We exhibited at the Free From Festival Bristol and it was everything

There's building a product. And then there's standing in a room full of the people it was built for, watching them understand in about thirty seconds exactly what it does and why it matters.

The Free From Festival Bristol was that second thing. A lot.

Why we were there

glüf is an AI-powered restaurant discovery app built for people with coeliac disease. We spent a lot of time in 2025 building, iterating, and talking to coeliacs one-on-one in research interviews. Exhibiting at the Free From Festival was the first time this year that we put ourselves in front of the community at scale. Not a controlled interview, not a screen, just a stand, the app, and hundreds of coeliacs with very strong opinions about restaurant experiences.

We loved every minute of it!

What people told us

We talked to hundreds of people over the course of the festival. What struck us wasn't just the warmth of the response to glüf. It was how consistent the stories were. Different people, different cities, different restaurants. Same experience.

• The biggest fear isn't 'there's no gluten-free menu'. It's 'I don't trust that the kitchen actually understands what happens if they get this wrong'

• Most people have developed elaborate workarounds: calling ahead, arriving at off-peak times, ordering only from a narrow safe list, always asking to speak to a manager

• Existing tools don't answer the right questions. They tell you there's a gluten-free menu, not whether staff understood what cross-contamination means

• Many people simply eat out less than they would otherwise. Not because they don't want to, but because the cost of getting it wrong is too high

What they thought of glüf

The response was genuinely overwhelming. People downloaded the app on the spot. The most common thing people said when they understood what glüf does was some version of: 'Why doesn't this exist already?'

It does now.

What the festival reinforced for us

Every conversation in Bristol reminded us that the four things glüf rates are the right four things: staff knowledge, labelling clarity, gluten-free variety and taste. Not stars. Not atmosphere. Not 'good for groups'. The specifics that determine whether eating at a restaurant is safe.

We're going to keep showing up at events like this. Because building for a community means being in the community, not just building for it from a distance.

Come and find us

If you were at the Free From Festival and you're reading this, thank you for the conversations. Download glüf, leave a review of somewhere you've eaten recently, and help make the platform better for every coeliac who comes after you.

We'll be exhibiting at the Allergy Free From Show in Birmingham in May so pop along and see us.

If you know of anywhere else we should be exhibiting, tell us. We want to be in the rooms where the community is.