With years of experience in the restaurant and retail food business behind them, the O’Reilly family understands food allergies and intolerances better than most. It’s an issue they deal with professionally every day, but it’s also a personal one as they have a family member with a severe peanut allergy. This has always made eating out an uneasy experience for the O’Reillys, and in 2022 it prompted daughter Shannen and her dad Sean to co-found digital allergen management company TrustDish.
“Allergens are currently communicated to customers with a booklet or with symbols on menus or through members of staff. However, these methods are often hard to understand, not accurately updated and not user-friendly,” Shannen O’Reilly says. “Secondly, they are not personalised to the individual diner’s requirements, and they don’t allow the diner to communicate directly with the person preparing their food. TrustDish tackles all of these issues in one go.”
TrustDish is aimed both at those with specific dietary needs and those preparing and serving food to them. Food service providers such as cafes and restaurants access the platform by paying a monthly subscription fee based on the size of their establishment while the customer (and this can be an individual, a parent or a carer) downloads the TrustDish app for free.
When a customer visits a TrustDish subscriber’s premises they scan a special QR on the menu. This immediately shows them, via a traffic lights system, which dishes contain ingredients they might have a problem with. The QR code is “dynamic” meaning the allergen profile of a dish can be easily updated if an ingredient changes.
When the diner scans the QR code the kitchen gets an alert on their digital device (which is linked to the TrustDish platform) that they have a customer with special requirements. It will also indicate what table the person is at and the customer’s order will be given a unique ID code.
“Our system is user-centric with the key allergen information communicated directly from the customer to the chef via secure encrypted messaging. This removes the possibility of miscommunication by a waiter to the kitchen and solves the long-standing problem of inconsistent and unreliable allergen management in food services,” O’Reilly says.
“TrustDish will transform the dining experience for those with food allergies and also play a role in reducing food service providers’ exposure to litigation and hikes in insurance premiums.”
In addition the platform providers subscribers with back-office supports such as software and certification for insurance purposes, staff training, and a digital footprint that is useful for audits and inspections.
O’Reilly recently completed a masters in food business and innovation at University College Cork and the idea for what has now become TrustDish originally started out as a course project. “My research was deeply personal, rooted in first-hand experiences with my sister’s peanut allergy and also in our family food business,” she says. “Retailers and food businesses have always struggled to manage and communicate food allergens to customers, and it can be especially difficult in situations where staff turnover is high and English may not be employees’ first language. Our aim is to make TrustDish the universal language of allergen communication.”
TrustDish is designed for the broad food service sector covering hospitality, retail, childcare, healthcare, transportation and delivery. The company has recently participated in the Ignite accelerator at UCC and privately funded investment to date has been roughly €200,000.
The company is currently going through the application process for Enterprise Ireland’s pre-seed and HPSU funds, and TrustDish will have its formal launch in Q2 of 2024. Already on the staff is chef and food & beverage adviser Kevin O’Regan, and O’Reilly says the next hires will be a chief technology officer and a sales team whose role will be to consolidate sales in Ireland before the company moves into the UK and US markets.
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