Every operator in hospitality knows the feeling, even if they've never had to live through the worst version of it. A table mentions a nut allergy. The order's taken by whoever was nearest. It's a Friday, the rail is full, three other tables are waving, and somewhere between the table and the kitchen a single line — "no nuts" — has to survive a relay of memory, shorthand and noise. Most of the time it does. The whole problem with allergens is that "most of the time" isn't good enough.
Because the stakes here aren't a remade plate or a comped round. They're someone's life. The UK's 14 named allergens, Natasha's Law, the Food Standards Agency guidance, the cases that made the news and changed the law — every person who's worked a floor knows this is the one mistake you can't take back. And yet the tools meant to prevent it have always been passive: an allergen matrix in a ring-binder, a laminated sheet by the pass, a "ask the chef" sticker on the menu. Information that's only as useful as someone's decision to go and look at it, in the exact moment they're least able to.
The dangerous moment is when the order is taken
Here's the insight that drove this feature. Your kitchen probably already manages allergens well — proper data, careful prep, separate boards. The fragile link isn't the kitchen. It's the thirty seconds at the table when an order is rung in, often by your newest, busiest or least-experienced team member, with no prompt, no check, and nothing standing between a genuine mistake and the kitchen acting on it.
epos247 was already holding both halves of the answer. You can record each product's allergens in Back Office. And when you open a table, you can record the guest's allergies right there on the till. Two lists, in the same system, that until now never spoke to each other. From v1.6.10, they do.
What it does, in one sentence
When a table has allergies recorded, every product on the order screen that contains one of those allergens is outlined in red with a ⚠ warning badge — and if a staff member taps it anyway, a clear pop-up stops them: "Contains: Milk, Peanuts. This item clashes with the allergies recorded for this table." They can read it back to the guest, then either cancel the item or tap Continue to sell it deliberately.
Read that last part again, because it's the whole philosophy. The item is not blocked. Hospitality is full of legitimate reasons to proceed — a guest who knows their own tolerance, a dish that can be made without the offending ingredient, a "trace" they're relaxed about. The system's job isn't to overrule the human. It's to make absolutely certain a clashing dish can never leave the till unnoticed. Selling it becomes a conscious decision instead of an accident waiting to happen.
Why this is a genuine shift for the industry
- It moves safety from passive to active. No one has to remember to check a folder. The warning comes to them, on the screen they're already looking at, at the precise second it matters.
- It doesn't care who's on shift. A first-week trainee taking orders on a heaving Saturday gets exactly the same red border and the same stop-and-confirm as your most seasoned server. Allergen vigilance stops depending on experience, memory or how busy the room is.
- It's everywhere your staff take orders. The same warning works on the web till, Windows and Android POS, and on both the Android and iPhone waiter apps — so the protection follows the order whether it's rung in at the counter or tableside.
- It's built in, not bolted on. This isn't a separate compliance app to buy, learn and maintain. It rides on the product allergens and table allergies you can already record. Switch nothing on; just keep your data current and it's simply there.
- It gives managers something priceless: consistency. Allergen handling you can actually rely on being applied the same way, every table, every shift — and a team that feels supported rather than exposed.
An honest word on what it is — and isn't
We've built this to be a safety net, and we want to be straight about what that means. The warning is only ever as good as the allergen information behind it: it reflects the allergens you've set against your products and the allergies your team records for the table. It supports good allergen practice — accurate kitchen data, careful prep, talking to your guests — it doesn't replace it. Keep your product allergens up to date in Back Office, record allergies properly when you seat a table, and this becomes a powerful backstop for everything your team already does well.
Switching it on
There's almost nothing to switch on — which is rather the point. In Back Office, set the allergens on your products (edit a product, tick the allergens it contains). On the till, when you open a table, record the guest's allergies from the allergen picker. That's it. From then on, any clashing product flags itself in red on the order screen and warns on tap — automatically, on every till and waiter app, for as long as that table is open.
We think allergen safety should be a feature of the system you already run, not a chore you bolt onto the side of it. v1.6.10 is the first step in treating it that way — and like everything we build, it got better the moment real operators told us where the real risk lived. Keep telling us. This is the part of the product we most want to get right.
