What allergen management software actually does
Strip away the marketing and it's a handful of jobs: hold an allergen profile against every ingredient, work out which allergens end up in a finished recipe or dish without you re-typing them each time, keep that up to date the moment an ingredient changes, and produce something you can hand to a customer or an inspector — a printed sheet, a matrix, or a PPDS label for anything sold prepacked.
Everything else — invoice scanning, costing, stock, staff training, QR menus — is a different job that some of these products bundle in alongside allergen tracking, and some don't. Worth knowing which is which before you compare on price.
What to actually check before you buy
The comparison
Three real options that all do allergen tracking as a core feature, not a bolt-on. Kitchen Control and MenuIQ are built for kitchens serving food live; FoodCore is built for a different job — small producers packaging food to sell, not a live kitchen.
| Capability | Kitchen Control | FoodCore | MenuIQ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ingredient-level allergen tracking | Yes — core feature | Yes — with nested sub-recipe propagation | Yes — core feature |
| Cascades automatically to recipes & dishes | Yes | Yes | Not detailed publicly |
| Printed PPDS / Natasha's Law labels | Yes | Yes — allergens auto-bolded | Yes |
| Allergen matrix / sheet for the whole menu or range | Yes | Yes — updates automatically | Not detailed publicly |
| Who it's actually built for | Independent kitchens serving live — cafes, pubs, restaurants, takeaways | Small food producers packaging goods — bakeries, home bakers, market stalls | Hospitality groups needing allergens + nutrition + HACCP + QR menus together |
| Monthly price | £12.99 flat, one plan | Tiered plans, roughly £19–£65 depending on plan | Quote after a demo — not public |
| Free trial | 30 days (card required, not charged if you cancel) | 7 days, no card required | Demo + onboarding process |
| Bringing your existing data in yourself | Yes — self-serve spreadsheet import | Not confirmed | Ask them directly |
Who each one is actually for
Kitchen Control
A single-site independent kitchen — cafe, pub, restaurant, takeaway, bakery-that-also-serves — that wants allergens, recipe costing and invoice scanning in one place, set up in an afternoon, without a sales call.
FoodCore
A small food producer selling packaged goods — a home baker, a market stall, a farm shop — who needs PPDS labels and a production/stock workflow more than live-service allergen checks.
MenuIQ
A multi-site hospitality group that needs allergens, nutrition/calorie data and HACCP tooling together, and doesn't mind a demo-led sales process to get there.
What a spreadsheet still does fine
If you're a genuinely small, one-person operation on top of your own numbers, a spreadsheet costs nothing and works — right up until a second person needs the same information at the same time, or you need to hand something to an inspector that looks like it was built for the job rather than bent into shape. See our full spreadsheet comparison for where that line actually sits.
Kitchen Control is £12.99/month, one plan, everything included — no separate allergen add-on, no per-location pricing, no demo required to see what it actually does.
START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL