Clyde’s partners with AllergyEats on the Great Gift Card Giveaway

I’m very excited to share with you that the Clyde’s Restaurant Group, based in and around Washington, DC, has signed on as a partner in the AllergyEats Great Gift Card Giveaway.  Even better, no pitch was required – Clyde’s is so comfortable serving food-allergic diners and so welcoming to our community that they proactively called us to be a part of the program.

I wrote a positive piece about the Clyde’s chain way back in April 2010 after reading an encouraging article titled “Food Allergies: Clean Plates” in Restaurants & Institutions magazine.  (You can read that blog entry, entitled “How far can a restaurant go to be allergy-friendly? Ask Clyde’s,” by clicking HERE).  Re-posting some key aspect of Clyde’s operations seems worthwhile:

• They have an allergy-alert feature in their point-of-sales system where “servers can key in any of the eight major food allergens. A guest’s allergens then are noted on each ticket that gets printed.”
• “Servers are instructed to steer guests away from high-production items such as beef stew unless the cook who prepared the item is on-site and can vouch for its being free of a given allergen.”
• Some units have dedicated seafood fryers to prevent cross-contamination.
• “Kitchen employees are reminded to change clothes as necessary and always use freshly cleaned pots and utensils when preparing items for guests who have a food allergy.”
• A member of management attended the FAAN (Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) Teen Summit to understand why teens are often hesitant to tell restaurants about their food allergies.
• Clyde’s Corporate Operations Manager has made the statement, “Sometimes we consider our menu just a list of suggested ingredients.” This is a great concept and reminds me a bit of my own recent description of the Disney attitude (“Tell us what you want and we’ll tell you how we can do it” versus “Let me show you which items on our menu are safe for you”).

You can see why Clyde’s is a well-respected restaurant by those with food allergies and intolerances and why Clyde’s currently has a chain-level AllergyEats allergy-friendliness rating of 4.3 out of 5.0.

Clyde’s current operates 16 units under the following names: Clyde’s, 1789 Restaurant, Old Ebbitt Grill, Ebbitt Express, The Tomato Palace, The Tombs, F. Scott’s, Tower Oaks Lodge, Willow Creek Farm, and The Hamilton

And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the AllergyEats Great Gift Card Giveaway, we are now in the 25^th week of this program!  Each week, we award one or more $25-50 allergy-friendly restaurant gift cards to randomly-selected participants who simply rate a restaurant on AllergyEats that week, correctly answer a simple (or not-so-simple) trivia question, or complete some other task.  Each week’s winners are announced on Wednesdays, following which a new contest begins.  You can find a permanent link to the Gift Card Giveaway site on the AllergyEats home page (www.allergyeats.com) or go straight there now by clicking HERE.

AllergyEats only accepts partners for the Great Gift Card Giveaway if that chain maintains an AllergyEats allergy-friendliness rating of 4.0 or above.  We currently have 5 partners – BJ’s Restaurants, Clyde’s Restaurant Group, Legal Sea Foods, Not Your Average Joe’s, and Stone Hearth Pizza – and we expect to add more soon (including at least one national chain).  In addition, if you don’t have a partner restaurant near you, there are other prizes you can choose as an alternative.

One easy way to enter AND help our entire food allergy and intolerance community is simply to rate your restaurant experiences on our core AllergyEats site (www.allergyeats.com).  While together we’ve already built the largest and fastest-growing online guide to allergy-friendly restaurants, we still have a long way to go to achieve true national coverage and critical mass.  Remember that each time you take just one minute to rate a restaurant (answering just 3 questions), you are helping our entire community.  You can also help by referring a friend or support group.

So please rate any recent restaurant experiences today.  www.allergyeats.com