Why food allergies could be a big opportunity for restaurants

The gap, according to FARE, often comes down to visibility: front-of-house teams rarely have reliable data on which allergens matter most to their guests, and are left relying on scattered anecdotes instead. EveryBite's digital menus — accessible through a restaurant's website or a QR code — let diners filter dishes by allergen or dietary need, while giving operators real usage data in place of guesswork. That combination is already live across more than 50 restaurant brands and 4,000-plus U.S. locations.

To back the report, EveryBite and FARE pulled together data from a million diners for what's billed as the first in an ongoing quarterly Diner Trend Report — tracking the most common allergens, where allergy-conscious diners are concentrated geographically, and which dishes tend to resonate with specific dietary groups. The timing lines up with a broader trend: food allergy rates among children have roughly doubled twice over in recent decades, and restaurants are increasingly leaning on ordering data to understand what their guests actually need.