants around knows or reasonably should know,
And that I think is to cover off those edge
case instances which Erica referred to we all know happen
all the time, where again a supply at the last
(25:20):
minute swap something out there was you know, no one
was really notified. It found its way into the dishes,
and this had soybean oil, whereas the thing yesterday didn't.
And so again it's I don't think the intent of
the bill is that there is a twenty four to
seven you know, someone monitoring every single thing that comes
into the kitchen. It's you know, once you have a
robust process, to the best of your ability, within a
(25:42):
pragmatic manner, capture these changes. If this these edge crazy
edge cases do occur, that you should be protected in
terms of SB sixty eight in any case.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Very cool, Dylan does Sfordini, Well, that not does, but
for Deani's working on helping customers find restaurants that will
work for the allergies they have. Correct, can talk a
little bit about what you're doing there.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, So I suppose there's a few ways.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
One is, as we kind of alluded to, if anyone
with food outergies planning on going out to eat, the
first thing they're going to do is check that restaurant
menu to see is there something they can eat there.
So currently a lot of the big enterprise groups who
are the kind of only ones really who have these
allergen matrixes out. It's a twenty page PDF that's unreadable
(26:31):
on your phone, semi readable with zoom on your desktop,
and still not clear and still you know, just not
a very easy experienced to navigate, especially if you have
more than one.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Right, if you know, it just becomes trickier and trickier.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
So by building this into your website, which is where
we primarily live, it again just gives that consumer. When
someone suggests, let's go to X VENU for lunch, two seconds,
they can figure out, yeah, great, I have fifteen items
i'd need here done, let's book it. So we're driving
consumers to restaurants that way. We do have another product
which we haven't rolled out across the board yet, which
(27:07):
is more on consumer discovery, so that all of the
restaurants that are in our ecosystem are listed there and
at the community that we're building, which again is a
community that are constantly looking for these things, can discover
other restaurants in their vicinity that also have all their
allergy and information there and again go through that same
personalized menu experience. So like ultimately objective is to continue
(27:29):
to drive these consumers who are fearful to go out
to restaurants that can cater for them and ultimately drive
more restaurants revenue to those restaurants.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, you two are doing important work. I love it,
love to see it. We should both luck and thanks
for doing this.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Not at all our pleasure, and thank you very much
for having us on.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, thank you, and I want to thank the audience
for tuning in. If you liked our conversation, please share
with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon for another
interview on chopping it Up.
Welcome to Chopping It Up. I'm your host, Mike hallon
the senior restaurant and food service analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Our research and that a bi's five hundred analysts around
the globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal.
If you enjoy the PODDOMI a solid and give us
a five star review on Apple or Spotify. Today we're
joined by Dylan McDonald, founder and CEO, and Erica Anderman,
(00:35):
co founder and COO at Foodini.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Foodini is a.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Dietary intelligence platform that leverages AI to create ingredient and
transparency solutions for food service venues. Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Sure things. So, I'm excited to talk about food allergiens today.
Not only is it a hot topic, but I've mentioned
to you too that my nephew slash god son, suffers
from pretty terrible food allergies. So this one's close to
my heart. Yeah, looking forward to Yeah, man, what inspired
you to start Foodini?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
So I come at this very much from the consumer angle,
not too dissimilar to your godson. So quick background. I
was born in Philly, grew up in Ireland. As the
accent probably betrays. I was in the legal world prior
to this as well, so worked in big law for
a few years with the kind of big tech companies.
So this was definitely a bit of a pivot for
(01:31):
me to solve a problem that obviously I experienced myself
diagnosed as celiac when I was ten years old. And honestly,
it was just the like twenty odd years of trying
to navigate dining out of home or like ordering online,
any scenario where I wasn't cooking food myself, and just
the amount of times I could not find the food
(01:53):
I was looking for, amount of times that I would
go out with friends or colleagues and end up sick
that night or the next day because I was given
incorrect food, even after you know, doing all the right things.
And yeah, as time went on, I just got more
and more frustrated and thought that there had to be
a better way, and then started digging into just how
big this problem was and the reasons why it existed.
