FAACT and MenuTrinfo® Partner on Food Service Training

For the millions of students living with food allergies, eating at the school cafeteria is not merely a convenience, it’s a gamble – with potentially fatal consequences. The food service industry’s food allergy expert, MenuTrinfo®, partnered with the nation’s leading food allergy education and advocacy group, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Connection Team (FAACT), to make serving students with food allergies safer.

Together, FAACT and MenuTrinfo® are providing leading-edge food allergy education, risk-reduction strategies, and emergency preparedness plans to food service facilities so they can safely serve students living with food allergies as well as their families, friends, and colleagues.

The AllerTrain™ suite of courses by MenuTrinfo® was launched in 2011 to meet the growing need for food-allergy and gluten-free training within the food service industry. Over the past decade, it has evolved into a wide variety of training options, led by the food service industry experts, designed to suit the needs of every member of the food service industry. The ground-breaking partnership with FAACT brings expert oversight and additional content vetted by FAACT’s Medical Advisory Board to achieve even stronger and clearer education for those who complete the training.

With both an eLearning platform and live workshops taught by Master Trainers, AllerTrain™ is an accessible option for every style of learner. MenuTrinfo® is the only company that offers an in-person food allergy training option, which is the chosen teaching to have students retain high levels of information.

AllerTrain U™ for the college and university settings and AllerTrain Lite™ are the programs that dining services looking to be “Certified Free-From” locations have turned to for the knowledge their staff must have to deliver food services with confidence each and every time. Both are ANAB/ANSI-accredited training courses that go further to meet state- and county-specific training mandates. You can find a map online showing college and universities that have utilized the AllerTrain™, AllerTrain U™, and AllerTrain Lite™ training.

The courses teach food service professionals:

• Top foods that cause allergic reactions
• Proper protocol for preparing food to avoid cross-contact with allergens
• How to better serve students with special dietary needs
• Recommendations for policy implementation
• Information on current and pending legislation in each state

AllerTrain™ and FAACT are helping food service professionals on all levels to better handle gluten-free and food allergen requests, avoid food allergy-related incidents, and prepare for onsite food allergy emergencies should they occur.

Has your college/university food service division provided certified allergen training for staff? If not, please consider using the AllerTrain™ U and/or AllerTrain™ programs to train all food service personnel. It’s the best way to ensure the safety of your students living with food allergies.

MenuTrinfo® also offers the Kitchens With Confidence™ program, which certifies food service locations that have been assessed through rigorous audits on methods, standards, policies, and understanding to serve persons with special dietary needs, specifically food allergies. A map of certified locations available on the AllerTrain™ website is a useful tool for students going to college with food allergies.

Visit AllerTrain™ to schedule your training today!

FAACT & TAP Series know the importance of food allergy education in the restaurant setting. It is necessary for food establishments: restaurants, hotels, colleges and universities, cafeterias, hospitals, senior living and more to be educated and knowledgeable of managing food allergies in the food establishment setting - from the front of the house to the back of the house.  

TAP Series has been providing digital/online education since 1999. TAP Series has a global client base of foodservice, hospitality, manufacturing, processing, distribution companies as well as colleges and universities.

Allergen Friendly™ Training Series was created using a Subject Matter Expert team of food safety professionals from companies such as Marriott International, Dunkin Donuts, Johnson & Wales University, and others. The training series includes three levels of training and an allergen-tracking database. Its purpose is to provide foodservice operations with the tools to develop, implement and manage a highly accommodating allergen friendly operation.

We want food service establishments to have affordable and easy access to our new allergen training modules. There are three training modules:

• Allergen Awareness - $14.95
• Allergen Plan Development - $29.95
• Allergen Specialist - $29.95

The Allergen Awareness course is ANSI-accredited for those who need continuing education hours.

Visit each module section to learn more about the courses, and order your training today! Share with your favorite restaurants in your community, and ask them to complete FAACT and TAP Series’ Allergen Friendly™ Training Series!

Allergen Awareness

Allergen Awareness is the first module of this series. This interactive online course provides allergen awareness for the entire staff. You will learn:

• Information on what causes an allergic reaction.
• The main food allergens.
• How to communicate with customers who have food allergies.
• How to assure customers’ allergen needs are communicated within the operation from the initial order to the serving process.
• Cross-contact and how to avoid it.
• What to do when an allergy reaction or attack happens.

Allergen Awareness was designed to be highly flexible, allowing the student to train on their schedule. 

The Allergen Awareness course is ANSI-accredited for those who need continuing education hours.  

Order the Allergen Awareness module for $14.95!

Allergen Plan Development

With the Allergen Plan Development Course, the answers to the questions about “ask your manager” are developed. This course walks management through all the elements of food allergens in a food operation, allowing management to decide what will and will not be done.

Throughout the course, the user is offered a series of questions and options for how much accommodation the operation will give to the issue of food allergen safety. Even those operations not able to achieve a high level of accommodations will have made the decision with a full awareness of what is not being provided. Operations that decide to offer a high level of food allergen accommodations will end the course with the foundation of their Allergen Plan. This plan will be saved and used to develop the details of the operation's food allergen safety process. 

Order the Allergen Plan Development module for $29.95!

Allergen Specialist

After completing the prerequisite courses Allergen Awareness and Allergen Plan Development, your operation may decide to have on staff someone who knows how to evaluate and document allergens in the operation’s products. In this course, the student is provided with an in-depth understanding of food allergens, product ingredients, and common allergen food items. With this knowledge, the student learns how to evaluate a menu and its recipes for their food products. Knowing all the products used by the operation, the student learns how to identify the food allergen ingredients in the products. The student learns when to be alert to potential ingredient changes, how to communicate with suppliers, and what to do about product recalls due to allergen mislabeling or undeclared allergens. The student learns how to use this knowledge to create a database to track each allergen, from product to menu. 

In Lesson 2, the student learns all the steps of an operation and how to develop written protocols for each step. Through discussions of receiving, storage, ordering, cooking and serving, the student learns how to work with other staff to evaluate each step of the operation from an allergen view point. Using this knowledge, the student is taught to develop short written directions as guides for staff. Forms of written communication are addressed and what should and should not be said to customers. 

We have developed an Allergen Friendly™ Database to support being highly accommodating:

• Food Products are listed by selected allergens
• Product allergens are tracked when used in a recipe
• Recipes matched into meals track all allergens
• Products removed or recipes item changed add or subtract allergens

For substitutions, a recipe or meal can be found by allergens or without allergens.

Order the Allergen Specialist module for $29.95!