How FreeFromFinder rates venues
We rate each venue separately for each allergen. The same pizza place might be Tier A+ for coeliac but Tier C for dairy. The tier tells you how the kitchen handles that allergen. The confidence score tells you how sure we are. If we are not sure enough, we keep researching rather than recommend.
Independently verified safe for this allergen: either a 100% dedicated kitchen (no allergen on premises) or a current accreditation we've matched against the body's own published directory. High-care setup. Either someone close to the kitchen (owner, chef, staff) needs to avoid this allergen themselves, OR the menu marks allergens AND dedicated equipment plus trained staff manage cross-contamination. Allergen-marked menu with aware staff, served from a shared kitchen. Cross-contamination risk is acknowledged but the venue has clear options. No marked menu but staff will accommodate when asked. Quality varies by who's working that shift; safer to call ahead and confirm. Thin positive signal only: a stray menu callout, a single passing review mention, or generic dietary marketing without specifics. Not enough to assess kitchen practice. Call ahead and confirm before relying on it. Documented unsafe for this allergen: refuses to accommodate, multiple bad reports, or a documented incident. Surfaced as a warning rather than a recommendation. Not all sources are equal, so we weight them. An official accreditation counts more than what a venue says about itself. The owner's own words count more than a third-party listing. A diagnosed-coeliac blogger counts more than a random Google review.
AccreditationOfficial registries like Coeliac UK, Coeliac Society of Ireland, MUIS Halal, Vegan Society Trademark, and FARE.weight 0.95
OfficialThe venue's own allergen page, menus, or PDFs on its own website.weight 0.85
Verified blogReviewers who have a diagnosed allergy or coeliac and a track record of writing about it.weight 0.70
AggregatorEstablished listing sites like FindMeGlutenFree, HappyCow, and AllergyEats. Useful but not strongly weighted.weight 0.60
Communityr/Celiac, allergy support forums, and signed-in user reviews. Worth more when several sources agree.weight 0.55
Public reviewGoogle Maps and TripAdvisor reviews that talk specifically about how allergens are handled.weight 0.50
We save a copy of every page we read before we publish a rating. If the original page disappears six months later, we still have the proof. If a venue argues with a rating, we can show the evidence we used. If we change a rating, the old evidence stays on file.
Each time we check a venue again, we save a fresh copy with the date. Over time this shows how a venue's allergen story has changed.
Each rating carries a confidence percentage from 0% to 100%. Three things push it up: how many independent sources back it, how trustworthy those sources are, and how recent they are. A Tier A+ venue with three accreditations scores higher than a Tier A+ venue with only one enthusiastic blog post.
- If we are not sure enough, the venue stays off the recommended list while we keep researching.
- We re-check the top venues in each city every 90 days.
When people report being glutened, turned away, or sent the wrong dish, we leave that in the summary. We do not smooth it over. So if a venue card has no warning, you know there is no warning to give, and that is useful information too.
Honest caveat, one Google reviewer reported a wrong dish initially sent out; corrected promptly. Highly-sensitive coeliacs should reconfirm at order.example caveat, The Port House, Dublin (Tier A coeliac)
Coeliac · Gluten-freeautoimmune Shellfish-freeanaphylaxis