(02:16):
And yeah, that's kind of a spouse where the inspiration
came from just trying to solve a problem that so
many people suffer from.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it's such a growing problem, and we'll talk about
the size of it as we get into it. Erica,
how did you two meet and what strengths to each
of you bring to the business.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yeah, so both came from literally different parts of the
world and industries. For me, I've been in the restaurant
take industry a long time. I got my start in school,
started a company called Campus Food back in the day,
so one of the first players in online ordering. And
then I met the founders of Seamless in New York
who were starting a new company called Single Platform. So
(02:53):
Single Platform we essentially built kind of the plumbing for
menu data on the internet prior, when you look up
a restaurant, it's name, address, phone number, and then a
PDF of the menu if you're lucky. And what we
did is we turned that into an actual menu schema
that we would syndicate out. All the major search engines,
review sites, all the different platforms that were listing restaurants
(03:17):
online now had actual menu data. And so after that,
I was at Slice, a local pizza app, and many
different online ordering platforms. And from being in that world
of menus and online ordering, you know, I knew a
lot about menus and so we got introduced through a
mutual friend. Dylan at the time had started the company
from a consumer lens and was actually struggling with working
(03:40):
with restaurants in terms of how to get this data
from restaurants. And once I met him and started really
talking through the problem, it became clear.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
To both of us, like this was just such a
huge gap.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
From my perspective, it's really on the restaurant industry, knowing
that online ordering today and menus still don't.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Actually have this data.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
It's very manual, and so we realize there's a huge
opportunity to really help the industry to be able to
make it easier for restaurants.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
To document this and put it in front of consumers.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Very cool, Dylan, How big is the food allergy problem
here in the US and globally?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
You know, when I first started looking into this, you
kind of assume you live in your own little bubble,
and you know, there's a few other people impacted, and
no one was kind of horse shocked than I was
when I started digging into the numbers. But in terms
of food energies, so just food energies, there's thirty three
million Americans have a diagnosed food energy, which is much
much larger than I expected.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And just another little stat.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Within that, but forty percent of the children who fall
in that bracket have more than one food energy, so
it tends to be especially amongst kids if they've won,
they have multiple Over the top of that, then you've
bought another fifty million Americans who have a food intolerance,
which is something essentially that you react negatively to the food,
but it's not a diagnosed the allergy. Then you have
(05:01):
another seventy million Americans who fall into the bracklet of
a lifestyle diet. So think you're vegan, you're vegetarian, your keto,
you're paleo, your low thoughd map so many different I
suppose diets that continue to come out, and so we
usually have the tam in and around one hundred and
seventy three million, and so again, like in terms of
dietary needs, holistically, it's a massive consumer segment and it
(05:23):
just continues to grow year on your boat in terms
of prevalence, but also the complexity of the consumer diets
that people wish to follow.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And do you have any data about how big the
problem is globally? I'm just curious if this is a
bigger issue in certain parts of the world.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
It's funny it's different. Different regions seem to have different
prevalence to certain things. So for example, celiac disease, which
is gluten free, that's what affects me. Italy has the
number one highest rate of Celia act disease in the world.
Arland is number two per head of capita. And side
story but that they say that's the back to the
potato famine and that when the pileato crop got wiped out,
(06:03):
they imported a load of we eat into Ireland and
that's kind of what the came down through the generations
and why there's such a high prevalence there. Australia, Melbourne
is the food allergy capital of the world. They have
the highest rate of food allergy of any city in
the world. A lot of Asian countries there's an extremely
high prevalence towards lactose. So it's one of these ones
(06:23):
where there's definitely definitely different regions have different propensities to
certain allergens, but it is a global problem. And the
only reason certain regions we don't have a lot of
data from is just aware like awareness and diagnosis, Like
not everyone has access to the medical requirements that they
need to actually figure out why am I getting sick
(06:43):
all the time and what food is causing that?
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, it's it's really interesting and clearly difficult to track. Erica,
how our food allergies currently handled in online ordering?
Speaker 5 (06:54):
Yeah, so in the online ordering space, I think this
has become more and more of a growing problem. Right,
So it's it's you see it more prevalent in kids,
and I think over the past call it fifteen twenty years,
as online ordering has grown, most of it has been
done reactively. And so because menus have that same schema
you know we built back then it's menu title description.
(07:17):
The way the industry has handled that is through adding tags,
and so the challenge with that is that when you
add tags, it's manual and not consistent. And so whether
it's first or third party ordering, it's the restaurant that
has to go and add those tags, and they're not consistent.
