FAQs
Learn more about how Picknic helps you find restaurants for food allergies, gluten-free, vegetarian, or vegan diets.
Picknic primarily researches restaurants based on their ability to serve the top 8 allergens, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and vegetarian or vegan diets. We’ve got restaurants for you if you are:
- Gluten-free
- Peanut-free
- Tree nut-free
- Dairy-free
- Shellfish-free
- Egg-free
- Soy-free
- Fish-free
- Wheat-free
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
We have the most options for gluten-free friendly restaurants, peanut-free friendly restaurants, tree nut-free friendly restaurants, shellfish-free friendly restaurants, vegetarian friendly restaurants, and vegan friendly restaurants. However, with our growing list of restaurants, we’ve got plenty of food allergy-friendly restaurants that can accommodate a spectrum of food allergies, sensitivities, and special diets.
If you have a food allergy or dietary restriction we don’t cover, we recommend viewing restaurants that have our “Allergy Excellence” rating or that publish their full ingredient list for each menu item. There are filters for this on our restaurant search page!
As the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education and Research (FASTER) Act is implemented and sesame is added to allergen labeling in the U.S., we will begin listing sesame-free friendly restaurants as well.
We get our information from what a restaurant has already published about itself and from conversations directly with each restaurant’s management.
Our team of restaurant researchers all manage food allergies, celiac disease, or gluten-free, vegetarian, or vegan diets. They have spent years navigating the world of allergy friendly, gluten-free friendly, vegetarian friendly, and vegan friendly restaurants. They need to know the same information you do, and they are really good at getting it.
For chain restaurants, we don’t speak with every location. Instead we speak with the management at enough locations to reasonably profile the chain as a whole.
For our partner restaurants, we have even deeper conversations with managers and owners about restaurant operations and support for food allergies and gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan diets. We often make suggestions and help the restaurant be more friendly for those with food allergies or gluten-free, vegetarian, or vegan diets.
For some of our partner restaurants, we are the platform for their allergen menu, gluten-free menu, vegetarian menu, and vegan menu. We consult with them to build their allergen and special diets menu and then host it on Picknic.
In occasional cases, we will display the allergen menu, gluten-free menu, vegetarian menu, or vegan menu information for a restaurant that is not a partner. This is generally only when the restaurant has an excellent allergen and special diets menu and is friendly for food allergies and gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan diets.
We currently have over 58,000 restaurant locations listed across the country. This includes over 60 national chains. Therefore, we have gluten-free friendly restaurants, food allergy friendly restaurants, vegetarian friendly restaurants, and vegan friendly restaurants in every major city.
We also have a growing list of local restaurants, but most of them are in our home city of Nashville, TN.
Want us to list more local restaurants near you?
The best way is to join our email list and enter your zip code. We are quickly adding local restaurants and are prioritizing cities where we have the most users.
Accuracy is critical, so we work hard to keep our information up to date. Some information on our site may only need updating annually or semi-annually. For example, restaurant procedures and employee training for food allergies don’t change often for established restaurants. Other information such as menu data for food allergies and gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan diets may need updating more frequently.
We list the date a restaurant profile and menu was last updated at the top of the page so you can always know how current the restaurant information is.
Not yet. Picknic is currently only available in your browser.
Our restaurant partners are always visible for free on Picknic, but you’ll need a Premium account to access all of the 58,000+ restaurant locations on our platform. Picknic Premium is $9.99 per month or $34.99 per year.
If you are having trouble finding restaurants that meet your needs on Picknic, here are three steps we recommend to find restaurants that do:
- Create a free account or sign up for our mailing list below. We are constantly adding new restaurants to Picknic and can notify you when we add new restaurants in your area.
- Request a free list of recommended restaurants. You enter your dietary restrictions and zip code, and we send you a list of the restaurants in our data that we recommend for you. This is a great way to be sure you didn’t miss any options on our site.
- Let Picknic create a personalized destination guide for you. Our team will do the research for you and produce a detailed report of restaurant options for you in the location you choose. Email guide@picknic.app if you are interested to get pricing information and other details.
Your dietary settings include the diets you follow (e.g. vegetarian, vegan), the foods you must avoid (e.g. gluten, dairy), and whether or not you are comfortable with cross-contact for each diet or dietary restriction.
These settings are used to:
- Identify which restaurants are “Picks” or “Possibles” for you.
- Show you only the information that is relevant to your needs.
- Identify the menu items that are a match (or potential match) for you.
First of all, we want you to know that it is important to us that you find restaurants and menu items that are safe for you. We have plans to list allergens beyond the top 8, so be sure to request that we add your allergens.
Until then, use the Allergy Excellence filter to find restaurants that will best understand your needs and commit to delivering you a safe and satisfying meal. You can also use the Full Ingredient Listings Available filter to find restaurants that plublish all ingredients, not just the top 8 allergens.
If you have celiac disease or a severe gluten intolerance, you are probably skeptical of anything labeled “gluten-free.” We are too. Some of our founding team members have celiac disease, so we understand the confusion and inconsistency of gluten-free (or “gluten-friendly” – as if anyone is trying to befriend gluten) labeling. Though many people with a “lifestyle” gluten-free diet use Picknic, we go beyond that.
Here are the key things you should know when using Picknic:
- Be sure your dietary settings are set to avoid gluten and avoid cross-contact. Once these are set everything displayed for you in Picknic is based on your need to avoid all gluten.
- Picknic Picks & Possibles will be based on your need to strictly avoid gluten. Picks will be the safest options.
- The Gluten-Free Info section in a restaurant’s profile will be written with your strict needs in mind. This is the best place to learn about a restaurant’s procedures and options for strict gluten-free and celiac.
- The gluten-free information in our allergen, gluten-free, and vegetarian/vegan menus (when available) will help you understand your meal options. The information there is based on the ingredients of the item according to the restaurant. For many of our partner restaurants, we also include cross-contact information.