AIBU to be really pissed off with this Cafe?

[mermaidofthewestside]

Morning MN
Went to a cafe yesterday with friends. My daughter has eczema & dairy products really affect her skin. She has not had any in 4 years.
Where I live there are a lot of places that do vegan/dairy free options & dairy free ice-cream is pretty normal everywhere.
They had one dairy free sorbet & I made it really clear that DD couldn't have dairy & asked him to check the cones were dairy free too.
After a few mouthfuls DD became upset & said she didn't want the sorbet & became very itchy. I put it down to tiredness because I didn't want to re-question the cafe staff & our friends had paid & it was quite a small place, so I did that 'don't-want-to-cause-a-scene thing & took DD home. By the time we got home 15 mins later her whole face had blistered & her torso was red & blotchy. She was very upset. I gave her some piriton but DD was unable to go to her friend's party in the PM as she was so itchy & upset.
I rang the cafe to get a list of ingredients as she'd reacted so badly & they told me it had milk in!
They were apologetic & said if we wanted to come back they'd make sure DD got a free dairy free treat but today I feel really annoyed that DD had to put up with some major itchiness & miss out on a party & her day was essentially ruined because of their mistake.
I don't want to give them a slating on Tripadvisor or anything but don't feel very happy about all this on reflection.... WWYD?

They should keep a list of allergens in everything they sell.

Yes it is the law now. I work in catering all unwrapped products should have their allergens listed so customers can check.

Trading standards. Everyone saying 'she gets a free treat' is being rediculous. Would the cafe be so blasé about a peanut allergy? They could kill someone!

I'd go in and kick off and insist they train their staff

They told me the sorbet was dairy free.

They're 100% in the wrong here. No way acceptable. As someone who has allergies, you double check when out and you did. You were told it was dairy free. You checked.
Could have been fatal.

Sure there was an article in the paper a while back about an Indian restaurant where the owner was convicted for his attitude to allergies.
Will try and find it....
www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/23/restaurant-owner-mohammed-zaman-guilty-of-manslaughter-of-peanut-allergy-customer

If it's a new cafe they probably are planning to train up all staff over time which in the case of allergens isn't good enough. Perhaps they are unaware of how serious allergies can be.

They need a sharp reminder to up their game.

Glad you are going to talk to them. Although it wasn't extremely serious in your dd' s case it could have been and they need to recognise that. If they get defensive or arsey then let local food standards agency know about it. They will take a dim view of it and follow it up.

Hope your dd is better soon.

definitely take it furthr -as pp have said a man died after getting a curry which they asured him had no nuts in it

they got done for it
-they could kill someone next time they give out wrong info

Just to throw in another thought, was the sorbet served from a counter full of open ice cream tubs and sorbets?

Years ago i was in a cafe and wanted to buy my DD (anaphylactic to dairy) a sorbet. I checked that it was dairy free and double checked that the cones were too. What I hadn't considered until I checked out afterwards was that they used communal scoop spoons that they kept in tubs of water to 'clean' between switching ice cream flavours. I hadn't seen them do this when I ordered the sorbet - unfortunately took only a couple of licks before her lips swelled up covered in hives.

I'm or type you've had to go through a similar nasty experience but I think you should follow it up with the cafe. As others have said they have a legal duty to tell you if allergens are present in their food. Obviously they can't guarantee food is safe but that is our risk to take

Yanbu.

Yanbu. You asked if it was dairy free, they said yes. End of....they were in the wrong. People are so complacent re allergies these days and don't realise they can be life threatening ! An apology is not enough !
Standards have been breeched. Next time it could be anaphylaxis for a customer .... environmental health need to be informed and have their allergy protocols and training of staff reviewed.

Maybe it's trading standards not environmenal health.

Sorry should have put Food Standards Agency. I have advice from both and was in a rush earlier.

If you are serving food on your premises you are inspected by Food Standards Agency. If you are not following their guidelines or laws on food prep, handling, storage and serving they will come and inspect the place and give you further advice on what you should be doing, if you dont do this they can close you down.

Trading Standards have nothing to do with serving food. They deal with business issues, scams, etc

OP sorry its Food Standards Agency. My misteak I was in a hurry.

