Privacy policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Restaurant Guru, Inc. and its subsidiaries (collectively, “Restaurant Guru,” “we,” “our” or “us”) collect, use, process and share personal information. This Policy applies to visitors and users (individually, “you”) of Restaurant Guru’s websites, applications, social media accounts, and other services (collectively, our “Services”). Your use of our Services is also subject to the Restaurant Guru Terms of Use.

Restaurant Guru helps connect diners and restaurants. This involves sharing personal information with third parties, including restaurants, restaurant groups, and restaurant affiliates, amongst others. In some cases, these third parties may collect personal information directly from you and share it with us.

For more information about the information we share with third parties and the recipients of such information, please refer to the How We Share Your Information section of this Policy. Please note that this Policy does not otherwise cover the use of personal information by third parties or their services, and we do not take responsibility for their privacy practices.

You may have certain rights or choices that relate to your personal information, including choices about how we share your personal information with others. For more information, please refer to the Your Choices and Rights section of this Policy.

1. Information we collect and use

   “Personal information” is data that identifies, relates to, describes, can be used to contact, or could reasonably be linked directly or indirectly to you. For purposes of this Policy, there is no meaningful distinction between the terms “personal information” and “personal data.”

   Personal Information We Collect Directly From You. As you visit or use our Services, we collect the following categories of personal information directly from you:

   • Personal details (such as your name, photo, location, password).
   • Contact information (such as email address, social media and for restaurateurs only postal address, phone number).
   • Dining information (such as primary dining city; dining preferences; favorite restaurants; special restaurant requests; dining activity, including restaurant type and meal type).
   • Account information (such as account settings and passwords).
   • Social media data (if you choose to link your Restaurant Guru account with a social media account, we may collect personal information such as name, age, gender, photograph, and other personal information relating to your social media account).
   • For restaurateurs only. Billing information (such as credit, debit, or other payment card information, as may be required to use certain paid promotion Services).
   • Your preferences (including survey and marketing responses).
   • Photos of you (such as if you add a photo of yourself to your profile, upload photos to a review or restaurant’s profile, or link your social media account to your Restaurant Guru account).
   • Communications you send us (such as customer support, messages or communications to us or with restaurants through our app or other platforms, and other requests you make through our Services and through restaurants).
   • Restaurant reviews and content (including reviews, photos, an alias of your choosing that you can use when submitting reviews, and other information you provide through our Services).
   • Other information you may provide (including other information you provide about yourself or others through our Services or to which you provide us with access via third-party platforms).

   You may choose not to provide some of the personal information described above. Please note, however, that many of our Services require some personal information to operate, so if you choose not to provide the personal information necessary to operate and provide you with a particular Service or feature of that Service, you may not be able to use that Service or feature.

   We do not proactively collect sensitive personal information, such as health-related information. Sensitive personal information you voluntarily submit is processed on the basis of your consent, which you may revoke at any time by contacting us at the details set out in the How to Contact Us section below.

   Personal Information Generated By Us. As you use our Services, we generate certain personal information about you, including through automatic data collection and by inferences based on the information we collect about you and your activity. We may automatically collect information about your interactions with the Services or communications you receive (such as email) using certain technologies, such as cookies, web beacons and other technologies (see our Cookies and Interest-Based Advertising Policy for more details). We generate the following categories of personal information about you:

