Ben McCloskey, a senior studying entrepreneurship at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, wants to eliminate the struggle of explaining food allergies when ordering food.
He is doing this as the co-founder of The Allergy Card, a startup company that allows users to create and print their own allergy and food restriction cards for free.
“We want people to be able to eat without having to worry about the potential possibility of having an allergic reaction,” McCloskey said.
The concept of The Allergy Card originated from McCloskey’s desire to help his brother and others with food allergies have an easier experience ordering allergen-free food.
Growing up, his brother faced lifelong struggles with food allergies. Their household was stocked with a limited range of foods because his brother couldn’t eat fish, dairy, nuts, seeds, and eggs.
“Everything we made became a challenge to make it safe for him,” McCloskey said. Dining out at restaurants or eating at friends’ houses was always a challenging experience.
McCloskey believed that a simple card could be the next step in facilitating allergen-aware interactions between dining services and customers. The brothers worked as a team to bring this idea to reality, where McCloskey started developing the concept and his brother designed the cards.
The cards have been tested in local restaurants and received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from consumers and staff. “We are trying to help the people with allergies as well as the people who work at the restaurants. It is a beautiful thing,” McCloskey said. “It’s made their lives so much easier and has cut out steps in the process.”
The Allergy Card has outshone competitors by offering no-cost cards with ample room to list and display multiple allergies. Where other companies charge up to $20 for a card with limited slots, The Allergy Card wants to make sure customers don’t have to pick and choose which food allergies they can list.
Not only does The Allergy Card provide fully customized cards, but in the future, it will offer a paid translation service for people who are traveling out of the country. “A card like this could become potentially lifesaving in these situations,” McCloskey said.
As The Allergy Card grows, McCloskey hopes to expand to grocery stores, the medical industry, and catering services. They want to expand the website so the user data from the sales will eventually be consensually collected, analyzed, and sold to restaurants that would benefit from providing allergy-safe options.
McCloskey gained valuable insights and opportunities from the David Eccles School of Business that aided him in growing his startup. “They helped me with everything in general, just in consideration of liability and other factors that I would have never thought about,” McCloskey said.
The Lassonde Entrepreneurship Institute and the University of Utah provided McCloskey with opportunities that helped him receive important funding from Get Seeded, a milestone grant program, to develop his startup. Future funding will be allocated to hiring a developer to enhance the website and work towards automating the process to reduce the cost of production.
The Allergy Card allows users to create and print their own allergy and food restriction cards for free.
