My Wife Kept Getting Glutened, So I Built a Gluten-Free Restaurant App

My Wife Kept Getting Glutened, So I Built a Gluten-Free Restaurant App

For most of my life, when I heard the word "gluten", it really didn't mean much to me. In fact, for a long time, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way, because I associated it with some trendy movement around dietary decisions meant to be "healthier". I didn't take the word "gluten" seriously, and I imagine many other people didn't either.

This is unfortunate, as the lived experience by the vast majority of those who can't indulge in gluten is very far from the lightheartedness of some trendy movement. It's serious. It's constant. And it's really, really, really hard to avoid.

When "Gluten-Free" Becomes Real Life

You see, I can't personally relate to the struggles of being celiac or having a severe gluten sensitivity. However, my wife has to fight the gluten-restrained battle. Like any good husband, I try to fight that battle with her, but there's no way to fully understand or comprehend the struggle when you aren't constantly in it.

Even more tragically, she didn't get this diagnosis until she was 30 (and a few months into us dating). The tipping point was a night at a brewery, with the tragic combination of pizza and beer. A gluten nightmare. TLDR - it didn't end well.

Thus began our journey into the world of eating gluten-free. It is a world significantly more complicated than I could have ever imagined. Combing through restaurant menus, interrogating kitchen staff & managers, rage messaging restaurants about inaccurate GF (gluten-free) protocols (yes, I've done this a few times lol), and scouring reviews of restaurant goers. Even with all of that, it's still incredibly difficult, because gluten is everywhere. And it's really sneaky! I could have never imagined how pervasive gluten is, because it's often not the base ingredient that has gluten. It's a shared cooking surface, seasoning, medication coatings, etc. (and there's a lot more I'm missing).

We love traveling, we love going out with friends, and we very much so enjoy McDonald's. However, very quickly, we realized that each of these areas would be significantly impacted.

The Reality of Adventuring without Gluten

Trip planning shifted from the spontaneous, "We'll figure it out when we get there" to "We need Plan A, B, and C for each meal." Before meeting up with friends, we began making "food gameplans" for the day. Even with extensive planning, it felt like we'd up with moments of let downs, frustration, and worst of all getting "glutened".

This may sound ridiculous or exaggerated, but I assure you it's not. For someone who can not and should not eat gluten, the result of getting glutened is not so pretty. My wife has unfortunately had that exact experience, all over the world (including Japan, hours after the photo above). And even when she, and others in the same situation, aren't actively being glutened, they have to be on edge, guarded, and acutely aware of everything they are eating.

I will never fully be able to relate to that experience, but I can relate to the disappointment of a spouse who wants to, but can not help their significant other going through something. Try as I might, my wife kept getting glutened and there wasn't anything I could do. That is, until now.

Why I Decided to Build WiseBites

Working in data, analytics, and AI, I would always tell my wife I would love to build a tool to help us navigate the world of gluten. While I would consider my self tech-savvy, I most certainly was not a developer so this idea remained just that, an idea. But then, 2025 came along, "vibe coding" took off, building things got a whole lot easier, and I created WiseBites.

Initially, I made it just to help my wife & I, but very quickly I realized this could help a lot of other people. Now, if you've made it this far, I know what you are thinking. There are platforms for this like Find Me Gluten Free, Atly, and even Google Maps. I hear you, I've tried all of them, and I wholeheartedly appreciate their mission to support the celiac & gluten-sensitive communities. However, with each platform I tried, I found myself struggling with some combination of:

• I had to spend a lot of time reading reviews to get a sense of how well a restaurant handled gluten
• The interface was difficult to navigate
• There were very few reviews for a large number of restaurants
• It was hard to save, organize and visualize restaurants I liked
• There were never all the filters I wanted on map & search views

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Already navigating the gluten-free dining world? Search your first restaurant free on WiseBites →

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With these in mind, and knowing how my wife & I typically searched for restaurants, I created WiseBites. The mission was simple: let users search anywhere, surface insights quickly using AI, let users visualize information how they want, make restaurants easy to save & organize, and aggregate new & existing reviews.

What WiseBites Does

Restaurants are presented with gluten-focused AI summary and "WiseScore" based on relevant reviews from Google as well as reviews from the WiseBites community. Leveraging both data sources helps have more reviews & signal, which is especially important in the early stages of the platform.

This AI summary and WiseScore help users evaluate restaurants quickly in search results and our map view. Users can easily create lists and save restaurants to them, which I've found helpful for trip planning and categorizing local restaurants. Additionally, users can visualize their saved restaurants on the map, which is another tool for trip planning.

On top of that, WiseBites has filters & sorting options that should help declutter lengthy results or a crowded map. This was critical as there was no point in having a map view if you can't actually see anything.

It's free to create an account and start searching. However, a WiseBites+ membership does get you unlimited searches, access to all existing features, and guaranteed access to new features (Wisey, our AI chat assistant coming soon).

How WiseBites Solves the Gluten-Free Dining Problem

1. The Explore Dashboard: Search Anywhere

• Users can search anywhere in the world by cuisine type, restaurant type, or by name
• Results appear with a gluten-focused AI summary and WiseScore
• New restaurants in results are added to the WiseBites database. This is helpful as each search adds new restaurants to our database.
• Robust sorting: distance, top rated, most reviewed, and most saved
• Advanced Filtering: GF-menu available, 100% dedicated GF, Dedicated fryer (these require a certain # of WiseBites reviews)
• Add restaurants to new & existing lists

2. The Discover Map: Visualizing Safe Spots

• The map view populates restaurants already in the WiseBites database. If you don't see something you expect, it's worth searching it on the Explore tab because that will add it to the database & map.
• Restaurants are presented with colored WiseScores to make it easy to visualize good/bad restaurants.
• Upon hovering AI summaries are presented, along with the ability to add restaurants to new & existing lists.
• Advanced Filtering: Saved Restaurants Only, Minimum WiseScore, GF-menu available, 100% dedicated GF, Dedicated fryer.

3. Saved Tab: Organize Your Finds

• The saved tab allows users to see all of their custom lists they've created, and the restaurants within those lists.
• Users can also see their favorites & avoids

4. Restaurant Details: Deep-Dive

• From the Search Dashboard, Map View, and Saved Tab, users can view the full details of the restaurant
• On this page, you can see the full reviews from WiseBites & Google users
• You can leave your own review using our gluten-centric review form and upload relevant photos
• This page shows you the hours, overall google rating, allows you to open in Google Maps making it easy to get directions to the restaurant

5. Wisey: The AI Chat Assistant (Coming Soon)

• It wouldn't be an AI platform if we didn't have a chat interface on the roadmap!
• This chat interface will be a place you can communicate in natural language with our database of restaurants & reviews, allowing for more powerful querying

The beauty of these features is, as the platform grows, they will only get better. Filters become more powerful, the map is more populated, and the chat assistant becomes more accurate.

This Is Just the Beginning

WiseBites is young. I officially launched the platform on March 10th. There are still so many things I want to add to WiseBites to keep making it better. This is an evolving product that I will continue to be working on. For a while, it was just my platform to help me and wife, but now I hope it can help you to

Try WiseBites free →

P.S.: - I promise I am very open to feature requests and ways to make it easier to find restaurants. I get direct product feedback within my home, so additional feedback on social media or email is highly encouraged. Finally, I plan to do some more writing about our gluten-free travels around the world and WiseBites updates as they come.