   • Device information. When you visit or use our Services, we automatically collect certain information about your device (e.g., your mobile device, computer, or tablet), including information about your hardware and software, device configuration, and nearby networks. Such data may include data about your device operating systems, browsers, and other software installed on your device; device identifiers, such as IP address, IMEI number, MAC address, or other device identifier; country of origin, region and language settings; and information about domain servers and wireless or network access points near your device.
   • Usage and performance information. We also automatically collect personal information about your usage of the Services, including information about your searches or interactions with features of our Services; sites or restaurant pages visited; access times; and performance of our Services.
   • Location information. If you use our Services, we automatically collect generic location information about you (such as city or neighborhood) or, with your consent, precise geographic location data from your mobile device when the app is running and when it is not running, depending on the choices you make when you are asked to consent to our collection of location information. For example, we may receive this information when you select restaurant search locations, enter your local dining city in your account profile, when you are in proximity to certain beacons, choose to publish your location in reviews you leave for restaurants on the Services, or in your comments or other communications with us. We may use and store this information to provide and improve features of our Services, for example, to tailor our Services on a needs-based manner to better facilitate your requests and to provide you with more relevant content about restaurants in your dining city or cities you visit. Please see the Your Rights and Choices section below for more information about how to adjust your preferences, including those related to location information.
   • Inferences about you. We combine the information we collect, generate, or otherwise obtain to draw inferences about your preferences and interests in order to provide and personalize our Services and tailor the offers we and our partners provide to you.
   • Personal Information We Obtain from Third Parties. We may also receive certain categories of personal information from third parties, such as third-party websites, applications, social media networks, and services (which may include publicly-available sources; each of these is a “third-party platform”), our group companies, restaurants, and other third parties. The categories of personal information we may obtain from third parties include:
     • Your name.
     • Email address or other contact information.
     • Social media data, if you connect to our Services using a social media third-party platform or interact with Restaurant Guru by liking or commenting on our social media pages or content, or if any of your social media data is available to the public, we may receive information from that social media third-party platform or a third-party service about those interactions and your profile.
     • Browsing, usage and advertising details, including how you use our Services and/or third-party websites, applications, and services; and information relating to your interactions with our advertising and marketing materials.

2. How we use your information

   We use your personal information for the following purposes (“Purposes”), to:

   • Provide the Services, which includes providing you with the services, products, and functionality offered through our Services and fulfilling your requests.
   • Authenticate your account credentials and identify you, as necessary to log you in to the Services and ensure the security of your account.
   • Communicate with you about your account or use of our Services, products, and/or functionality; respond to, or follow up on, your comments and questions; and otherwise provide customer service (see below for more detail on Electronic Communications).
   • Send you marketing communications, including communicating with you about services or products offered by Restaurant Guru, our group companies, or our business partners and other marketing communications that we believe you would be interested in, as permitted by law (see below for more detail on Electronic Communications and Your Choices and Rights).
   • Operate and improve our Services and develop new products and services, including using analytics to better understand how you use our Services for purposes of product, website, application and service development and to enhance the user experience.
   • Authenticate your credit or debit card account information (for restaurateurs only).
   • Provide services, products, and information to restaurants, including restaurant groups and restaurant affiliates.
   • Tailor your experience with our Services, such as by making inferences or combining different pieces of information we have collected about you to suggest restaurants that you may be interested in or otherwise tailor our Services to you according to your preferences or restrictions. For example, if you frequently search for Italian restaurants or restaurants with outdoor seating in your home city, we may prioritize Italian restaurants with outdoor seating in your search results when you look for restaurants in another city.
   • Provide you more relevant advertising on and off our Services, including to show you personalized offers on and off our Services. For example, if you frequently search for Italian restaurants in a particular city, we may display advertising for a local Italian restaurant to you on our Services or work with our business partners to display advertisements for local Italian restaurants to you on other websites you visit.
   • Protect against, investigate, and deter fraudulent, unauthorized, or illegal activity.
   • Comply with our policies, procedures and legal obligations, including complying with law enforcement or government authority requests, addressing litigation-related issues, and exercising rights or obligations conferred by law.
   • As otherwise consented to by you and as required or permitted by applicable law. If you give your consent to any further use of personal information, you can withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us using the details set out below.

   You have choices about your personal information, and in some circumstances, you may have the right to opt-out or object to our uses of your personal information for these Purposes. For more information, or to exercise these or other rights (where available), see the Your Choices and Rights section below.

   Electronic Communications. Consistent with the above Purposes and as permitted by applicable law, we may communicate with you via electronic messages, including email, text message, or mobile push notification to:

   • Send you information relating to our products and Services. This may include reminders and updates, receipts, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages.
   • Send you marketing communications. In other situations, subject to the Your Choices and Rights section below and applicable law, we may communicate with you about contests, offers, promotions, rewards, upcoming events, and other news about products and Services offered by Restaurant Guru, our group companies, restaurants, and other business partners.

