Serving Safely: Restaurants respond to alpha-gal syndrome challenges

Some Springfield-area restaurants are becoming more attuned to providing safe spaces for diners dealing with food allergies and sensitivities.

For those eateries, that includes creating special menus or food items that appeal to those navigating allergies, such as alpha-gal syndrome. AGS is a tickborne disease that has a molecule naturally produced in most mammals that also is found in the saliva of most ticks, such as the lone star tick, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s a disease that Alec Hagan has dealt with for roughly four years. With his wife, Katrina, Hagan co-owns The Safe Spoon, an allergen-free cafe that launched earlier this year in Springfield. The eatery at 1450 E. Sunshine St., Stes. A-B, is seeking to provide a haven for those dealing with allergies, which includes its owners.

Katrina Hagan, who previously worked for five years at Grooms Office Environments, said she began allergen-free baking as part of a path to change her diet and lifestyle following a lupus diagnosis. The home-based venture, dubbed Sensitively Sweet, became a brick-and-mortar bakery in Nixa in 2024.

While the bakery is still in operation, the Hagans desired to create a restaurant that also provided an allergen-free environment for diners.

“It was hard for us to model this because there was nothing else like it,” Hagan said of The Safe Spoon. “We really just had to trust our gut, go with our instinct and really go based off of customer feedback.”

She said the company’s products are free from the top allergens listed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including eggs, milk, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, soybeans, wheat and sesame. They also are celiac-safe, alpha-gal-safe, free of mammal meat and mammal-derived ingredients, grain-free, and don’t contain artificial dyes. 

“We kind of took my husband’s experience in the kitchen at home, experimenting for several years with our allergies, and just decided to take that into our menu at the restaurant,” Katrina said. “The vision was to serve comfort meets conscious ingredients. We wanted the food to taste good. We wanted it to be visually appealing.”

Breakfast items at The Safe Spoon include pancakes, avocado toast and cinnamon rolls, while sandwiches, soups and salads are among the lunch menu offerings. 

Alec said the main challenge at opening the restaurant was checking every single ingredient that went into the food.

“Since mammal can hide in normal products like sugar and natural flavors, we spent a lot of time working with food manufacturers and confirming their food was safe,” he said via email. “We still read the ingredients on all products that we have vetted just in case they change them on us. I can say we take it very serious for our alpha-gal friends in making sure all of our products are safe for them.”

Describing The Safe Spoon as allergen-free is really based on the sourcing and preparation protocols rather than testing the finished product, Alec said.

“When we say ‘allergen-free,’ we’re specifically referring to the FDA top 9 allergens and alpha-gal products, though we recognize there are many allergens beyond those nine and we try to accommodate as many as we can,” he said.

Becoming common
Customers with food allergies are common in restaurants, according to the CDC. The agency said in a 2024 study that one in three people report having a food allergic reaction in a restaurant. 

Dr. Seth Knight, an allergist and immunologist with CoxHealth, said his office in the Ferrell-Duncan Clinic is seeing between three to five referrals for AGS per day.

“It’s a very commonly referred and increasingly more recognized allergy condition,” he said, adding Springfield is an area that has a lot of tick exposure.

AGS can have a range of symptoms, such as gastrointestinal and respiratory issues, hives and swelling, Knight said.

“It’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all diagnosis,” he said. “I see patients who have all kinds of different reaction histories, which makes it sometimes a tricky diagnosis.”

Investment in health
Katrina said while there are some restaurants in Springfield that accommodate food allergies, such as gluten, dairy and alpha-gal, she said the risk of cross-contamination is always present in those kitchens.

“It just takes a cook, a server, someone not paying attention or not changing their gloves and you can get really sick due to cross-contact,” she said. “We’ve completely eliminated the cross-contact because there’s none of it in our kitchen. That is what’s really given people the peace of mind to be able to eat at Sensitively Sweet and specifically The Safe Spoon without having that fear surrounded with them.”

However, providing peace of mind did come with a price, as Katrina said the couple invested $90,000 in startup costs, largely toward purchasing new equipment such as stoves, a griddle and an oven. 