So on some platforms it might say add a tag
(07:40):
of gluten free, but on another it contains gluten. So
now it's confusing to the consumer of like, what exactly
does that GF? You know, what is exactly does it
mean because there's no consistency across the different online ordering platforms,
and then from an online ordering perspective, those companies also
because the data is consistent and you can't query based
(08:03):
off of it. So for online ordering, who want to,
you know, focus on personalization and being able to put
the right results in front of the right people. Without
that data, it's really difficult for them to be able
to deliver on.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
That sounds like a mess pretty much exactly, Yeah, Dylan.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Regulations around alergen labeling vary across the globe. So which
countries right now are ahead of the curb curve and
what are they requiring from restaurants?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Yeah, so Europe is probably the furthest ahead right There
was the EU brought in European wide regulation matt like
around food Atrogen's boat on package goods, but also in restaurants.
The implementation on a country by country level can be
slightly nuanced.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
In Europe.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
The countries that are most ahead of of the curve
are Germany, Austria, Ireland. The UK is pretty is pretty
good as well. Australia has regulation around this as well.
It's a little softer than the eure in regulation it's
more around everything has to be documented on premise, but
it doesn't necessarily have to be on every menu. But yeah,
(09:08):
it's the likes of Austria, Germany and Ireland for example,
that have the kind of most comprehensive allergen labeling laws
when it comes to restaurants and menus.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Okay, and the US is behind the curve, but there
is some movement.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
SB sixty eight in California has been passed by the
state legislature and as a waiting Gavin Knew some signature.
What does it mean for restaurants in the Golden State
and how do you think it will influence dining trends
in consumer behavior?
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Yeah, so this is I suppose big for the allergy
community in terms of it's the first piece of allergen
legislation to come to the United States. As right, it's
to restaurants. Just I suppose quick bullet points on it.
It applies initially to restaurants with twenty plus locations worldwide
that have at least one restaurant in California, So one
(09:56):
location in California twenty overall you're captured. The effect of
it is also one July twenty twenty six, so it's
not that far away. And it essentially applies also to
all menus physical and digital that are in that restaurant's ecosystem.
And so the restaurants, in terms of becoming compliant, they
can do it in two main ways. On all of
(10:17):
their physical menus, so think PDF and menu boards. They
can label every individual menu item for the allergens that
are within that item, so chicken curry contains gluten eggs,
so et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Or they can
use a digital solution, so there's specific wording in there
that there can be a link out to QR code,
so a QRE code that links out to a digital
(10:38):
allergen menu. And again, are assumption is that the vast
majority of restaurants are going to go down that path
as opposed to having to you know, constantly reprint and
redo all of their physical.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Menus and menu boards.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
In terms of the impact, I suppose it will definitely
push restaurants to operate with a similar rigger around now
ingredient data to the same way they already kind of
treat food safety. You know, there'll have to be processes
in place, Recipes will need to be documented. Every substitution,
whether that's an internal substitution or a substitution met by supplier,
(11:14):
because you know they've swapped out whatever that that day
will need to be tracked, and the impact of that
swap on the allergens in every menu item will also
need to trace through all menus in that restaurant's ecosystem,
again physical and digital. And yeah, essentially menu items just
won't be able to be changed or added without the
menus being updated for that correspondent allergen. So there will
(11:35):
definitely be a pretty I think significant impact on how
restaurants think about their menus going forward.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, i'd imagine. So what states do you expect to
be fast followers of California and implement something like this.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
New York is already on train.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
So there's already a bill that's in the early stages
of going through the process that I think is even
potentially more onerous then the California one. Again, intent initially
of SB sixty it was to cover all restaurants, and
we know that the intent of the Senator got this
bill passed is also to go back and make sure
that this does capture all restaurants, not just twenty plus location.
(12:12):
So New York is next up with that bill that's
already in train, and we believe I think Illinois and
Oregon are likely to be the next two that take
this up.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Erico, what are the biggest challenges restaurants face when they're
implementing allergen disclosure?
