What’s in my dish?

Hospitality Expert Daniel Wilson, Managing Director of PSL, shares his thoughts on how technology can help the hospitality industry not only manage the law change on food allergens but also improve the way customers access important allergen information for each menu.

Utilising available technology to create smooth processes and increase safety within the food production sector of the hospitality industry is critical to drive your business forward. With ever-changing and improving technology our industry must adapt and develop. This was never clearer than with the introduction of new allergen laws in December 2014.

The historic problem with allergens was linking the key allergens to the products being purchased through food suppliers with the recipes and menus. In terms of scale one restaurant could use up to 500 ingredients and each ingredient could contain a number of the key 14 food allergens.

In turn this meant each restaurant could be required to manage hundreds, potentially thousands, of pieces of data each time a dish or product changed or indeed when the allergen composition of a product changed.

Technology now exists to help restaurants and suppliers cope with providing the public with up to date and more accurate allergen information. What’s in My Dish is a live database constantly receiving supplier product and allergen updates. These are then linked to the recipes added to the system by the restaurant.

The allergens contained within the recipe are published on a website securely hosted by What’s in my Dish thereby allowing customers of that restaurant to review the menu and allergens from the comfort of their own home before they choose to dine out or whilst sitting in the restaurant using their own smartphone.

This new technology saves time and therefore money, as the time spent developing and publishing a fully allergen compliant new menu has been reduced by up to 75 per cent. Time now spent maintaining the integrity of the allergen information is less than 10 per cent of what it was.