For most people, picking a restaurant isn’t a life-or-death decision. For people with severe food allergies, it can be. FACTCheckDining, developed by first-year Bryant University student Anderson Davis ‘29, aims to remove the fear of allergies from a night out.
“I was born with a bunch of food allergies,” says Davis. "I've had severe reactions and been to the hospital many times because of them. Eating out has always been a struggle.”
When he was younger, Davis’s parents did their best to screen restaurants that the family could safely patronize. But as he got older, the responsibility shifted to Davis as he began going out with friends.
“Just walking in blindly to a restaurant, you have no idea what you can eat at all,” he says, “and that puts you in a lot of tough social situations, especially with friends. There have been instances where I’ve walked into a restaurant, looked at the menu, and had to say, 'Hey, guys, I can't eat anything here' and had to walk out.”
FACTCheckDining helps mitigate both health and social risks by matching users’ allergy history to restaurant menu information.
“Users can create a personalized allergy profile where they can put in exactly what they’re trying to avoid from an allergy perspective, dietary needs, restrictions or sensitivities,” says Davis. “We include the top nine allergens recognized by the FDA: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. We also have a custom allergen section where you can put in anything else you're trying to avoid, including niche allergens that not everyone has or not every restaurant recognizes. I’m allergic to mustard, for example, which is hidden in a lot of little things like dry rubs on meat and barbecue sauce.”
Using individual allergen information, FACTCheckDining creates map-based dining guides based on menu information supplied by restaurants and gathered from visits and online research. Each restaurant on the map receives an Allergen to Restaurant Compatibility Rating: “Many” indicates that the restaurant has an abundance of allergen-free dining options available, followed by “Some Options,” “Limited,” “Small to None” and “Unknown.”
“All of the restaurants around you will be highlighted on the map,” says Davis, whose work experience during high school included stints as a server assistant at two local restaurants. “From there, we give it a rating of red, orange and green based on your allergen profile.”
Davis sees the site as a partnership with restaurants, who can display a FACTCheckDining badge in their physical location and on their website by fully disclosing their ingredient lists. “We’re saying this is a place that's going to be accommodating and willing to help people with allergies, and we want to send you there," explains Davis.
“We’re saying this is a place that's going to be accommodating and willing to help people with allergies, and we want to send you there.”
To date, FACTCheckDining has been self-funded by Davis, with critical partnerships with family friend (and lacrosse player) lead software engineer Clark Reboul; database and systems manager Dhiren Jashnani, currently an engineering program manager at Amazon; and marketing and social media campaign manager Caroline Hunt, a high school classmate. “The people helping me with this project are either working under equity or are contributing because they believe in the product and the company’s future,” explains Davis.
FACTCheckDining is live online, but remains in development. It currently includes allergen information on 110,000 chain restaurant locations across the United States, with a city-by-city rollout with menu data on local and independent eateries planned, starting with Washington, D.C.
Davis stresses that while FACTCheckDining can be a helpful guide for people with food allergies, it’s not foolproof.
“We can't eliminate errors that happen in the kitchen, but we can provide people with the best allergy suggestion before walking into the restaurant," he says. “It’s still important that you're asking all the right questions. We can't tell you what to eat, and we can't tell you what's going on in the back of the house. But we can do our best, based on the facts and data that we've gathered, to give you the most transparent dining-out experience.”
“We can't eliminate errors that happen in the kitchen, but what we can do is provide people with the best allergy suggestion before walking into the restaurant."
Davis, a Chagrin Falls, Ohio native who began thinking about developing a restaurant allergy guide when he was 10 years old, says Bryant’s entrepreneurial culture was a big reason why he chose to come to Smithfield, Rhode Island for college.
“I’m playing lacrosse at Bryant; I reached out through my high school coach and found a great fit,” says Davis, who has not yet chosen a major but has his eye on a business-oriented education. “[Bryant alum, lacrosse player and entrepreneur] Cole Braun ’25 has been a great mentor for me. Bryant's physical College of Business school is a big draw, and the new Applied AI minor is really interesting to me. But all the people there who are focused on innovation and entrepreneurship was huge, because I see it as a great environment for me to grow my idea.”
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The potential market for FACTCheckDining is also huge. According to the nonprofit research, education, and advocacy group FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education), 33 million Americans have food allergies, including one in 10 adults and one in 13 children.
Each year, 3.4 million Americans have food allergy reactions severe enough to merit a visit to a hospital emergency room.
“With so many kids being born with food allergies, we’re really focused on trying to make them less worried about dining out,” says Davis. “Avoiding that awkward situation where you have to walk out or you can't have a meal with your friends is the real goal here, on top of general food safety. We’re trying to make people feel better about their situation and not be brought down by having food allergies, because they are so common.”