 |
Members
of the Can I Eat There? team promoting their website at The Allergy
& Free From Show in London. From left to right: Nicky Granger, Scott
Muncaster and Ali Harper.
Photograph:
Federica Tedeschi |
Dining out is going to
be easier for the over 10 million people in the UK with food allergies and
intolerances.
The answer is Can I Eat There?, the first and
only restaurant directory with customisable allergy menus, where people can search
for an eating place by location or cuisine, completely free of charge.
Nicky Granger, Managing Director and founder of the
website, spot a gap in the market,
driven by the necessity to guarantee her young child a safe environment while
dining out with the family.
“I think restaurants are fantastic. I love food, I love the social
environment, but it is very sad that parents are scared to take their children
to eat out and that adults with food allergies are frankly scared to eat out
too,” said Ms Granger.
Her young son, Gabriel,
was diagnosed with nine severe food allergies following an episode of
anaphylaxis caused by cow’s milk when he was eight months old.
“My son has had anaphylactic reaction, so it is scary and you don’t take
it lightly but it doesn’t change the fact that all my life I’ve loved eating
out.
“There are restaurants a lot brilliant for people with food allergies
but you got to work very hard to find them and in the process you get a lot of rudeness, quite often people don’t
have the time to talk to you, and I got very frustrated by this. So, I decided
that if nobody else was going to do it, I would create a website that collected
all the restaurants in the UK, their allergy policy and their allergy menu, so
that people could search by using the allergy filter,” she explained.
Nicky Granger also mentioned
about some of her adult acquaintances who had an anaphylactic attack while eating out.
They have given up restaurants and if really want to join their friends, they pack a
lunch box.
“I just think it’s sad and there are places that are prepared
to cater for people with food allergies, even though this is not their main focus. So
let’s make it easier for people like me to find them,” she added.
Going into more details about the Can I Eat There? website, Ms Granger said:
“We launched 3 months ago and have 12,000 restaurants on our directory.
Over the next year we have set us the target of getting every single eating
place that we can find on the site. It’s
a team of five of us working really hard and dealing with people who are in the
hospitality industry and provide us with their restaurant database.”
This enthusiastic team
really seems to have the backing of all the right people, as well.
“We also liaise with Allergy UK, which is the
nation’s allergy charity, and luckily enough, they have recently decided to work
in partnership with us while launching a national accreditation for
restaurants, The Allergy Aware Scheme. Their goal is to train and accredit those restaurants
across the UK that have the gold standards,” she added.
Being a team of facilitators of information rather
than allergy experts, they have spoken to Dr.
Adam Fox, one of only a handful of
UK doctors with recognised higher specialist training in Paediatric Allergy and have also gathered information from specialist allergy dieticians.
“Our partners
are there, they are growing all the times. We are working with Free From Eating Out Awards, which was launched last year. Entries for
2015 are just opened, restaurants have to be dutiful and prove good allergy
control. We don’t say which restaurants are the best, the experts decide,” said Nicky Granger.
Can I Eat There? website is free for both
users and the restaurants. There is however, a strategy for monetarisation and
potential sponsors have already noticed the website. Consequently, the future looks rosy for Ms Granger
and the rest of the team.
“Restaurants will be able to pay for extra services which will allow them
to address people with food allergies directly.
“Over the last couple of weeks the very first
advertisers have approached us, which is no bad after three months. I didn’t
expect the advertisers being much interested yet and they are. So, we have a good chance of making pretty
good on that side,” she added.
However, the website’s
creator stays really focused on the quality of her work and has promptly stated
that if they don’t have the restaurants
across the UK pretty covered in a
year’s time, people can say that they failed.
Allergy & Free From Shows
are events full of food and drinks, skin/hair care, household items and
more for people having food and/or chemical allergies. The programme also
includes cooking classes, talks, expert advice and kids activities, all ‘free
from’ and all dedicated to help people improve their lives. The event was first
run in 2009 in London and since 2012 more locations have been added.