   Our Role as Data Controller and Data Processor.. For purposes of European Union law and similar data protection regimes, we generally act as a data controller, meaning we determine the purposes and means of processing your personal information through our Services.

   Processing Bases and Consequences. When we process your personal information, we rely on the following legal bases:

   • Performance of the contract we have with you.
   • Compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject (such as tax obligations, and when we are obliged to comply with lawful requests from competent authorities such as law enforcement).
   • To serve our legitimate interests (such as tailoring your experience with our Services, carrying out online advertising, and for fraud detection), provided that such processing does not outweigh your rights and freedoms. The processing may also be pursuant to other applicable legal bases for data processing especially provisions set out under local law.

   Where we use personal information to meet our legitimate interests, we take steps to ensure that your rights with respect to your personal information are not infringed. You can contact us using the details set out in the How to Contact Us section below for more information about the steps we take to ensure these rights are not infringed. You also have the right to object to such processing as described in the Your Choices and Rights section below.

   • Consent. To the extent that a legal ground described above would not apply to processing of your personal information by us, we will seek your consent for such specific purpose in accordance with applicable law (such as sending direct marketing messages by electronic means, like email, without an exception from the requirement to obtain consent).

   Aggregate Information. We aggregate personal information collected directly from you, information generated about you by us, and information obtained from third parties (with your consent, where required) with personal information collected about other users in order to produce general statistics that cannot be linked to you or any other specific user. Information that has been aggregated and de-identified is no longer considered “personal information” and may be subsequently used for any purpose.

   Anonymized Information. We may process information that cannot be linked to you or any other specific user using any means available to us, either because it was collected anonymously or has been subsequently anonymized. Information that is anonymous or has been anonymized is no longer considered “personal information” and may be subsequently used for any purpose.

3. How we share your information

   We disclose the personal information we collect (or otherwise generate or obtain) as follows:

   • With restaurants and restaurant affiliates. We share your information with restaurants and their affiliates to provide the Services (such as sharing your dining activity and history, preferences, requests, restrictions, and other information with the restaurant)
   • With other business partners. We share information with other third-party business partners for their own marketing purposes, including sharing with online advertisers or advertising technology (“ad tech”) companies to provide you with targeted advertising and marketing communications, where permitted under law
   • With social networking services. We share (or facilitate your sharing of) your information with social networking services when you use our Services to connect and share your information publicly or with friends, or when you use our Services to connect with us on, share on, or use third-party social networking platforms and services
   • Third-party services or applications you use to log into your account. If you use a third-party service or application (e.g., Google account) to log into your Restaurant Guru account, we share certain personal information with that third party, such as your name and email address.
   • Reviews you submit. If you provide us with a review of a restaurant, you authorize us to publish it on all our Services under the screen name you provided, to aggregate your review with other reviews, and to share it with restaurants.
   • To process payments. We require credit or debit card information to make payments for our paid promotion services. Note that Restaurant Guru does not have any direct access to your payment information and we share your credit or debit card information with the payment system in the encrypted mode.
   • In the event of a corporate transaction. We may disclose or transfer your information to a third party if we sell, transfer, divest, or disclose all or a portion of our business or assets to another company in connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, transaction, or proceeding.
   • To protect rights and property. We may disclose your information to third parties when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, our property, the integrity of the Services, personal safety, or the interests of you or any other person, and to detect, prevent and/or otherwise address fraud, risk management, security or technical issues.
   • To comply with and as required by law. We may disclose your personal information to government authorities or other relevant third parties in order to comply with applicable legal requirements, judicial proceedings, court orders, legal process, or lawful requests from governmental authorities.
   • Aggregate information. We share aggregate statistical data for the improvement of our Services. We may also share aggregate or de-identified information with third parties at our discretion.
   • At your request. We also share your information as directed or requested by you, or subject to your consent.

