MIND THE GLUTEN
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EATING OUT GLUTEN-FREE
Netnography
Over 24 months we immersed ourselves in coeliac communities on forums, Reddit, TikTok and Facebook, analysing more than 700 posts, reviews and conversations.
Each piece of content was mapped to a stage of the dining journey and to its emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimension.
In-depth interviews
12 phenomenological interviews with coeliac consumers and 4 with experts (doctors, nutritionists and AIC), complemented by an autoethnographic perspective from within the team.
This let us move from what people post online to what they actually feel at the table.
Eye-tracking & co-design
An eye-tracking experiment on a partner restaurant’s menus observed how diners read and navigate the offer.
Findings were then tested in a workshop with restaurateurs, AIC and researchers, using empathy maps and role play.
Gluten-free products are now easy to find, and the gluten-free market is expected to reach $14 billion by 2032. Yet for coeliac consumers, eating out remains a high-risk experience: one invisible mistake can cause real physical harm.
Mind the Gluten maps the coeliac dining journey across 13 touchpoints, from online research and the phone call to the restaurant to payment and the days after the meal.
We found that the opposite of trust is not distrust but dread: a pervasive fear that pushes many people to stop eating out altogether.
To cope, guests develop four strategies: avoidance, negotiation (calling ahead, saying “allergy” instead of “coeliac” to be taken seriously), trust in certified and familiar venues, and creative practices that turn the condition into a personal map of the city.
Beyond its cognitive, emotional and behavioural sides, trust has two dimensions that had been overlooked: physical safety and social inclusion.
When every touchpoint is predictable, a loyalty loop begins; when guests can also share the experience with friends, “exclusive trust” becomes inclusive trust.
The knowledge coeliac consumers build out of fear circulates in their communities as real cultural capital, which makes them some of the most attentive and influential reviewers a restaurant can have.