Speaker 6 (12:27):
Yeah, I mean the challenge here is just all the
data does not live in one place, so you need
to maintain this information also across both your physical menus
as well as your digital menus.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So I think one thing that.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
We should probably also just state is like, most restaurant
operators want to do the right job here right, they
want to serve guests safely. What's holding them back is
more that the ingredient information is super fragmented and changing,
and the tracking on the supply chain is not where
it needs to be. So this is something that makes
it really difficult for them to be able to make
sure that from what the chefs are putting in that
(13:02):
dish in the kitchen is being update or first I
guess back that up what's coming off the truck, you know,
because there are things like substitutes that can happen and swaps,
So if that happens. How do we then know that
that's happening when you're now making that food in the
kitchen and then you're putting it on that plate and
the menus that are in front of consumers before they
come in or while they're sitting there. So while this
(13:24):
information is changing, the big challenge for the restaurant industry
is how do you make sure that you have it
accurate across in one place? Across you know both your
vendor spec sheets, your kitchen, your menus, and when you
add in things like limited time offers where your menu
is changing, you know, it gets tricky. So I'd say
from a how do we help right as I'm painting
(13:46):
a dark picture here, but really the goal here is
how do we make this easier? And this is a
place where technology can help the industry. While there are
still some advancements that will need to be made in
terms of better tracking across the supply chain for those
things that I talked about, as far as like products swaps,
when it comes to the restaurant industry, they can make
(14:07):
sure that they have their recipes documented, one single source
of truth that has what products are within those recipes
and what Fuudina does is we break those down. So
we take the menu, we then break it down to
the recipe. We break that down to the specific products
and ingredients used within that recipe, and even further to
the sub recipe of those products, so what ingredients are
(14:29):
used there, and that's where we tag it on the
back end for one hundred and fifty plus different diets
and allergens. So while the legislation is covering the top nine,
we know that you know in Europe it's fourteen Canada like,
these things continue to change and so our thought is,
let's tackle this from the ingredient level, so that no
matter what the guests allergen or dietary need is, you
(14:52):
have that covered and you can make sure that that
is communicated clearly to them in a digital format. And
we do that through personalized menu use. So we believe
that's a much better experience than these matrixes where you
can document it and make sure that it's updated. But
what we do is we create personalized menus for that
guess that tells them exactly what they can eat, what
(15:12):
they can modify, and what's not suitable for them, so
that it's really easy and convenient for them to know
what they can order before they died it.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I mean, it sounds like the restaurants need a lot
of help from their food service distributors, and the food
service distributors need help from their suppliers right up and
down the chain to get this done, right. Can you
speak to how Fuudini gathers, verifies, updates their ingredient data.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
So we design this to make it, you know, manageable,
something that can be managed ongoing instead of this one
time compliance project, which I think is a mistake that
some restaurant operators have made, is they treat it like
we need to hire someone to just put together this
allergy matrix. Well, ultimately, this is as you said, it's
it's maintenance that needs to happen, and we need to
(16:02):
make sure that information is updated as you update menus,
because we also want restaurants to be restaurants. We want
new menu items, we want seasonal items, right like, we
don't want to create a world where we're scared to
change a recipe. So what we do is we integrate
with back of house systems and the vendor databases. So
what the restaurants are buying from the major food suppliers
(16:25):
we'll go in there. We have those product databases documented
so that we can gather the recipe and ingredient data
automatically from them, so they just tell us, basically, here's
our recipe and a lot of especially once you get
to the larger chains, this is more difficult for the
small business restaurants where a lot of this is offline,
but for most mid market and chains, they're using an
(16:46):
inventory management recipe management system, so we'll pull that from there,
we pull the product data, and from there our engine
basically standardizes and tags every item against those major allergens
and dietary needs and so on the restaurant side, it's
really just giving us access to the data and we
take it from there so that they're not needing to do,
you know, these massive projects.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I'd imagine it's helping create safer kitchens exactly.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
I think the biggest thing that IRIS tell restaurants is
it's just or what I hear. I guess also when
we talk to restaurants is having that single source of
truth for everyone, both the guests, sure, you know that's
the guests love getting access to this information, but also
your staff. I think that's one thing that we hear consistently.
