Allergen icons on a digital menu: 14 official ones, not asterisks

A paper menu with a footnote of numbers is not information. It is a puzzle. The guest with a gluten issue squints at asterisks, asks the server, the server asks the kitchen, the kitchen is in the middle of a pass, and the table waits.

That loop is how mistakes happen. It is also how you lose a table that would have ordered if they could trust the carta.

A digital menu with official allergen icons does not replace your duty to be accurate. It puts the 14 allergens where the guest is already looking: on their phone, in their language, before they call anyone over.

Asterisks do not filter. Icons do.

The legal list is not a design suggestion. Guests with allergies scan for gluten, nuts, milk, crustaceans — the official set of 14. If those marks are tiny, incomplete, or only in one language, you have not helped them. You have created a conversation you will have fifty times a night.

In Ordenala each dish carries the official allergen icons. Guests can filter the QR menu by allergen. They see what they can eat without turning the server into a database.

The icons and their names are translated with the rest of the interface. You mark which allergens apply. You do not redraw symbols or invent a legend.

Trust at the table is operational, not decorative

People with allergies decide in seconds whether they feel safe. A restaurant QR that shows clear icons and a filter is a signal: this kitchen takes the list seriously.

What changes in service:

Fewer “does this have…?” interruptions during the rush
Fewer tickets that bounce because someone guessed
Tourists who cannot read the footnote still see the same 14 icons

Photos per dish help too. A picture plus allergens plus a short description is how guests decide without a speech.

The menu stays accurate when the recipe changes

Paper is where allergen info goes to die. You change a sauce, you forget to reprint, and the footnote is now a liability.

Because you update the digital menu without reprinting, a recipe change can go live before the next seating. The QR on the table is the same. The dish page is not.

Hide a dish if you are not sure. Show it again when the kitchen confirms. That is faster than a handwritten “ask us” that nobody reads.

Languages and allergens belong together

A tourist with an allergy is the highest-friction guest you have. They need the dish name in their language and the official icons, not a server mime.

Ordenala combines both: up to 10 languages, automatic detection of the phone language, and the 14 official allergens already labeled in those languages. No guest app.

Prices by location still apply. A dish can exist at the bar and not on the terrace; allergens travel with the dish, not with the zone.

Build it before you publish

You do not sign up to start. You add dishes, mark allergens, check the preview, and publish when the carta is honest.

Plans are simple:

Basic: internal path, a working restaurant QR
Standard and Premium: subdomain and info site, more locations and languages — Premium is the one if you run a hotel or a tourist-heavy room

The work is marking dishes correctly. The product is making that work visible to the guest without another print run.

If your current menu treats allergens as fine print, you are asking staff to compensate. Put the official 14 on the digital menu instead.