A new $45 million Sydney hotel disregarded allergy suffers when winding up their pre-opening promotions.
As they say, the kind of publicity that money can’t buy, they are probably wishing that they could buy it back.
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What a storm in a schooner glass.
Wonder if it is self agitation/hyperventilation to gain free media attention.
The menu and wording made sense to me. If a menu item is not GF, vegan etc, then one can’t expect the same item to be specially GF etc when requested. I don’t know of any food outlets that do such and this place is no different.
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In the coverage of the news item,
Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia CEO Maria Said …
Australia was known as the allergy capital of the world and more needed to be done to support people with allergies in general, Ms Said said.
How significant is this fact, and is this particular to food allergies?
What is it about Australia that makes Australian’s so prone to food allergies?
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The orginal wording on the menu said there were ‘no alterations’, and the restaurant then apologised for this and now provide a standard allergy warning instead. To my mind, the two issues are seperate ‘no alterations’ is a service issue, and ‘being unable to guarantee dishes to free from trace elements of allergens’ is a health issue (and as @phb, this is currently pretty standard) .
It was the secondary matter that people reportedly became upset about (but perhaps the original wording that triggered the response), and the outrage seems opportunistic to me, rather than based on genuine sentiment from the local community of less than 6000 people based in the Richmond NSW area (how many people suffering allergies in this area were planning to attend this restaurant?).
Opportunistic or not, it doesn’t necessarily diminish the point being made on social media (thanks for highlighting @mark_m) to my thinking. Perhaps restuarants that can provide better guarantees on allergies will attract more business? I can’t answer that on a broad scale, but unless this particular hotel sees a drop in patronage due to the lack of allergy-free options, it’s hard to imagine that there will be much in the way of short term change.
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