10-02, 10:15–10:45 (Europe/London), Create 1
It's estimated that ~12% of the UK follows a gluten free diet, yet no free UK-focussed gluten free map app existed... until this year - this is the story of how blood, sweat, tears and open source helped us create it, without any previous mapping experience.
In 2019, my partner was unexpectedly diagnosed with coeliac disease - which was quite scary, especially because it was something neither of us had ever heard of! We quickly scrambled to learn everything we could as she started a strict gluten free diet.
It became quite obvious that so many of the things we took for granted and enjoyed doing weren't going to be as easy as they used to be, especially eating out. Much to our surprise, there was no good and/or free apps in the UK to help... and so Gluten Free Glee was born - initially as a blog and social media account, but after 18 months and over 100k followers, we launched an app in May 2025. After just a few months, we have thousands of active users and are growing every day, with our stand out feature being a completely free gluten free map to help users find and review places to eat across the UK & Ireland.
We have no previous experience with mapping or cartography, but thanks to so many amazing open source projects, we've been able to provide users with a completely free map-first search experience and not break the bank! This is the story of how we got here :)
Building Gluten Free Glee, the #1 gluten free app in the UK - including a completely free gluten free map. Get it now on the App Store and Google Play.