FSA definitely. There was a curry house that gave someone nuts and they died. They have a legal obligation to ensure the information they give you is correct.

If you are going in to talk to them, I think an earlier poster's suggestion - that they have an ingredients list for each item they sell ready to show potential customers - is a good one. That would save them time and it would protect the customers, as someone with an allergy would be more likely to know which ingredients and their variations can affect them rather than a busy employee.

Hope your little one is better soon. It's awful when Cafe/restaurant owners allow this to happen. I say 'allow' as you asked them to check if there was dairy in the ingredients and they failed to do so, causing your child to have an allergic reaction.
Don't accept any 'free' treat. If I'm correct, then that's you legally accepting that they have apologised and it's a clever way for them to cover their backs. If you accept I'm not sure if you could then sue/press charges if your child was to get any worse.
Environmental Health need to know so that they can get the appropriate training.

For those who say that sorbet doesn't contain dairy, many brands of sorbet do. Dairy can be found in many things that you'd think it shouldn't be in. Our child is anaphylactic to it, so I spend my life reading bloody ingredient lists.

I have Coeliac and TBH it seems to me that the smaller 'Mum & Pop' type establishments are less reliable than many larger places when it comes to allergy awareness. At least, I've had more problems either getting a straight answer about ingredients or in their prep and serving procedures. I think larger or chain locations have more 'kitchen rules' and take the time to train staff.

The last place I was in, after I explained I had Coeliac, the owner assured me that the GF items were fine and that he would 'take care of me' and tbh based on the cuisine and menu it was pretty believable. We just got ready to order when for some reason I stopped and said "So, you prepare in a separate area and use clean utensils?". He looked at me as if I was nuts and said "No, why would I do that?". We left.

i used to manage a large cafe and we often had customers who would come in and ask about allergens, i would always take them to the kitchen window and have the chef go over them with the customer, because in some cases it really is life and death, and on 3 occasions customers gave me a printed list of what they can not have in food, had all the different milk names, gluten names etc and one had even green lettuce on it ( pretty much anything green was listed) i thought this was an awesome idea ( sad people had to go to this extreme to prevent contamination happening though) when i read the list i had no idea that coeliacs had so many things to look out for and just how many products contain gluten
Might be something to think about as a just in case, list all the names of any milk product and have them double check against your list

YANBU, when I worked in a cafe we had a folder which had a list of ingredients and nutritional info for every single product that didn't have packaging already visible to a customer (boxed sandwiches for example could be picked up and checked by a customer so weren't needed in the folder). It was absolutely drilled into us that if a customer asked about something that was in a product you never ever assumed you checked the folder without fail. Allergens training was mandatory and had to be re-completed regularly. I also wouldn't have been offended if a customer wanted to check it themselves too afterwards to be certain.

I think it's more than fair to follow up your complaint with a letter asking for details of what steps are being taken to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Don't ever feel that you can't ask to see an ingredients list for yourself and if someone cannot provide it or does not want to then don't buy from them as it clearly isn't worth the risk. Allergens should be taken very seriously but unfortunately this isn't the case everywhere.

Jackelope by law this is what they should already have in place, it's been law since 2014.

Op how is your girl

A friends son who is anaphylactic for dairy once had a huge reaction because despite them checking the cone and the sorbet and informing the cafe of the seriousness the server used a scoop that had previously been used for dairy on the sorbet. It doesn't sound like your dd's allergy is as sensitive as that but possibly a contributing factor? And worth mentioning to the cafe as they are clearly not allergy aware. You are doing the right thing going in and giving them a chance to change practice.

Thing is, if it were me or my child I would check that they were going to use a clean spoon,.ingredients etc because it would be me and mine that would suffer!

Definitely worth educating the cafe though in what labels dairy can come under.

I'm astonished to learn from a poster on here that they've looked at sorbets in supermarkets and found most of them included something dairy in the ingredients. As another poster said, sorbet shouldn't include anything dairy-related at all. I have a friend who is more than just simply dairy intolerant and is always having sorbets, of loads of makes, and has never had one problem.

Here you go, Carte d'Or Lemon sorbet

Also one by Movenpick.

The others on ocado seem to be dairy free but lots contain wheat!