Allergens

The allergens functionality in Fusion has been enhanced to offer a more robust method of protecting users from purchasing items that contain allergens that they are allergic to. Previously schools were free to create and manage a list of ‘Restrictions’ which were used for this purpose.

https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/allergen-guidance-for-food-businesses#allergens

While the ability to create restrictions is still available and useful, we are now including a separate list of the 14 allergens recognised by the UK Food Standards Agency. These allergens are non-editable and allow us to more clearly manage a user’s/product’s allergen information and make it more clear to the operator why a user is unable to purchase an item.

Additionally, a dedicated list of standard allergens allows us to integrate with the recipe management system, Nutmeg, and in the future retrieve allergies of users from compatible MIS.

Checked for allergens checkbox

When creating or editing a product, there is now a ‘Checked for allergens’ checkbox within the ‘Allergens, Diets, & Restrictions’. This checkbox is used as a reminder to check the product for allergens. If you attempt to save changes without checking this checkbox, you will get a reminder and be asked if you want to do this now.

Pressing ‘Yes’ will open the ‘Allergens’ tab where you can set the allergen information for the product. Once complete, tick the ‘Checked for allergens’ checkbox to record that this product has been checked.

Contains vs May contain

When setting the allergen information for a product, for each allergen, if the product is known to contain that allergen, you should set it to ‘Contains’. If there is a potential that the product may contain the allergen, it can be set to ‘May contains’. These function differently at the Point of Sale and are presented to pre-order users accurately.

Users with allergies

Allergen messages

If a user has been set as having an allergy when their account is opened at the Point of Sale, an information message is presented to the operator. The operator needs to acknowledge this message before they are able to continue with the transaction.

Once the message has been acknowledged, the message will appear as a banner at the top of the screen for the duration of that transaction as a reminder.

Attempted purchase

When a user has been flagged as having an allergy when they attempt to purchase an item that is set as ‘Contains’ that allergen, the transaction will be prevented and the operator will be alerted as to why.

If the product is set to ‘May contain’ an allergen that the user is allergic to, an alert is presented to the operator asking them if the user is aware and if they still wish to purchase the item.

Pre-order

Similar messaging will also appear on the pre-order kiosk, so that users are clear as to what allergens a product has, and if they can’t purchase it they understand why.

The pre-order kiosk now also has a product information page so that users can view a products full information, including allergen details.

Restrictions

Restrictions will continue to function as before, so you can still prevent users from making purchases of items for other reasons, such as if a parent does not want their child purchasing cakes or if a user has an allergy to an allergen that is not one of the 14 recognised ones.

On upgrade

For existing Fusion clients, on an upgrade, we can convert the default restrictions to allergens. This will map any users and products to use the corresponding allergen and then delete the old restriction. For example, if a user was flagged with the ‘Nuts’ restriction, and/or any products also mapped to this restriction, they will now be set as having a ‘Nut’ allergy and the products will be set as contains nuts. The old ‘Nuts’ restriction is then deleted.

Any restrictions that were not created by Fusion can be converted to allergens using the ‘Map restrictions’ tool.