The hardest kitchens there are. Built with them.

Why cruise is the toughest test

A cruise galley concentrates every allergen risk at once. The corporate menu cycle repeats over weeks and across a fleet, so the same cards are produced again and again — each one a fresh chance for a hand-typed slip. Crews are international, and the most safety-critical step often lands on the person least equipped to second-guess an English recipe sheet. And there’s no Environmental Health Officer at the gangway — the accountability is to the flag state, the auditor, and the guest who trusted the card.

The worst failures hide in a dish’s name. A “fish pie” that also carries prawns and mussels; a sauce thickened with flour. Hand-typed cards follow the title, not the recipe. That gap is exactly where the dangerous cases happen — and it’s why a system has to read the recipe, not just transcribe a name.

Two regimes, one broader baseline

If you sail both sides of the Atlantic, you operate under allergen rules that don’t line up: the US declares 9major allergens (FALCPA, with sesame added 1 January 2023), while the UK and EU require 14 (EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex II). Build only to the US list and you can miss celery, mustard, sulphites, lupin and molluscs. PlateProof uses the UK/EU 14 as its baseline — the broader set — so a card covers both. We mapped the two side by side in 9 or 14? US vs UK allergen rules. (Sources: EU Reg. 1169/2011 Annex II; US FALCPA / FASTER Act 2021.)

How PlateProof fits a fleet

• Built with an exec chef across a cruise fleet.The menu-cycle and daily-specials model is designed for how galleys actually run — the repeating corporate menu plus the vessel’s own specials, in one place.
• Reads the recipe, not the name.Allergens are read from the recipe and flagged when a dish’s name hides what’s really in it — the defence against the “fish pie” failure mode — then a named chef signs off.
• The language equaliser. Any crew member, in any language, produces the same audit-ready, signed card as the corporate chef who set the menu.
• Signed proof, fleet-wide. Every card is bonded to its source photo, the signer and the timestamp, with a QR to verify it — auditable across ships without shipping a binder between them.

Where it sits

PlateProof is allergen compliance software built on evidence rather than labelling alone — see also how it serves multi-site caterers and hotels. It doesn’t certify food or guarantee safety; it makes the declaration accurate, evidenced and producible at fleet scale. The proof, not the promise.