Globally, there is over 250 million people suffering from food allergies with more than 17 million people having this in Europe alone, according to this journal article. Restaurants should provide allergen information in their menus not only to protect the customers, but also the reputation of restaurants. However, it is impossible to rely on your staff or the chef through the verbal communication with the customers to make sure the food will be safe.
Once your customers have allergic reactions after eating but without a clear statement on the menu, your restaurant may face the legal action and lose the reputation. Therefore, restaurants have to identify the allergic items in the restaurant menus in written or symbols.
There are a lot of ways providing allergic food information in the special menu. Most restaurants choose to include the allergen statement at the bottom part of menu, for example, "Allergy statement: This may contain or come into contact with EGGS, MILK and WHEAT." But this seems boring and not catchy enough to alert the presence of allergen ingredients to your customers.
What if EDIT helps you without writing the boring and long statement, you can just simply choose the allergen food icons to indicate which dishes are gluten-free, dairy free, seafood-free, etc. For example, you can select the the "peanut" icon from "Elements" and place it beside the name of your dish, and then change to any color that suits the style of your restaurant. You can also customize the background, the font style, colors inside the templates and add the most important thing - your restaurant logo!
And we know it is time consuming to do all the written and decoration details in some professional programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, which requires time to learn it and costs you a lot. But EDIT helps you solve it through "click and drag" in a cost-effective way!
✔ Open EDIT and click the “Restaurants” under the main categories.
✔ Select your favorite designs from our free menu templates
✔ Upload your restaurant dishes’ photos
✔ Add the “Allergens” food icons next to the dishes under the “Elements “
✔ EDIT offers you a large variety of food icons, including “peanut”, “fish”, “milk”, etc.
✔ Decorate your menu by adding filters, fine-tuning your images and text.
Follow the human scan patterns
As people read the words from left to right or from top to bottom. Remember to place the allergen food icon on the right side of dishes' name or underneath it.
Clearly divide the menu section
To make your customers easier to read the menu, it is important to state the divisions clearly, such as appetizers, soup, main-dish, dessert and drinks and also don't forget to include the allergen icons on your menu!
Make a allergy-free, gluten-free food section if needed
People who have serious allergy to many kinds of food may want to look for the dishes that are totally allergy-free. It is convenient for them to read the menu at one section or or one page only without reading every lines.
Share your allergen menus to social media to attract more customers
Want some ideas for posting? You can add some hashtags #AllergenMenu #FoodAllergy #Gluten-free #EditWithEdit in your post because the customers can find your restaurants easier. With the new menu, you can also benefit from gaining the trust and increase customer loyalty! (And bring more revenue :D )