   In some circumstances, you may have the right to opt-out or object to our sharing of your information with certain third parties. For more information, or to exercise these or other rights, see the Your Choices and Rights section below.

   If you provide comments about a restaurant through our Services, these comments may be shared with or may be accessible by that restaurant, and the restaurant may respond to you.

   Sharing with Our Business Partners. We share your information with other third-party business partners for their own marketing purposes. These third parties include online advertisers or ad tech companies, who may provide you with targeted advertising and marketing communications, where permitted under law. The information we share includes information collected through your use of our Services and information we collect about you through the use of cookies and similar technologies (e.g., information about the websites you visit; information about your searches, including the cities or neighborhoods you search in, the type of restaurant or cuisine you searched for, price range).

   For example, if you frequently search for Italian restaurants, we use that information to help a particular Italian-themed restaurant group offer you a promotion.

   Sharing with Social Networking Services. Our Services allow you to connect and share your actions, comments, content, and information publicly or with friends. Our Services may also allow you to connect with us on, share on, and use third-party platforms, including those on which Restaurant Guru has a presence. Please be mindful of your personal privacy needs and the privacy needs of others as you choose whom to connect with and what to share and make public. We cannot control the privacy or security of information you choose to make public or share with others. Restaurant Guru also does not control the privacy practices of third-party platforms. Please contact those sites and services directly to learn about their privacy practices.

   Sharing to Process Payment Information (For restaurateurs only). To use certain Services (such as to pay for promotion on Restaurant Guru Sites), we require credit or debit card account information. When you submit your credit or debit card account information through our Services, we share that information with third-party payment processors, and other third-party service providers (including, but not limited to, vendors who provide fraud detection services to us and other third parties) to the extent necessary to meet our contractual obligations to you (e.g., to provide a promotion on Restaurant Guru Sites), to meet our legitimate interests in preventing fraud and other misuse of our platforms, or with your consent where this is required by law. In particular:

   • When you initially provide your credit or debit card account information through our Services in order to use our paid promotion services, we provide your credit or debit card account information to our third-party payment service providers. As explained in the Restaurant Guru Terms of Use, these third parties may store your credit or debit card account information so you can use our paid promotion services through our Services in the future, to the extent permitted by local law.

   Sharing with Other Service Providers. We share information with third-party vendors, consultants, and other service providers who perform services or functions on our behalf (e.g., hosting or operating our Services, data collection, reporting, ad response measurement, site analytics, data analysis, delivering marketing messages and advertisements, processing credit card payments, and providing fraud detection services). We do not authorize these third parties to use or disclose your information for purposes other than for which it has been provided. We require these third parties to maintain and implement security measures to protect your information from unauthorized access or processing.

4. How we store and protect your information

   Restaurant Guru maintains commercially-reasonable technical, administrative, and physical security measures designed to protect your information from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.

   When your credit or debit card account information is being transmitted to our Services or through our Services, it will be protected by cryptographic protocols. To be clear, Restaurant Guru does not itself store your credit or debit card account information, and we do not have direct control over or responsibility for your credit or debit card account information. We use third party payment processors that are the controllers of your credit card information. Our contracts with third parties that receive your credit or debit card account information require them to keep it secure and confidential.

   However, we cannot guarantee that transmissions of your credit or debit card account information or your other information will always be secure or that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat the security measures taken by Restaurant Guru or our third-party service providers. Except to the extent that liability cannot be excluded or limited due to applicable law, we assume no liability or responsibility for disclosure of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized third-party access, or other causes beyond our control.

   You play an important role in keeping your information secure. You should not share your user name, password, or other security information for your Restaurant Guru account with anyone. If we receive instructions using your user name and password, we will assume you have authorized the instructions. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (e.g., if you feel that the security of any account you might have with us has been compromised), please contact us immediately as detailed in the How to Contact Us section below.

   Retention. We may retain your personal information for as long as your account is active and for a period of time thereafter to allow you to re-activate your account without loss of information. We may also retain your personal information as necessary to:

   • Maintain logs and business records for analysis, security, and/or audit purposes.
   • Comply with record retention requirements under the law.
   • Deal with any complaints regarding the Services.
   • Comply with our legal obligations, protect or defend our rights, resolve disputes and enforce our contracts.

