Free for every type of food business

AllerEasy works for any catering business

Whether you run a single café or a nationwide group, AllerEasy is free to download, deploy, and use. Here's how different types of businesses are using it.

Restaurants & bistros

For table-service restaurants, allergen questions often slow down service and put pressure on staff to recall accurate information on the spot. AllerEasy gives both guests and staff a reliable, always up-to-date reference.

Guests can scan a QR code at the table and filter dishes by their specific allergens before calling a member of staff over. This doesn't replace the human interaction — it improves it, by ensuring conversations focus on genuine edge cases rather than basic information that could easily be displayed digitally.

  • Reduce allergen-related interruptions during service
  • Give guests with allergies confidence to dine with you
  • Keep allergen data current without reprinting menus
  • Display kcals to meet calorie labelling requirements if applicable
  • Audit log provides a compliance record if questions arise
A typical workflow
  1. Chef updates allergen information in the admin dashboard when a recipe changes
  2. Guest scans QR code, filters by their allergen (e.g. dairy), and sees which dishes are suitable
  3. Guest orders through a member of staff as normal
  4. Staff can refer to AllerEasy or the allergen matrix if further detail is needed

Cafés, coffee shops & quick service

Counter-service environments are particularly challenging for allergen communication — queues move quickly, staff are busy, and printed labels on display cabinets can be hard to read or easy to miss.

A QR code on the menu board, counter, or a small table card gives guests a fast way to check allergen and kcal information on their phone while they wait. For grab-and-go items and cabinet displays, AllerEasy makes the information easily accessible without the need for individual printed labels on every product.

  • QR code on counter or menu board for instant mobile access
  • Clear kcal display supports calorie labelling obligations
  • Easy to update daily specials or seasonal items in the dashboard
  • Reduces pressure on staff to remember allergen details verbally
  • Works well for both eat-in and takeaway operations
Good for PPDS operations too

If you prepare and pre-package sandwiches, salads, or pastries on site for display (PPDS foods), those items must carry full allergen labelling on their packaging under Natasha's Law. AllerEasy can support the guest information layer alongside your PPDS labelling — showing kcals, nutrition, and allergens for everything on your menu in one place.

Holiday parks, resorts & multi-venue sites

Multi-venue operations face a particular challenge: keeping allergen information consistent across multiple outlets, with different menus, different staff, and seasonal changes in both dishes and suppliers.

AllerEasy handles multiple menu types within a single installation, each with independent branding, categories, and dish lists. A change to the dish database can be reflected across every venue-specific menu at once, avoiding the problem of some locations running outdated information.

  • Multiple branded menu types within one deployment
  • Shared dish database reduces duplication of data entry
  • Consistent allergen information across all venues
  • Branding aligned to each outlet's identity
  • Seasonal menus managed through the dish status workflow (active / inactive / archived)
  • One audit log covering all changes across the whole installation
Self-hosted means full control

Because AllerEasy is self-hosted, your data stays on your infrastructure — not a third-party SaaS platform. For large groups or franchise operators, this means full control over data, hosting location, and who has access.

It also means no per-venue licensing costs, no user limits, and no dependency on a vendor's pricing decisions.

Schools, hospitals & contract catering

In institutional catering environments, allergen accuracy is not just a regulatory matter — it can be a matter of life and death. The combination of vulnerable guests, large-scale menus, and frequent recipe changes makes a reliable, auditable system essential.

AllerEasy's audit trail records every change to every dish — who made it, when, and why — providing a clear compliance record that can be reviewed in the event of any incident or inspection. And because it is free and open-source, there is no barrier to adoption for publicly funded organisations.

  • Full audit trail for every dish change
  • Multi-user access — different staff can manage different areas
  • Bulk import from existing allergen management spreadsheets
  • Free to deploy in any institutional setting — no licensing cost
  • Self-hosted for data governance and information security compliance
Works with existing processes

AllerEasy is designed to sit alongside your existing allergen management process, not replace it. Your allergen matrix, HACCP documentation, and staff training remain your primary controls. AllerEasy provides the digital guest information layer that makes it easy to communicate accurate allergen data without distributing printed sheets that quickly become out of date.

Food trucks, market traders & pop-ups

Smaller operators often have the same legal obligations as larger businesses but without the resources to invest in enterprise allergen software. AllerEasy was created specifically so that cost is never a barrier to having a proper allergen information system.

A food truck or market trader can deploy AllerEasy on a low-cost cloud hosting platform for a few pounds a month (or even less), display a QR code at their counter, and give customers a professional, accurate allergen menu that would previously have required expensive software.

  • No software licensing cost — ever
  • Deploy on low-cost hosting for minimal running costs
  • Update dishes from any device with a browser
  • QR code at counter gives customers instant access
  • Looks professional and branded to your business
Estimated hosting costs

Running AllerEasy yourself is very affordable:

  • Railway or Render free tier — £0/month for low-traffic use
  • Heroku with PostgreSQL — approximately £5–10/month
  • Neon or Supabase (free database) — reduces Heroku cost significantly
  • Your own VPS — from around £3–5/month with a provider like DigitalOcean or Hetzner

The AllerEasy code itself is always free. Hosting costs depend on the platform you choose.

Developers & digital teams

AllerEasy is built on Django 4.2 with a clear, documented codebase. It is designed to be extended. If your organisation needs to integrate allergen and nutrition data with an existing EPOS, reporting system, or data warehouse, AllerEasy provides a solid foundation to build on.

The GPL v3 licence means you can fork the repository, modify the code, integrate it with proprietary systems, and deploy it in any way that suits your organisation — without restrictions and without any obligation to contribute changes back (though contributions are always welcome).

  • Django 4.2 LTS — stable, widely documented, easy to extend
  • PostgreSQL with Django ORM — straightforward to integrate with other systems
  • pandas-based import pipeline — adaptable to different data source formats
  • Clean separation between guest-facing app and staff dashboard
  • GPL v3 licence — use it, modify it, integrate it freely
  • GitHub Issues open for bug reports and feature requests
Contribute to the project

AllerEasy is open to contributions. If you fix a bug, add a useful feature, or improve the documentation, a pull request on GitHub is very welcome. The project exists to help the industry — every improvement helps.

View the repository on GitHub

Whatever your operation, AllerEasy is free to use

The code is on GitHub. The README walks you through setup step by step. There's nothing to pay.

Get the code on GitHub Read the compliance guide