Food safety and allergens

1. Who makes your food

Kitchens on Cravable are independent food businesses. They choose the recipe, buy the ingredients, cook, pack and hand over your meal, and they’re responsible for doing it safely and legally. Cravable runs the website: it doesn’t cook, store or deliver food.

There are three kinds of kitchen, and each can make only what its permit allows:

• Restaurants and commercial kitchens, with a health permit from their county or city for the place they cook.
• Home kitchens with a permit (in California, a Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation, or MEHKO), only in cities and counties that allow them and only once Cravable has done what the law asks of the websites that list them. A home kitchen’s offer says Made in a home kitchen and shows its permit number and who issued it.
• Cottage food operations, only for the foods their registration or permit covers, such as breads, baked goods and jams. A cottage food registration doesn’t allow hot meals.

2. What Cravable checks, and what it doesn’t

Before a kitchen’s first offer goes live, we ask for its permit or registration, who issued it and where it cooks, and we check the permit with the agency that issued it where we can. Restaurants and commercial kitchens also show us their insurance, and every kitchen cooks a test dish for us. We review every offer before it’s published: the dish, the price, the minimum, the hours and what the kitchen says about allergens and diets. A kitchen must tell us at once if its permit lapses, is suspended or changes, and we pause its offers until it’s sorted.

Our checks aren’t an inspection. The health department inspects kitchens; we don’t visit them or test food, and our approval isn’t a guarantee that a meal is safe or suits your diet.

3. Allergens

In the US, the major food allergens are milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame.

• An offer lists the ingredients and allergens its kitchen gives us. Read them before you reserve.
• If you have an allergy or intolerance, ask before you reserve: email hello@cravable.ai with the crave’s link, and we’ll get the kitchen’s answer about the actual meal: what’s in it and what else is cooked in the same kitchen. If you can’t get a clear answer, don’t reserve.
• Anything you skip in Your tastes sorts your feed. It doesn’t change a recipe, and it doesn’t tell the kitchen anything.
• What you tell the dish guide about allergies helps describe a dish. It isn’t a message to a kitchen and isn’t a guarantee.
• Even when a kitchen leaves an ingredient out, traces can get in from shared surfaces, pans and oil. Only the kitchen can tell you how it handles that.

4. Diet stamps

Small stamps after a dish’s name show the diets it may suit (Halal, Kosher, Vegan, Vegetarian) and the animal foods in it (such as lamb, chicken, fish or egg). A diet’s stamp says who stands behind it:

Dashed, asked for

The person who started the crave needs this diet. Nobody has promised it yet.

Dashed, as described

Nothing in the dish as described breaks it. Vegan and vegetarian only. A kitchen’s recipe can still differ.

Solid with a tick, the kitchen says

The kitchen making it promises the dish fits this diet, and may name who certifies it.

Cravable never certifies that a dish is halal, kosher, vegan or vegetarian, and no dish is any of those for certain until its kitchen promises it. A kitchen that promises halal or kosher must have a real basis for it and follow the laws on those words (in California, Penal Code sections 383b and 383c). If a kitchen’s promise turns out to be wrong, tell us: it’s grounds for a full refund and for removing the kitchen’s offers.

5. At pickup, and after

• Check your order at the counter: the dish, the number of portions and your name or pickup code.
• Follow the kitchen’s storage and reheating instructions.
• Keep hot food hot and cold food cold. As a rule of thumb from US food safety agencies, put leftovers in the fridge within 2 hours (1 hour if it’s above 90°F outside) and reheat them until steaming hot, 165°F in the middle.
• If something looks, smells or tastes wrong, don’t eat it. Take a photo if you can, then tell us.

6. If you think a meal made you sick

1. Get medical help first if you feel unwell, and call 911 for a severe allergic reaction or anything urgent.
2. Tell us at hello@cravable.ai with Food safety in the subject: the crave, when you ate it and what happened. Don’t keep or eat food you think is unsafe just to show us; a photo is enough.
3. Tell your local health department. It can investigate the kitchen. [Links to the environmental health departments for the pilot’s counties and cities.]

When we hear about a possible food safety problem, we pause the kitchen’s offers for that dish while we look into it, tell the kitchen, and contact everyone who picked up from the same batch if they might be affected. We refund the meal in full. We share what’s needed with health officials when they ask or the law requires it.

7. Recalls

If a kitchen, a supplier or a health agency tells us that food sold through Cravable may be unsafe, we tell everyone who picked it up, by email and under the bell, with what to do, and we refund it.

8. Questions

Questions about a dish: email hello@cravable.ai with the crave’s link before you reserve, and we’ll ask its kitchen. Anything else, the same address.