Is the staff is so relieved to have this documented,
(17:34):
both the kitchen staff and the wait staff, because now
there is a place to refer to that everyone is
consistent on. So if you have someone that started two
weeks ago, they don't have to be an expert at
every single ingredient on the menu, and the chef knows,
and it's a system that everyone is using so that
we know if we're changing a recipe, if we're swapping
an ingredient. We're all going to keep this information updated
(17:56):
together in this one place, so it's safer for ever
everyone involved where information doesn't get lost through you know,
word of mouth. We're not holding up, disrupting service, answering questions,
but we really have this one source of truth should
refer to.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, that's great and it's uh, you know, we'll go
create more opportunities for people like my nephew to actually
eat and not have to bring food with them wherever
he goes. Right, Dylan, what other benefits are your customers
seeing outside of of, you know, easing pressure on the
wait staff.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, like it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
On the just to double down on the point, Derek committed,
it's culture, right, it's like up to nown a lot
of white stuff, and I suppose organized like there's not
that people don't necessarily understand the potential consequences of one
slip up by forgetting that there's sesame and the whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And so, again just doubling down what Erica said, the
cultural shift of having, you know, technology that's in front
of consumers, that everyone knows is in front of consumers,
It just shifts the mindset in terms of what we
can't take a shortcut here, We do need to do
this the way because the consequences could be terrible.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But in terms of your question.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
I think one of the big ones is the ability
to attract more loyal customers, Like you'll know right, I
can guarantee your nephew in his area has a handful
of restaurants when they do eat out that they'll always
go to. I'm the exact same. I know the ones
in my area. I know they can cater for me.
I go there every day for lunch, same thing, right,
And so just giving that clarity to someone with an
(19:27):
allergy that they can eat there is going to attract
that new customer and they're going to stay with you.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The other big point there is the veto vote. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
It's if you're organizing the friend group dinner or the
work Christmas party, if you can't clearly see that there's
an option for the people in your group that have
anot allergy or that are grouten free or whatever, you
can't go there, right, that person becomes the veto, and
all of a sudden, you take your business to the
place down the road that can cater for the group
of ten with the two celiacs.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
In terms of the you mentioned the staff questions, we're
seeing about a sixty percent reduction in the number of
questions being asked to staff by just putting this information
back and front customers. So that's pretty pretty significant. And additionally,
it's in tandem with that is the reduction in the
number of mistakes fifty three point nine percent to be specific,
of allergy incidents that our current restaurants occur after the
(20:14):
staff have been notified of the allergen. And so that
just tells you that the system as it is today,
for the most part, is broken and not working. And
again coming back to just having that single source of
truth takes that largely out of play and The last
piece then, is around consumer data. Right now, every time
a conversation happens between a member of staff and a
(20:34):
consumer or someone clicks into that PDF, that's a last
data point. You don't know that there was a gluten
free customer or a not allergy customer. You can't connect,
can't tie us together. You can't use that data to
optimize your menu. You don't have the ability to potentially
personalize your marketing effort's towards that consumer knowing that they
have X allergen. So there is the consumer data we
(20:55):
believe and our customers are telling us is extremely valuable
to them in a multitude of different ways.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, and you mentioned the veto vote, which you know,
with ten percent of the population with documented allergies and
way more people with sensitivities, that veto vote is growing
larger and larger by the day.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
You know, I know some restaurant tours that are pretty
careful about the allergens on their menus, but they don't
want to promote themselves as allergen free because you know,
they don't want to be at risk of cross contamination
or an ingredient swap. What would you say to those
restaurant owners.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, it's like, well, there's two points around that. I suppose.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
One there's the compliance the legal aspect now, which kind
of takes a little bit of that out of their
hands in terms of, you know, the groups that are called.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
By SB six D.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I will have to label for allergens now, But I
think there's an in between, right. It's like you don't
need to go around and shout from the rooftops that
everything on your menu is free from X allergens or
gluten free or vegan or whatever it might be. But
it's funny like people who have these problems will pick
the words out very quickly. Like every time I see
gluten free anywhere on the menu, it's like my eyes
just go straight to instantly, because it's that is what
(22:09):
I'm looking for as that consumer. And similarly, you know,
if you have your allergen menu, which is separate to
your to your regular menu, consumers that have an allergen
will spot that straight away and they will go there.
The consumers that don't have the problem don't even see
it on the page. They just glay straight over it
because they never have to think about that in their lives.
