How California's SB68 Is Forcing Restaurants to Tag Allergens and Why Foodini Was Ready

Dylan McDonnell is the founder and CEO of Foodini, an AI-powered dietary intelligence company that helps restaurants, food service operators, stadiums, and delivery platforms map allergen and dietary information down to the ingredient level. An Irish-born corporate lawyer who worked at Mercer in Dublin and Sydney before founding the company, Dylan built Foodini to solve a problem he has lived with since childhood: celiac disease and the constant stress of not knowing what is safe to eat when dining out. He moved the company to Los Angeles two years ago and has since helped pass California's SB68, the first US law requiring allergen labeling on restaurant menus.✨ Key Insights You'll Learn:Diagnosed with celiac disease as a child, spending years silently navigating meals in school, sports trips, and social settings with no safe optionsCareer path from Big Law in Ireland through Mercer's investment funds practice in Dublin and Sydney to founding Foodini in AustraliaEarly MVP: a consumer discovery app quickly revealed the real problem was the absence of structured ingredient data at the restaurant levelPivoting from consumer-first to B2B-first after realizing the data coverage problem had to be solved before the consumer experience could scaleBuilding integrations with POS systems, recipe and inventory management platforms, and major distributors to pull ingredient data automaticallyTraining LLMs to tag menu items across 150 allergens and dietary preferences, with human dietitian oversight as a quality layerSpending most of Q3 2024 working with California senators and assembly members to help pass SB68, signed by Newsom in October 2024SB68 takes effect July 1, 2026, requiring chains with 20 or more locations to label menus for the top nine allergensSix more states with legislation in progress: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, and MissouriIntegration with Major League Baseball's ballpark app to help fans with dietary needs navigate concession options at MLB stadiums🌟 Dylan's Key Mentors:His Parents: Glass-half-full, pragmatic personalities who modeled resilience and the perspective that in the grand scheme of things, a lost client is not that big a dealFAIR (Food Allergy Education Organization): The nonprofit food allergy advocacy network that connected Dylan to the regulatory and community work shaping the legislative landscapeMendoza Ventures (Adrian and Sennifer Mendoza): Early-stage fintech investors whose thesis and values resonated with Dylan and expanded his understanding of the startup ecosystemHis Head Dietitian (First Hire): Still with the company, she shaped the credibility and rigor of the dietitian-in-a-box model from day one, including early kitchen visits to photograph ingredient labels👉 Don't miss Dylan's account of manually pulling products from restaurant refrigerators to photograph ingredient labels, the moment he realized the data infrastructure problem was even bigger than the consumer problem, and how a childhood with celiac disease quietly shaped everything that followed.🔗 Connect with Dylan McDonnell:Website: Foodini.co📋 Transcript Available: How California's SB68 Is Forcing Restaurants to Tag Allergens and Why Foodini Was Ready📺 Watch on YouTube: Inspired Stories Podcast🌐 Our Website: The Inspired Stories Podcast📋 Special Thanks to Anthony Codispoti & AddBack Benefits Agency: Providing innovative employee benefits solutions that improve employee well-being while optimizing your bottom line. Website: addbackbenefits.com