What do you wish you knew about a restaurant before eating there with food allergies?
I built something to make eating out with food allergies a little less uncertain — looking for feedback
I've been working on a project called AllergyHeart after seeing how difficult it can be to figure out what allergy information is actually useful when choosing a restaurant.
Instead of simply labeling restaurants as “allergy friendly,” the idea is to bring several pieces of information together — published allergen information, ingredient transparency, cross-contact information, restaurant procedures, and actual experiences from people managing food allergies.
One feature I've been working on is an Allergy Confidence Score, along with location-specific community reports. My hope is that over time you could look at an individual restaurant location and see not only what the company says about allergens, but what people with allergies have recently experienced there.
I'm starting in Ohio and keeping the initial launch small while I figure out what is actually useful to the allergy community.
I'm the person building it, so I want to be transparent about that. I'm not posting this pretending to be a user or saying the site can determine whether a restaurant is safe. I mainly want feedback from people who actually deal with food allergies.
If anyone wants to take a look, it's AllergyHeart.com.
More importantly, I'd really like to know: what information do you wish you could see before deciding whether to eat at a restaurant?
Cross-contact procedures? Staff knowledge? Shared fryers? Recent experiences from someone with the same allergy? Something else?