But you know, it doesn't impact their experience. So that's
(22:30):
the way we've always looked at it is having to
kind of keep your regular experience for the guests that
don't have any of these issues, but then have a bespoke,
personalized experience for those that do that still makes them
feel included and not you know, like a priya and
a nuisance.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
For sure, Erica, how do you help restaurants manage the
balance between being transparent and then the operational complexities of
running a restaurant like being you know, out of stock,
like the food service distributor being out of stock on
an item and that causing a last minute ingredient switch.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Yeah, so I think the reality is this is already
happening today, right, and so it's it's something that when
we talk to you know, different restaurants and food safety
teams right now, they're managing this all manually, and the
challenge is they're updating their systems manually and rarely updating
any menus, and so the information isn't getting to the consumer.
(23:24):
So I think the big thing that's also you know,
the elephant in the room, we'll call it, and this
is the fear of liability right where restaurants are just
so scared of if I put it in writing, then
if there's a swap or there's a mistake, then they're
going to come out for me with the pitchforks. But
I think if we wait for this to be perfect
in terms of tracking from when the you know, lettuce
(23:46):
leaf is picked from the farm to when it's mixed
in with the salad, and you know we're going to
be it's we're at least probably five to ten.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Years out at least.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
So where we are today is this population is so
so large, and this group of people is so frustrated,
and does they want basic tracking of what is meant
to be in the dish. We protect the restaurants with disclaimers.
We do make sure that we say that this is
what is meant to be, but there are product swaps
and that this is to the best knowledge, and there
(24:18):
are ingredients that can change. We're not trying to dissway.
If you are someone with a food allergy, if your
nephew is going out to eat, he's still going to
let them know he has a food allergy, because that's important.
But what we are trying to do is at least
make sure that he knows before he goes that this
restaurant has some options for him, so that he doesn't
skip them and keep going to those same few places,
(24:39):
or not go out to eat because he's too nervous.
So I think we just need to be a little
bit more comfortable with getting it out there that it's
not perfect, but we're all doing our best effort to
at least document it so that we have that transparency
for both their staff as well as the guests.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And to add to that, the SB sixty eight legislation
also had had a few amendments to kind of capture
that they added in the wording around when it comes
to a liability for restaurants around knows or reasonably should know,
And that I think is to cover off those edge
case instances which Erica referred to we all know happen
all the time, where again a supply at the last
(25:20):
minute swap something out there was you know, no one
was really notified. It found its way into the dishes,
and this had soybean oil, whereas the thing yesterday didn't.
And so again it's I don't think the intent of
the bill is that there is a twenty four to
seven you know, someone monitoring every single thing that comes
into the kitchen. It's you know, once you have a
robust process, to the best of your ability, within a
(25:42):
pragmatic manner, capture these changes. If this these edge crazy
edge cases do occur, that you should be protected in
terms of SB sixty eight in any case.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Very cool, Dylan does Sfordini, Well, that not does, but
for Deani's working on helping customers find restaurants that will
work for the allergies they have. Correct, can talk a
little bit about what you're doing there.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, So I suppose there's a few ways.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
One is, as we kind of alluded to, if anyone
with food outergies planning on going out to eat, the
first thing they're going to do is check that restaurant
menu to see is there something they can eat there.
So currently a lot of the big enterprise groups who
are the kind of only ones really who have these
allergen matrixes out. It's a twenty page PDF that's unreadable
(26:31):
on your phone, semi readable with zoom on your desktop,
and still not clear and still you know, just not
a very easy experienced to navigate, especially if you have
more than one.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Right, if you know, it just becomes trickier and trickier.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
So by building this into your website, which is where
we primarily live, it again just gives that consumer. When
someone suggests, let's go to X VENU for lunch, two seconds,
they can figure out, yeah, great, I have fifteen items
i'd need here done, let's book it. So we're driving
consumers to restaurants that way. We do have another product
which we haven't rolled out across the board yet, which
(27:07):
is more on consumer discovery, so that all of the
restaurants that are in our ecosystem are listed there and
at the community that we're building, which again is a
community that are constantly looking for these things, can discover
other restaurants in their vicinity that also have all their
allergy and information there and again go through that same
personalized menu experience. So like ultimately objective is to continue
(27:29):
to drive these consumers who are fearful to go out
to restaurants that can cater for them and ultimately drive
more restaurants revenue to those restaurants.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, you two are doing important work. I love it,
love to see it. We should both luck and thanks
for doing this.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Not at all our pleasure, and thank you very much
for having us on.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, thank you, and I want to thank the audience
for tuning in. If you liked our conversation, please share
with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon for another
interview on chopping it Up.
Host
Michael Halen
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