This is a legacy version of the WELL Building Standard. Please check the latest version here.

Special diets

Special diets

Intent: 

To provide alternative food choices to individuals with food restrictions or allergies.

If a project does not sell or provide food and/or beverages on a daily basis, it is considered in compliance with the precondition Features 38, 39, 40, 43 and 44. However, precondition Features 41 and 45 are still applicable to the project. Regardless of whether or not a project serves food on a daily basis, all Nourishment optimizations will be considered on the project scorecard and contribute to scoring.

All meals provided by the owner must meet the requirements - at a minimum, this must be available to all building staff in order to pursue this Feature. Food and beverage providers leasing space as a tenant of the building are excluded from these requirements. Commercial kitchens are not applicable.

The intent of this feature is to accommodate special diets and ensure that individuals with restrictions have an equivalent alternative, such as the option of a vegetable sandwich instead of a meat sandwich. In this scenario, it is not sufficient to provide an apple instead of a sandwich, but a main course salad (or similar meal option) would meet the requirement and the feature intent.

Your project can choose not to pursue this optimization, however, all Nourishment optimizations will still appear on the project scorecard and contribute to the denominator when calculating scoring. This differs from the Nourishment Preconditions, which are deemed "not applicable" if your project does not serve food on a daily basis.