“As business owners, as people with food allergies, you have to make good conscious decisions regarding your ingredients, but you also have to do it with your equipment,” she said, noting the Sunshine Street space most recently was occupied by Curly Que Barbecue LLC. “So, we got rid of any equipment that would have had any type of allergens baked in it or on it.”

Only the refrigerators from the prior tenant were kept, Katrina said, adding those received a deep cleaning.

“It is definitely more upfront, because you can’t buy used equipment like other restaurants are able to,” she said. “You have to go in and buy it new. It’s an investment into our customers’ health.”

Menu attention
Chris Galloway, owner of pizza chain PaPPo’s Pizzeria & Pub, is well versed in AGS. For nearly 40 years, he said he has lived with the allergy, which wasn’t formally identified until 2009 by researchers at the University of Virginia. According to the CDC, at least 450,000 people in the country may have the condition but AGS cases aren’t nationally notifiable to the government agency.

Galloway said the menu at PaPPo’s, which has 12 shops, including two in Springfield, has options for those diagnosed with AGS, such as vegan cheese and turkey pepperoni.

“We ask the people to let us know what their allergy is,” he said. “If it’s severe and it involves dairy and all that, we just need to know before we put the order in. Once we put the order in, then we’re able to make adjustments.”

People should not feel embarrassed to reveal food allergies at restaurants, Galloway said, although he sympathizes with those who get tired of doing so.

“For myself, having had alpha-gal for 39 years, it’s a trust factor,” he said. “When I go to a place, I trust that they’re going to take care of me. But whenever I go, I still have to tell them.”

Galloway said his restaurants occasionally experience a customer with alpha-gal who formerly were unable to eat pizza but become emotional after realizing they can do so at PaPPo’s. 

“We care a lot – like to the nth degree – that people are going to be safe,” he said, noting the shops also have cauliflower and gluten-free crust options. 

A customer complaint served as motivation for Heather Hewey, kitchen manager at Van Gogh’s Eeterie, 334 E. Commercial St., to create a separate menu specifically for those with AGS. Hewey, who has worked at the C-Street restaurant for three years, said Van Gogh’s has probably served at least 100 people with the allergy since she made the menu around last Christmas. 

She incorporated an allergy card left by a customer into the menu, which contains around 15 items, including proteins such as chicken, salmon and shrimp. 

“They can have a salmon filet with a side of broccoli and a side salad or a side of fries,” she said as an example, adding the menu also has options such as a hummus platter and chicken salad on a bed of arugula with a side of fruit. “I did still put quite a bit of variety on there.”

When dealing with AGS, Hewey said the staff is trained to separate the cooking for that menu with its own pans, utensils, cutting boards and gloves. 

“If there is any question in regards to what is in foods, or if the customer wants to tell us what they are allergic to and our server doesn’t know all the food items involved in the allergy, that’s why I listed everything on that menu,” she said. “Since I made the menu, our staff has become moderately well versed in it.”

Hewey said she wants the menu to keep customers from having to worry about asking lots of questions and feeling uncomfortable.

“I wanted them to feel more invited into our restaurant, so they can see that we do care about them coming to eat with us and being able to enjoy themselves while they’re here,” she said.

Beyond misconceptions
Between The Safe Spoon and Sensitively Sweet’s 18 combined employees, Katrina estimates over 80% of them have a food allergy or is related to someone who does. Onboarding includes an allergen training guide. 

“We also have an allergen-free menu guide that has the breakdown of every single ingredient, every single menu item we have, because ingredient transparency is super important to us,” she said. 

Katrina said the big misconception about restaurants that have allergen-free menus is that the food “tastes bad and it’s dry. It doesn’t have any flavor.” 

But she said there are a lot of spouses of those with AGS who come into the restaurant. While they may be hesitant at first to try something, once convinced to eat, she said they really enjoy the experience.

“Our goal about this whole thing was to make it feel as normal as possible to everyone,” Katrina said. “We’re not going to say that fully allergen-free is always going to be just as good as allergen food, but we’ve really set the bar high and made some pretty good, tasty food that everyone seems to universally enjoy.”