This past Sunday, my friends and I decided to take a drive to a popular, local bakery. When we arrived, I walked up to the employee behind the counter and said, “Hi! I’m allergic to nuts, so I was just wondering if there is any dessert I could get that would be safe from cross-contact.”
For the longest three seconds of my life, she stared at me like I just said I ghost wrote the final season of Game of Thrones. Finally, she broke eye contact, quickly glanced over the display case of desserts and muttered, “Yeah, no, everything has it.”
Feeling confused, awkward and heartbroken for the chocolate brownie that wasn’t mine to lose, I said, “Okay, nevermind. Thank you so much,” and ran away.
It was clear that the employee did not know how to handle someone with a food allergy, but instead of being honest about her uncertainty, and perhaps offering me a hot chocolate, an item from the back free from cross-contact, a compliment toward my hair (my curls were having an especially good day) or even a simple apology, she made me feel like an inconvenience. How dare I ask if a well-known, successful bakery can accommodate my severe, potentially life-threatening condition?
This bakery is a prime example of what I refer to as an allergy-unfriendly eatery: a food establishment which lacks proper food allergy safety protocols, thus dismissing or endangering its patrons. On Sunday, I experienced the former, as the employee dismissed my request for help in finding a solution I felt safe with. Over the course of my life, I have also experienced the scenario of endangerment, the much more frightening display of ignorance and carelessness, that led to many of my most unpleasant hospitalizations.
Even though a pizzeria assured me that none of their food contained nuts, they served me a zeppole fried in peanut oil. After an employee at a diner mistakenly put a walnut custard on my Oreo waffles, I had to inject myself with the Epi-Pen in the parking lot. On the plus side, a very nice police officer stopped eating his pancakes to talk with me about Grey’s Anatomy as I waited for the ambulance. At a steakhouse, after taking a bite of my long-awaited chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, I realized there were macadamia nuts in the cookie. When I showed the server, he said, “I told them about your allergy, but they don’t really speak English back there so…”.
While these are only a few ridiculous situations from my personal experience, I am definitely not the only one. Recent studies in the U.S. have found that 1 in 3 people with food allergies have experienced an allergic reaction in a restaurant, and 53.5% of these reactions at restaurants occurred despite the patron notifying the staff about their allergy. These reactions could have easily been prevented if only the workers were given the proper allergy education.
Managers are responsible for developing their establishment’s overarching plan to handle customers with food allergies. This plan can include providing ingredient lists for their menu items, using separate or thoroughly cleaned equipment and areas while preparing food for customers with allergies, and above all, encouraging an open communication to make patrons feel as comfortable as possible. An eatery can even create allergy safety protocols using a comprehensive training program, such as ServSafe Allergens or FARECheck.
Most importantly, the restaurant must educate every staff member in this plan before they begin working. I’m sure the bakery I went to this weekend may not always be that inconsiderate and unaccommodating about allergies. However, if there is even a single employee uneducated and unaware about allergy precautions, then the management did an insufficient job in preparing, maintaining and ensuring the proper conduct of the entire staff, and the eatery is decidedly unfriendly.
Nearly 11% of adults in the United States have a food allergy. I believe every food establishment has a responsibility to keep each and every one of these 33 million people safe. Every manager, server, counter worker and chef must know how to openly communicate with patrons and fellow employees to make those with allergies feel, at the bare minimum, respected and safe.
SophieAnn DeVito is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, She can be reached at sgd56@cornell.edu.
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