California's SB-68 requires chain restaurants with 20+ locations to disclose Big 9 allergens on menus — by July 1, 2026. Nakol automates the entire compliance workflow: upload your menu, AI identifies allergens, you confirm dish by dish, and we generate your QR code and printable allergen chart.
🧬 Big 9 FDA Allergens⚖️ ADDE Act Compliant⏱ Live in 10 Minutes🔒 Restaurant-Verified, Never Inferred
Nakol
WB
ADDE Compliance Status
WaBa Grill · Downtown LA
47 dishes · Menu uploaded 2h ago
44 dishes · Allergens Verified
3 dishes · Needs Review
Review 3 Dishes →
Allergen Grid — Sample
Teriyaki Chicken Bowl
SOYWHEAT
Veggie Rice Bowl
CLEAR
Steak Plate
SOY
Compliance Score
98.7%
Dish allergens verified
Time to Compliant
9 min
Average for 50-dish menu
The Problem
32 million Americans have food allergies. One in three reactions happens at a restaurant.
California just raised the stakes for every restaurant chain. SB-68 — the ADDE Act — mandates Big 9 allergen disclosure on menus by July 1, 2026. Most chains have no system to comply. The spreadsheet workarounds they're using won't pass audit. And the window to get compliant is closing.
July 1
2026 deadline for California ADDE Act compliance. Chain restaurants with 20+ locations must disclose Big 9 allergens on every menu — printed, digital, and QR.
$10K+
Average legal exposure per violation for non-compliant restaurant chains. The FDA is actively accelerating enforcement in 2026.
4 States
California, Michigan, New Jersey, and Maryland enacting or drafting mandatory allergen disclosure laws — this is becoming federal.
⚠️
No existing tool solves this end-to-endToast, Square, and Yelp have no allergen verification workflow. Chains are using Excel spreadsheets. FDA inspectors are looking for dish-level documentation with timestamps — not a PDF someone emailed in 2023.
🕐
The compliance deadline is 91 days awayJuly 1, 2026 is not a soft launch. Penalties apply per location, per violation. A 50-location chain non-compliant on Day 1 is looking at six figures in exposure — before the first lawsuit.
🔬
"Restaurant-verified" means nothing without a systemThe ADDE Act requires that allergen data be accurate and updatable. A static PDF doesn't cut it. You need a live, timestamped, dish-level record that updates when your menu changes — and generates compliant outputs automatically.
How It Works
From menu upload to ADDE compliant in three steps
Nakol's compliance workflow is built for restaurant operators — not software engineers. No integrations, no IT tickets, no consultants. Upload your menu, confirm allergens dish by dish, and generate your QR code. Done.
📸
Upload Your Menu
Snap a photo or upload a PDF. Our AI — built on GPT-4o Vision — extracts every dish, predicts ingredients, and structures your entire menu in under 60 seconds. Works with handwritten menus, multilingual menus, and multi-page PDFs.
Photo · PDF · URL Import
🧬
AI Identifies Allergens
For each dish, Nakol cross-references predicted ingredients against the USDA FoodData Central database and Open Food Facts — returning allergen assessments with confidence scores. High-confidence items are auto-labeled. Edge cases are flagged for your review.
USDA · FDA Databases · Big 9
✅
You Confirm, We Document
A simple dish-by-dish review UI walks your team through each allergen label. Every confirmation is timestamped and stored in an append-only audit log. This is your legal paper trail — never inferred, always restaurant-verified.
Audit Trail · Timestamped · ADDE Compliant
📱
Go Live in Minutes
Download your QR code for in-store display. Print the ADDE-compliant allergen chart for tables. Embed the live digital menu on your website. Your public allergen page updates automatically whenever you edit a dish — no IT required.
QR Code · PDF · Live Menu Page
The Moat
Never inferred. Always confirmed.
Every competitor in this space infers allergens from ingredient lists. We require restaurant confirmation at the dish level — with source attribution and timestamps. That's not a feature. That's the legal standard the ADDE Act demands, and it's the only thing that holds up in an FDA audit.
Source 1 · USDA
Database Cross-Reference
Each ingredient is cross-referenced against the USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts APIs. Returns allergen presence, confidence score, and data source.
Auto
Source 2 · Restaurant
Restaurant Confirmation
Every allergen label requires explicit confirmation from a restaurant owner or manager. Logged with timestamp, user ID, and action type — ADDE Act compliant by design.
Verified
Source 3 · Audit Trail
Immutable Compliance Log
All confirmations are written to an append-only log. No edits, no deletions. If the FDA asks for your allergen disclosure history, you export it in one click.
✓ ADDE Ready
🍗 Chicken Teriyaki Bowl — Sample Chain
Wheat (from teriyaki glaze)✗ Contains
Soy (from teriyaki sauce)✗ Contains
Sesame (from sesame oil)⚠ May Contain
Milk✓ Free Of
Peanuts✓ Free Of
Tree Nuts✓ Free Of
Verified by: WaBa Grill Manager · April 1, 2026 · Source: USDA FoodData Central + Restaurant Confirmation
Competitive Landscape
Every other tool makes you guess
The allergen compliance market is fragmented. Consultants charge $5,000–$15,000 to manually audit a menu once a year. Generic SaaS tools give you a spreadsheet. Nobody has built the end-to-end pipeline from menu upload to ADDE-compliant output — until now.
