If you have a food allergy, eating out is never simple.
For 173 million Americans, roughly one in two, who live with a food allergy, intolerance, or dietary preference, dining out involves a level of risk that most people never think about.
Foodini is eliminating that guesswork. Foodini combines AI, food safety compliance, and consumer dietary data to help restaurants and food service operators manage allergen compliance and ingredient-level menu data, turning compliance into a commercial advantage.
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Until October 2024, there were effectively no US regulations governing food allergen disclosure in restaurants.
That changed with the passage of California SB-68, the most comprehensive allergen disclosure law in the country, taking effect July 1, 2026. SB-68 applies to all chains with more than 20 locations and at least one California location, effectively making it a national standard.
SB-68 was the first domino. Allergen disclosure legislation has since been introduced or advanced in New York, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, and Missouri, with additional states in preparation. Each new law is a buying trigger for thousands of operators who need compliance infrastructure.
The scale of the problem is significant. 33 million Americans have clinically diagnosed food allergies. Every three minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the ER. And 54% of allergen mistakes happen after staff have been notified of a guest's allergy, as verbal processes simply aren't a defense.
Foodini's value proposition sits at the intersection of two equally powerful forces:
Compliance is the entry point. The regulatory wave creates urgent, budgetable demand. Foodini provides compliance-grade ingredient data, verified by registered dietitians and powered by AI, that operators can legally stand behind.
Dietary intelligence is the platform. Beyond compliance, Foodini's data drives measurable commercial value. Dietary-restriction guests are two times more loyal than average diners. Menu items with clear ingredient descriptions get four times more views. Dietary-tagged items generate three-point-six times higher engagement. Foodini enables operators to capture revenue from a high-value guest segment that has been chronically underserved.
The combination is what makes Foodini defensible. Competitors are either compliance tools or personalization tools. Foodini is both.
At the core is AINGEL, Foodini's proprietary AI engine, which ingests menu and ingredient data from any format, from PDFs, spreadsheets, supplier invoices, to images and integrations. And it classifies ingredients against a database of over 450,000 products and ingredients, delivering high accuracy. AINGEL is a purpose-built dietary intelligence engine combining multimodal AI with registered dietitian verification. The data moat compounds with every menu item ingested.
Foodini demo video | YouTube @getfoodini
Strong companies at the intersection of compliance, AI, and food safety need founders who understand both the problem and the people behind it. Foodini's founding team embodies that.
Dylan McDonnell — Founder, President & CEO
Dylan has lived with celiac disease since 2002. For over two decades, he has been the underserved customer, navigating restaurants, reading ingredient labels, and calculating risk before every meal. That personal need was why Foodini was born.
Professionally, Dylan has a corporate law background, giving him deep fluency in compliance frameworks, regulatory strategy, and the legal exposure operators face. He chairs the Guest Communication Board for the FARE Hospitality Alliance, the leading food allergy research and advocacy organization in the US.
Erica Anderman — COO & Co-Founder
Erica has spent over 15 years building go-to-market engines for restaurant technology companies, starting her career in door-to-door restaurant sales and working her way up to leading revenue organizations at some of the most notable companies in the space. She was on the founding team at SinglePlatform, the restaurant menu data platform acquired by TripAdvisor, where she led customer success and strategic partnerships. She went on to hold senior revenue leadership roles at Slice (VP of Sales & Restaurant Partnerships), Seated (SVP of Revenue), and Odeko (VP of Revenue). She's also a Limited Partner at GTMfund.
Kent Bolton — CTO
Kent is a technologist with over 20 years of experience spanning solution architecture, software development management, and building high-performance engineering teams across enterprise-scale platforms. Before Foodini, he held senior technology leadership roles at Modaxo (Group Head, Delivery & Support for Trapeze Rail's Asia-Pacific operations), Ansible Australia (Technology Development & Sales Solution Architecture), TechnologyOne (R&D Manager on Australia's leading ERP platform), and Onthehouse Holdings (Software Development Manager).
Advisory board: Emmanuelle Skala (Former SVP Customer Success, Toast), Ken Hamlet (Former Global CEO, Holiday Inn Corp), Alice Elliot (CEO, Elliot Group), Alan Hickey (Former co-founder/CEO, Vromo — acquired by Inspire Brands).
Foodini's model has translated into a growing roster of enterprise clients and platform scale, including Jersey Mike's, José Andrés Group, Marriott Hotels, Compass Group, J. Alexander's, Sweetfin, Bluestone Lane, Kinton Ramen, Saxbys, and others.
MLB Partnership: Foodini is an official partner of Major League Baseball. The platform is live at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, powering allergen-filtered concession ordering across all concession stands through the MLB Ballpark app, in partnership with Levy. Camden Yards is the first professional sports venue in North America to offer this experience at scale.
The MLB stadium experience powered by Foodini | Cr. PriyoShop
Platform metrics: 300,000+ consumers | 150+ allergens and dietary needs | 98.9% guest preference rate | 60% average reduction in staff allergen questions | Zero reported allergen incidents from live partners
Recognition: Fast Company #9 Most Innovative Companies 2026 (Restaurants, Dining & Food Services) named alongside industry giants like DoorDash, OpenTable, and Toast; and winner of the Levy-sponsored SportsTech pitch event in Chicago.
As SB-68 takes effect in July 2026 and legislation accelerates across five additional states, Foodini is scaling to meet the moment.
The company's immediate priority is national compliance rollout, positioning Foodini as the primary compliance engine for restaurant chains and food service operators affected by the expanding regulatory wave. With capital from its seed round commencing in April 2026, Foodini is investing in technology acceleration, go-to-market expansion, and team growth.
Beyond compliance SaaS, two additional revenue layers are taking shape. Foodini is in active discussions on a number of insurance distribution partnerships, where hospitality brokers would distribute Foodini to their restaurant portfolios as a risk reduction tool, validating the platform's second major revenue line. Longer term, Foodini's ingredient-level dietary data has significant licensing value to online ordering platforms, delivery apps, and hospitality technology providers.
Foodini's long-term vision is to become the national source of truth for dietary intelligence and to power compliance and guest experience across restaurants, venues, hotels, travel, healthcare, education, and CPG. The regulatory entry point scales into a cross-sector data platform.
At GFR Fund, we are proud to back Foodini as it builds the infrastructure layer for a category that is just beginning to take shape. Beyond solving a compliance problem, Foodini is building the data platform that will power how restaurants communicate with every guest who has a dietary need.