Scottish food safety company LiberEat has announced that it will retire its app as part of a pivot towards a business-focused model.

Under new plans announced this week the company will remove its app from app stores. It was designed to help individuals with special dietary requirements to manage their lives, providing bespoke menus, supermarket grocery options and recipes, allowing users to filter these by their requirements.

In addition, it provided allergen safety information, protecting those with potentially life-threatening allergies.

“We have been on a journey of discovery since launching the app in 2019, following a research period with respected academics and lots of testing,” a company statement said.

“Part of our discovery was the unique technology we developed to identify allergens and allergen errors in food product labels and menus.”

As such, LiberEat will focus on using its technology to provide information to businesses on food safety earlier in the supply chain.

This will see the company move towards working with food businesses in quality assurance and food safety to lower the risk of allergens being present in foods before they get to the consumer.

“On our passion-led mission to make food safe for everyone, we are elated to have landed on a unique technology solution that helps consumers earlier in the chain, lowering the potential for injury to consumers and food recalls when food supply chain systems fail,” the company said.

“The technology we have created works as a second line of defence for food businesses lowering risks and protecting consumers.”

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As part of the timeline for the new pivot, the company will spend the next few weeks removing the LiberEat app from the app stores. It will no longer work on smartphones from the 18th of August 2022.

However, the Aberdeen-based startup confirmed it will maintain its customer-focused website offerings, such as blog posts and recipes for those with dietary requirements.

“We are still leading the charge on allergen avoidance and food safety, on our mission to make food safe for everyone, and we wish you well on your own dietary journey,” the company said.

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