Competitor
Allergen Verification
ADDE Compliant Output
Dish-Level Confirmed
Price
Manual Consultant
✗ Slow, expensive
✓ PDF only
✓ One-time
$5K–$15K/audit
Generic SaaS (Notion, AirTable)
✗ None
✗ No
✗ No
$10–$25/mo
EveryBite / SmartMenu
✓ Partial
✗ No
✗ No
Not published
Yelp / Google
✗ Self-reported tags only
✗ No
✗ No
$150+/mo
🍽 Nakol
✓ AI + USDA + Confirmed
✓ QR + PDF + Live Page
✓ Yes
From $0
For Restaurants
ADDE Act deadline: July 1, 2026.
California's SB-68 requires chain restaurants with 20+ locations to disclose Big 9 allergens on menus. Nakol makes compliance effortless — from menu upload to live allergen page in under 10 minutes.
📸
Upload Your Menu
Photo or PDF. Our AI extracts every dish and predicts ingredients in seconds. Supports multilingual menus, handwritten menus, and multi-page PDFs. No manual data entry.
60-Second Extraction
✅
Verify Allergens
Confirm ingredients dish by dish. We cross-reference against USDA FoodData Central and FDA databases. Every confirmation is timestamped and stored in an immutable compliance log. Restaurant-verified, never inferred.
USDA · FDA · Audit Trail
📱
Go Live
QR code for in-store. Printable PDF for tables. Live digital allergen menu for your website. All ADDE Act compliant. Updates automatically when you edit a dish — no IT required.
QR · PDF · Live Page
🔒
Stay Compliant
When your menu changes, update allergens in minutes — not weeks. Your compliance log updates automatically. Export your audit trail for FDA inspectors with one click. Built for chains with 20 to 500+ locations.
Always Up to Date
Covers all Big 9 FDA allergens: Milk · Eggs · Fish · Shellfish · Tree Nuts · Peanuts · Wheat · Soy · Sesame
Unlike our competitors, we publish our prices. No "Request a Demo" gatekeeping. All plans include the allergen verification workflow, QR code, and public allergen page.
$0
Free for 30 days
Pilot
Everything you need to prove compliance at one location — before committing a dollar.
The break-even math chains understand: At $49/mo per location, a 25-location California chain pays $1,225/month for full ADDE Act compliance. One avoided violation covers a year of Nakol. One lawsuit avoided covers a decade.
Why Now
The regulatory window is open — right now
July 1
2026 — California ADDE Act takes effect. Mandatory allergen disclosure for chain restaurants with 20+ locations. Enforcement begins on Day 1.
3 States
Michigan, New Jersey, and Maryland drafting nearly identical allergen disclosure laws. This is becoming a federal requirement.
32M
Americans with food allergies. One in three anaphylactic reactions happens in a restaurant. Consumers are demanding verified data — not Yelp tags.
Feb '26
FDA Commissioner Makary convened an expert allergen panel. Federal rulemaking is accelerating. The compliance window is measured in weeks, not years.
Market Size
A compliance wedge into a massive market
$1.4B
US Allergen Compliance TAM
$50M
California chain restaurant SAM (immediate)
25
Target chains in CA for 2026
PHASE 01 · NOW
California-first. We've identified 25 regional chains (WaBa Grill, Flame Broiler, Farmer Boys, Rubio's, California Fish Grill, Mendocino Farms) with 20–200 California locations. All face July 1 ADDE Act deadline. All currently non-compliant. We close the first three before the deadline.
PHASE 02 · +6 MONTHS
Expand to Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland as state laws pass. Bundle the B2C consumer discovery app — allergen-verified restaurant data from the compliance tool powers the consumer product for free. Restaurants pay for compliance, consumers discover verified dishes.
PHASE 03 · SERIES A
Federal allergen legislation passes — Nakol is already the infrastructure layer. Enterprise sales to national chains (500+ locations). $3M ARR target at Series A. The compliance moat becomes a national restaurant data platform.
The Team
Built by people who live this
S
Mohamed Sami Koudir
CEO / Co-founder
Muslim — navigates food allergies and halal restrictions every meal. Duke Kunshan University. Data scientist who built Nakol's allergen AI pipeline. The reason this product has to exist.
K
Jiayang Hong
CTO / Co-founder
Family owns a restaurant — knows exactly how painful menu management is for operators. Duke Kunshan University. Built the entire Nakol platform end to end. Shipping at YC speed since day one.
+
Join the Team
Advisors & Angels
We're actively looking for advisors in food safety regulation, restaurant tech, and allergen advocacy. Early angels and angels with chain restaurant relationships welcome. hello@nakol.ai →
Our Thesis
Compliance is the wedge. Trust is the moat.
The ADDE Act is our go-to-market. But the real prize is the verified dish-level allergen graph we build as a byproduct of compliance. Every restaurant that uses Nakol for regulatory compliance creates a verified, dish-level ingredient record — the foundational data layer for the next generation of food discovery. No one else has it. No one can buy it. It compounds with every menu upload.
"The allergen compliance mandate is the distribution channel. The verified dish-level data graph is the defensible asset. Restaurants pay us to build our moat."
— The Nakol Thesis
For Investors
Join us before the July 1 deadline
We're raising our pre-seed and meeting investors who understand regulatory-driven wedge markets. The ADDE Act creates a hard deadline that forces chain restaurants to buy — we're the only purpose-built solution. Top 10% of all YC applicants with zero revenue. Live demo available. Deck on request.