Allergens belong in a field, not in a notes box

The nine allergens that United States federal labelling law treats as major are milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame — sesame having been added most recently. Gluten is not on that list but behaves like it is, because coeliac disease is not an allergy and is not less serious for it.

Most catering software handles this by giving the customer a text box. Somebody types "one guest is allergic to nuts, another is gluten free". That sentence then has to travel: from the order form to the kitchen sheet, from the kitchen sheet to whoever is plating, and from there to whoever is carrying the plate. It is read by three or four people, each of whom is busy, and it is one line among a dozen other notes about parking and table linens.

What a field does that a sentence does not

It filters. Somebody ordering for a table that includes a coeliac guest can see the menu with the dishes containing wheat already removed. That is a better experience than reading twenty descriptions carefully, and it is a better outcome than choosing wrong.

It survives being copied. A marked dish carries its allergens onto the kitchen sheet by itself. Nobody has to notice the note.

It can be counted. "Three of the ninety guests cannot eat shellfish" is an instruction. "Some guests have allergies" is a worry.

It fails in the safe direction. A dish nobody has marked should never be presented as safe for anything. Silence is not a clean bill of health, and software that treats an empty field as "no allergens" is actively dangerous. The correct behaviour is to treat unmarked as unknown and say so.

What a field emphatically does not do

It does not make anything safe. Cross-contact in a kitchen is not a data problem, and no amount of correct labelling changes what happens when the same board is used twice. The software records what it is told, shows it to the customer and carries it to the pass. It does not verify anything and cannot.

Anybody selling you allergen handling as a compliance feature is selling you something they cannot deliver. The duty stays where it has always been.

The free-text box still has a job

Structured fields cover allergens and the common diets — vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, dairy-free, nut-free. They do not cover "the bride does not like coriander" or "table six has a guest in a wheelchair, please leave space". Those are real and they belong in a note.

The mistake is using the note for the thing that has to survive, and there is a simple test for whether you have made it: if the information matters enough that somebody could be harmed by it being missed, it should not be in prose.

What to actually do

Mark every dish once, when you add it. It takes a few seconds per dish and it is the only time you will do it. Then let the customer filter, and let the order carry the marks through to the kitchen without anybody having to retype them.

And keep asking on the day. The list is a tool for getting the right food to the right table; it is not a substitute for the conversation with the person who is going to eat it.