Uber Eats, the meal-ordering and delivery service that came under fire for a Super Bowl commercial that made light of an anaphylactic reaction, announced on May 28 that it had added features to accommodate the food allergy community. These include:
- Disclaimers noted on each store details page that notify a consumer whether a restaurant can accommodate food allergies or not.
- A special instructions field dedicated to allergy requests that encourage consumers to disclose their allergies when they order at eligible merchants. Consumers can choose from a pre-selected list of the most common allergens or enter their own, and the information will be saved to their account.
- The ability for consumers to call the merchant and disclose food allergies, if the merchant is able to receive phone calls.
These are welcome additions to their app that have the potential to reduce errors in food preparation that could cause serious injury to a person coping with food allergies or celiac disease.
That said, listing your allergies and having them transmitted with your order does little good if the food preparers — the people who matter in this case — don’t see and acknowledge your restrictions. If a staffer or some other intermediary is responsible for doling out the order to a preparer, there is no guarantee your restrictions will be seen and taken into account.
And this assumes the merchant understands the dangers associated with food allergies and has trained their food preparers how to properly accommodate your restrictions in the first place. Uber Eats makes no such claim, leaving it up to the merchant.
If you have a food allergy or celiac disease and plan on using Uber Eats, we urge you to take advantage of the new feature to call the merchant to discuss your restrictions directly. if, after the call, you do not feel confident in their ability to accommodate your restrictions, choose another merchant.
We appreciate that Uber Eats has taken steps toward making their service more accommodating to the food allergy and celiac communities. We urge them to take the additional and necessary steps to assure the merchants they represent have properly trained their employees and to provide a means of acknowledging that your concerns have been seen by the specific food preparer and properly accommodated.
