Chef Cards! Making Eating Out with Allergies CLEARER

Just wanted to take a minute to share a product we have found extremely useful in our family.  Equal Eats Chef Cards in STICKY NOTE form!

Chef Cards are super helpful for people and families that manage food allergies.  Typically they are a laminated card (maybe business card size), or plastic like a credit card, that can be handed to wait staff and chefs when dining out.  They list the allergens, and maybe some other info such as cleaning preferences and cross contamination risks.

These cards come with big benefits:

• You don't have to rely on wait staff to write down the list correctly.  This is particularly useful if your list is a true list, and not just one allergen.  
• You don't have to rely on the list being correctly forwarded to the chef and kitchen staff.  It's already written, clearly and completely.
• It's tangible, rather than just spoken word, so it serves as a hard reminder to the kitchen staff to pay attention to this meal and the prep involved with it.  That's not to say it's a 100% safeguard, but it helps.

Equal Eats' sticky note version of these cards is even better in my opinion!  They come in a pack of 50 disposable sheets.  What I absolutely LOVE about these is you don't have to remember to get it back!  The wait staff can hold onto it, stick it right on their note pad with everyone else's order, and bring it back to the chef in the kitchen, who can then keep it.  If he or she needs it for quick reference again, it's right there.  It can be used as a marker on the meal, it can move around the kitchen if needed.  And, it never has to make its way back to you.  (Bonus for Covid-19 times!)

There are currently 11 options for the sticky notes!  For our family, we went with the blank version.  This allows us to hand-write in our list of allergens.  Some of these include allergens outside the Top 8 (now Top 9) - like banana, which most likely would never be included on a pre-printed card.  Plus, if our list changes whether it grows or shrinks, we can adapt the cards as opposed to a pre-printed style.

Equal Eats offers a ton of useful cards including digital versions, allergy translation cards, and traditional printed cards as well.  Check them out at equaleats.com ! 

Trio Fudge is not affiliated with Equal Eats, and does not receive compensation for this blog post.  We just like to share allergy-friendly products that work well for our family!