Allergen legislation – assessing the risks to your business.

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There’s no doubt about it, allergen legislation is becoming stricter and hospitality businesses need to implement processes that will allow them to stay ahead of the curve without draining resources.

Where to start

The only way to achieve compliance is to begin with an assessment of the vulnerable areas in your business. Once you’ve identified the areas of risk, you’ll be able to develop processes and implement the solutions that will help you to safeguard your business, your staff and your customers.

Possible areas of vulnerbility

The allergen journey

Tracing the journey of an allergen through your production process is a great place to begin. Before a product arrives in your stockroom, do you know what allergens it contains? Is there a possibility that a supplier could change brands and leave you vulnerable to trace allergens in recipes? How can you be sure that accurate allergen information is being transferred from supplier, to recipe, to menu?

Flow of information

How is allergen information communicated within your business? Do BOH teams keep FOH teams up to date? Could paper menus show out of date information if there’s a last minute ingredient change? Are customers empowered with the allergen information they need?

Accuracy and up-to-date information

Using manual processes, spreadsheets and paper menus can leave businesses exposed to a risk of human error. A delay in the flow of information to staff and customers is another area of vulnerability. How can you make sure that allergen information is live and automatically updated? How can you be certain that all of your outlets have access to the same information? What is the best way to make sure your teams are able to locate the information they need, quickly and accurately?