Deliveroo has announced major changes to how the food delivery platform displays allergen content on menus as it increases transparency for consumers and promotes restaurant action in this area.
Until now restaurants and takeaways have not been able to display granular information for each dish on delivery apps, instead it has tended to be shown in store or communicated via restaurant staff.
To address this Deliveroo’s engineering team has been working with restaurant partners to design a new tool that will make this possible for delivery too. Deliveroo will be the first UK delivery platform to provide dish by dish allergen information.
From December, Deliveroo will begin rolling out in-menu dish by dish allergen information for individual items providing customers greater allergen transparency before they order.
Along with this major update to it menus, Deliveroo is making immediate changes to make existing allergen warnings more prominent in-app and making it easier for customers to contact restaurants with concerns.
The company is doing this by making major tech changes and has a dedicated team of engineers redesigning Deliveroo's menu system to allow restaurants to simply and quickly upload allergen information directly into deliveroo’s menus.
A number of Deliveroo’s major restaurant operators have asked for this level of functionality and following active consultation and collaboration we want to offer every restaurant the ability to display the same information previously only available on some partners websites or in store.
The measures Deliveroo are adopting are as follows:
Giving consumers the ability to communicate directly with restaurants
• Deliveroo will increase the ability of consumers to flag directly to restaurants their specific allergen requirements when they order. Deliveroo will be writing to all 10,000 UK restaurants it works with to urge them to use this tool and make it easier for customers to do this.
Enabling restaurants to add allergen content for each menu item
• Deliveroo will enable all restaurants on the platform to provide consumers with allergen content for each menu item through a new ‘menu tool’, which will be rolled out to all partners across 2019.
• The tool will be tested this year, and before the end of December 30 restaurants, which have almost 300 sites between them, will have the ability to add allergen information to their menus. Tortilla, Tommi’s Burger Joint, Mildreds and Chipotle have committed to adding allergen content to their menus in December.
• Following that initial trial in December, 700 further restaurants will be able to make use of the new tool. Other major national chains, including YO! Sushi, PizzaExpress, Pho and Byron, have said they will make use of the tool at this stage in January 2019.
• Specifically, restaurants will be able to show which of the 14 EU allergens each individual food item contains when they are browsing the menu.
• Deliveroo will encourage all partners to take the step of adding detailed allergen information and will make tech support available for those who decide to do so, so that this can be done as rapidly and smoothly as possible.
Immediate introduction of a new prominent warning about potential allergens at a restaurant
• A new banner at the top of each menu will remind consumers about potential allergen content in meals and urge them to contact restaurants directly before any purchase.
The company is doing this by making major tech changes and has a dedicated team of engineers redesigning deliveroo's menu system to allow restaurants to simply and quickly upload allergen information.
Dan Warne, Managing Director Deliveroo UK and Ireland, said, “This is great news for consumers who want more information about the food they are ordering online.
'Deliveroo believes that people should have an amazing delivery experience, and that must include making informed choices.Overhauling our menus is not a simple task, but customers with allergies need this extra transparency before they order which is why we are working with our restaurant partners to make it happen.”