The Allergen Gap
Most menus won’t tell you what’s in the food.
Across nearly 15,000 real restaurant menu items, fewer than half list a single allergen. And American menus are the worst offenders.
Quick answer
Across nearly 15,000 real restaurant menu items analyzed by ShiftTrained, only 44% list any allergen information, meaning 56% of menu items name no allergen at all. United States menus are the least labeled: just 40% of U.S. menu items carry allergen information, below the international average of 48% and far behind markets like the UAE (92%), Canada (86%) and Singapore (76%), where allergen labeling is common or required. For a diner with an allergy, the menu is silent more often than not, which leaves the server as the primary source of allergen information.
The finding
Fewer than half of menu items say anything about allergens.
of menu items list no allergen information at all.
of U.S. menu items are labeled, the lowest of any major market we measured.
of items are labeled in the UAE, and 86% in Canada, where labeling is the norm.
facts worth knowing on the average menu, most of it carried by one server.
Half the plate is a blank
More than half of menu items say nothing about allergens.
A printed menu is where most people expect to find out whether a dish has nuts, shellfish, dairy or gluten. On the menus we analyzed, the majority simply do not say. The description sells the dish. It rarely warns you about it.
Share of 14,890 menu items, by whether the menu lists any allergen for that item.
America lags the world
U.S. menus label allergens less than almost anywhere else.
The United States has no federal rule requiring restaurants to print allergens on a menu. It shows. Where labeling is common or required, menus say far more: the UAE labels 92% of items, Canada 86%, Singapore 76%, India 64%. American menus label 40%.
The reach
Where the menus come from.
This report draws on menus from restaurants across the U.S. and around the world, from a sports bar in Chicago to a fine-dining room in Cape Town. Every red dot is a U.S. city where a restaurant handed us its real menu.
Why it matters
When the menu goes quiet, the server is the whole safety net.
A table of four splits the menu between them. A solo diner has only the server to ask, and solo dining is rising fast. When more than half of items carry no allergen label, a guest with an allergy is trusting one person to know what the menu didn’t say.
Half of menus stay silent on allergens. That silence has to be filled by a server who actually knows the food.
The gap on the page is fixable in two ways: print more, or train better. Most restaurants can’t rewrite their menus overnight. They can make sure the person carrying that menu to the table knows what’s in every dish. That is what ShiftTrained does: it reads your menu and builds the training from it.
Methodology
Data by ShiftTrained draws on the menus restaurants upload to the ShiftTrained platform, where our AI reads each menu and builds staff training from it. This report analyzes 14,890 menu items from 124 restaurants across 31 countries, part of a corpus from which ShiftTrained has generated more than 39,000 training questions.
An item is counted as “labeled” when its menu lists at least one allergen or dietary flag for that dish. Country figures cover markets with at least 100 analyzed items. Figures reflect the ShiftTrained menu corpus, not a census of all restaurants, and grow as new restaurants join. This is a fixed report; the numbers are the snapshot as of publication.
Data by ShiftTrained · CC BY 4.0 · Cite as “Data by ShiftTrained, The Allergen Gap, 2026”
See also the live, self-refreshing companions: Restaurant Menu Statistics and Restaurant Training Statistics.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What share of restaurant menus list allergens?
Across nearly 15,000 real restaurant menu items in the ShiftTrained corpus, only 44% list any allergen information for a dish. That means 56% of menu items name no allergen at all, leaving the server as the primary source of allergen information for a guest.
Do U.S. restaurant menus have to list allergens?
There is no federal rule requiring U.S. restaurants to print allergens on a menu (federal labeling law covers packaged foods, not restaurant menus). In our data it shows: only 40% of U.S. menu items carry allergen information, the lowest of any major market we measured.
Which countries label allergens best on menus?
In markets where allergen labeling is common or required, menus say far more. In our corpus the UAE labels 92% of items, Canada 86%, and Singapore 76%, compared with 40% in the United States.
How much does a server need to know about a menu?
When ShiftTrained's AI reads the average restaurant menu, it finds more than 180 distinct facts worth knowing, across roughly 70 items and 14 sections. A group of diners splits that load between them; a solo diner relies on one server for all of it.
Where does this data come from?
Data by ShiftTrained draws on the real menus restaurants upload to ShiftTrained, where our AI reads each menu and builds staff training from it. This report analyzes 14,890 menu items from 124 restaurants across 31 countries. Figures reflect the ShiftTrained menu corpus, not a census of all restaurants.
About the Author
Terry Psaltakis is a 30-year restaurant operator who has opened more than 20 concepts across multiple markets, in every role from dishwasher to Owner. He founded ShiftTrained in Chicago to solve a problem he lived for three decades: pre-shift meetings don't actually train staff. Terry writes about the operational side of restaurant training, AI in hospitality, and what works on the floor.
LinkedIn · terry@shifttrained.com
Last reviewed June 2026
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