Gather around food everyone can actually eat.

Plan potlucks, dinners, and cookouts where no one's reading labels in the corner. Spread coordinates the menu, tracks every ingredient, and flags allergen conflicts before the invites go out.

Join the beta See how it works

Two problems, one app.

Hosting is a spreadsheet in disguise.

Group texts. "I'll bring something!" with no specifics. Three people show up with the same salad and no one brought bread. Hosting a gathering shouldn't require a project manager.

Allergens are a guessing game.

"Is there dairy in this?" "I think so?" Anyone with a serious allergy or restriction has spent dinners eating before they arrive, or politely picking around things. The people cooking for them want to do better. They just need the information.

Spread fixes both at the same time, because they're the same problem: gatherings work better when everyone knows what's on the table.

From invite to last bite, in three steps.

  1. Create the event.

    Date, place, vibe. Invite by link or email.

  2. Build the menu together.

    Guests claim or bring dishes. Recipes carry their ingredients with them, so allergens are tagged automatically.

  3. See the safety map.

    Spread cross-checks every dish against every guest's profile and surfaces conflicts before anyone shows up hungry.

Features

Allergen profiles that travel with you.

Set them once. Every event you're invited to checks against them automatically. You decide what's shared with hosts, what's shared with other guests, and what stays just for you.

Recipes that know what's in them.

Add a recipe and spread tags allergens automatically, first with string-matching against the ingredient list, then with an AI pass for the trickier cases. The community sharpens it over time: any user can flag a missed allergen or a wrong annotation, and those corrections improve the tagging for everyone.

RSVP-aware safety checks.

When a new guest joins, spread re-checks the menu and tells the host what to adjust. No more remembering who can't eat what halfway through cooking.

A journal that notices what you might miss.

Log a reaction in a few taps: what you ate, how you felt, how bad it got. Spread quietly looks for patterns across your entries, and when an ingredient keeps showing up, it tells you. The long tail of triggers, the ones that don't show up on a standard panel, are exactly the ones that get caught here.

Your reaction journal is private and never shared with hosts or other users.

Built for everyone at the table.

Colorblind-friendly palette. Allergen warnings use color, icon, and text, never just one. Designed with the people it's protecting in mind.

Built by someone who needs it

Ashley, founder of Spread

I'm Ashley. I have eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and a long list of food allergies and intolerances. Some are anaphylactic. Some are "I'll feel terrible for two days." Some I just avoid because the trade isn't worth it. The list is long enough that even I forget pieces of it sometimes.

But the real reason spread exists isn't my own list. It's that I want to take care of the people I love at the table, and I want them to be able to take care of me without it being a burden. The people doing the cooking want to get it right. The guests with their own restrictions deserve the same thoughtfulness I'd want for myself. Right now, both sides do a lot of work to make that happen, and a lot still falls through the cracks.

Part of what falls through is severity. People often assume every allergy is an EpiPen-level emergency, and the conversation gets stuck there. The difference between "this will send me to the hospital," "this will ruin my week," and "I just don't eat it" matters a lot for cooking, and right now there's no good way to communicate that without a long explanation every time.

My family has its own mix of allergies and intolerances, so I see this from every angle. Planning holidays takes real work, and the work is mostly invisible because the people doing it are doing it out of love. Spread is the app I wanted to exist for everyone in that picture: the hosts trying to get it right, the guests who'd rather just enjoy the meal, and the families who've been quietly managing this for years.

Ashley, Fort Collins, CO

Join the spread beta

Spread is in private beta. We're letting people in slowly so the safety features get the attention they deserve, and so early users get real time with the maker. Drop your email below and tell us a bit about how you'd use it.

Are you, or is someone you regularly cook for, navigating food allergies or restrictions? (optional)
  • We'll never sell or share your email.
  • No spam. We'll write when there's a real reason to.
  • You can unsubscribe with one click, anytime.

Want to help?

Spread is a passion project, built by one person, and there's more work than one person can do. If any of the following sounds like you, I'd love to hear from you.

  1. Use it for real.

    The single most valuable thing anyone can do is host (or guest at) an actual gathering with Spread and tell me what worked, what didn't, and what almost made you give up. Real events surface things no amount of solo testing can catch.

  2. Share recipes you trust.

    If you cook around restrictions and have recipes with well-mapped ingredients, contributing them to the community library makes Spread more useful for everyone. Especially valuable: recipes for the long tail of restrictions that most cookbooks ignore.

  3. Help with allergen accuracy.

    If you've spent years navigating a specific restriction, or you have professional knowledge (dietitian, allergist, food scientist, etc.), the tagging system gets better with people who know what they're talking about. I'd love your eyes on the data.

  4. Bring your skills.

    If you're a designer, mobile developer, or someone with skills that might fit a small, allergy-aware food app, even occasional help would matter. No formal commitment needed.

  5. Tell someone.

    Word of mouth is how a project like this finds the people who need it most. If you know an allergy community, an EoE group, a family that hosts a lot, a friend whose kid was just diagnosed with something, sharing Spread with them is real help.

Get in touch

Your email stays with me. No newsletter, no list, just a real reply.

Questions you might have

Is Spread a medical or clinical tool?
No. Spread is coordination software, not medical advice. It makes allergen information visible and easy to share, but the responsibility for safety always stays with the people involved. For serious allergies, always confirm directly with the person who cooked a dish. Spread is built to make that conversation easier, not unnecessary.
How does the allergen detection work?
When a recipe gets added, Spread tags allergens automatically: first with string-based matching against the canonical ingredient list, then with an LLM pass for the trickier cases (hidden ingredients, ambiguous names, regional terms for the same thing). The community then makes it better over time. Any user can flag a missed allergen or a wrong annotation, and those corrections improve the tagging for everyone.
Which allergens does Spread track?
The nine common allergens recognized by the FDA (peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, milk, soy, wheat, shellfish, fish, and sesame) plus the major dietary patterns: vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, and keto. You can also track anything else. Flag any ingredient in our database as something you avoid (nightshades, specific spices, individual proteins, religious restrictions, personal triggers) and Spread will treat it the same way as the big nine across every recipe and event.
Who sees my allergies?
You decide. For each piece of your profile, you can choose to share with hosts only, with hosts and other guests, or keep it private and rely on Spread's behind-the-scenes safety checks. The default settings are conservative; you opt in to wider sharing if you want it.
When does the beta open up?
Rolling invites starting soon. Invites go out in small batches so early users get real attention and the safety features get stress-tested properly. Earlier signups get earlier access.
Is it free?
Yes during the beta, and the core safety features will always be free. Spread is built and run by one person right now, and keeping it running long-term (servers, the AI tagging that powers allergen detection, security, ongoing development) costs real money. At some point there will likely be a paid tier for things like larger events, advanced features, or community spaces, so that the safety-critical parts can stay free for everyone who needs them. We'll be transparent about what's changing well before anything changes.
More questions? See the full FAQ