A Facebook post by a customer has pushed Sumo Salad to introduce ingredient labelling for its freshly prepared salads.

The customer, Ellie Rimmer, has a nut allergy and she suffered a severe anaphylactic shock that required hospital treatment after eating a Sumo Salad beetroot and pumpkin salad which contained walnuts. However, the labelling did not indicate the presence of nuts in the salad because the law for such labelling refers only to packaged foods.

Rimmer turned to social media when her attempts to contact the company fell flat. Her Facebook post attracted 300 likes and a number of responses from Sumo Salad:

We understand and appreciate how distressing this has been for you and your family.
Please accept our apologies that someone has not been in touch with you sooner. We have been aware of your situation and assure you this is a high priority for us. We take matters like this very seriously. In fact, there is an internal management meeting tomorrow to discuss. 

And:

In light of the seriousness of Elly’s personal experience, last week we made the decision that we would be changing all of our ticketing to better communicate the presence of nuts. As you would be aware, this is above and beyond our legal obligation. We take matters like this very seriously, and understand and appreciate how distressing this has been for Elly and her family. 
We do however encourage all our customers with specific health and allergen sensitivities, to consult our sensitivity information in store or online. 

Sumo Salad’s co-founder and CEO Luke Baylis told SmartCompany the franchise would display the information on its labelling from September onwards even though the business already posts information on ingredient sensitivity on its website and in-store.

“While we are not legally obliged to display this information on ticketing as our products are prepared daily and are not packaged goods, we have made the decision to do this when we next change our tickets in September,” Baylis said.

“Life threatening allergic reactions can have catastrophic results. SumoSalad believes this small change to ticketing will go a long way to demonstrating to our customers that their health and wellbeing is of the highest priority to us, and if a similar allergic reaction could be avoided in the future, then it’s worth it,” he said.