Cloud-based food management

Managing ingredients and allergens by remote is the next step in food technology, says Tarryn Gorre, Co-founder of Kafoodle Kitchen

Last year a new law came into force that affected all out-of- home food businesses: the UK Allergens regulation required that they all identify, keep record of and communicate to customers which menu items or dishes contain any of 14 specified allergenic ingredients which are gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soya, milk, nuts, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide, molluscs, celery, mustard and lupin. Failure to comply can result in a hefty fine and worse if someone suffers an allergic reaction if you have not carried out due diligence and made your business compliant. So how do you ensure you are compliant? Businesses can take a number of precautions to help remain compliant and avoid any potential problems with guests with allergies.

Now, suppliers have to, by law, let you know what’s in a new product down to ingredient level, it’s then your responsibility to make sure you can pull up this information, refer to it and keep it updated when cooking and then ensure your front of house team has the tools to advise diners accordingly. One of the ways in which businesses can make this process easier is by using a technology solution which can store this information and pull it up on demand when creating new or updating previous recipes.

There are a lot of great software solutions that can help chefs and businesses manage the allergen legislation and inform customers of the allergies in their food, such as the cloud-based menu management system Kafoodle – a simple, easy to use online system which allows you to manage ingredients as well as write, store and share recipes across multiple menus and outlets – with a key benefit being it automatically highlights allergens and calculates the nutrition in any dish and then connects directly to the front of house staff and diners who can access each dish via a tablet or computer instantly to advise the customer on any allergens present in the meal.

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