5. Cookies

   When you use or visit the Services, we collect information about your usage and activity using cookies, web beacons, and other technologies. Third parties may also view, edit, or set their own cookies. The use of these technologies by third parties is subject to their own privacy policies and is not covered by this Policy, except as required by law. See our Cookies and Interest-Based Advertising Policy for more details.

6. Your choices and rights

   Email. If you no longer want to receive marketing and promotional emails from Restaurant Guru, you may click on the “unsubscribe” link in such emails to opt-out of future marketing email communications.

   Push Notifications (on Mobile Devices). You can use the settings on your mobile device to enable or turn off mobile push notifications from Restaurant Guru.

   Cookies and Interest-Based Advertising. To exercise choices regarding cookies set through our websites or Services, as well as other types of online tracking and online advertising, see our Cookies and Interest-Based Advertising Policy for more details. We currently do not employ technology that recognizes “do-not-track” signals from your browser.

   Application Location. As explained in more detail in the Information We Collect and Use section above, we collect information about your location if you enable location services through the settings in your mobile device, or with your consent, as may be required by law. You can change the privacy settings of your device at any time to turn off the sharing of this location information with our Services. If you choose to turn off location services, this could affect certain features of our Services. If you have specific questions about the privacy settings of your device, we suggest you contact the manufacturer of your device or your mobile service provider for help.

   Sharing with third parties. As described above in the How We Share Your Information section, we share your information with third parties for their own purposes.

   Access and Correction of Your Information. If you have created an online account with us and would like to update the information you have provided to us, you can access your account to view and update your information. You may also contact us as described in the How to Contact Us section below.

   Legal Rights. Where applicable under local law, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information: the right to access personal information we hold, and in some situations, the right to have that personal information corrected or updated, erased, restricted, or delivered to you or a third party in a usable electronic format (the right to data portability). Where applicable, you may also object to how we use your personal information if the legal basis for processing that information is our legitimate interest. Where we are using your personal information on the basis of your consent, and where applicable under local law, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Where you have granted consent to receive direct marketing communications from us, and where applicable under local law, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

   If you wish to exercise legal rights you may have under applicable law, please submit your request to contactus@restaurantguru.com. So that we can better process your request, please provide the email you use to log into your Restaurant Guru account. If you do not have an Restaurant Guru account, please provide the email you used to make requests or to use our Services.

   Where applicable, you may also have the right to register a complaint to your local data protection authority. For residents of the EU and UK, contact information for the EU data protection authorities can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm. For residents of Australia, if you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint after first contacting us, you may wish to contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner; for more information, please refer to www.oaic.gov.au.

7. International transfers of information

   Information about you will be transferred to, or accessed by, entities located around the world as described in this Policy. Some of these entities may be located in countries (such as the United States) that do not provide an equivalent level of protection for personal information as your home country.

   We have put in place safeguards to provide adequate protection for transfers of certain information, in accordance with applicable legal requirements. For more information on the appropriate safeguards in place, or to request a copy of these safeguards, please contact us using the contact details listed in the How to Contact Us section below.

8. Links to other websites

   Our Services contain links to other websites or services that are not owned or controlled by Restaurant Guru, including links to websites of restaurants and restaurant affiliates and our advertisers. This Policy only applies to information collected by our Services. We have no control over these third party websites, and your use of third party websites and features are subject to privacy policies posted on those websites. We are not responsible or liable for the privacy or business practices of any third party websites linked to our Services. Your use of third parties' websites linked to our Services is at your own risk, so we encourage you to read the privacy policies of any linked third party websites when you leave one of our Services.

9. Children

   Our Services are not directed at or intended for use by children. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 16 years of age. If you become aware that your child or any child under your care has provided us with information without your consent, please contact us at using the contact details listed in the How to Contact Us section below.

10. Changes to this policy

    Except to the extent limited by applicable law, we will update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our privacy practices, legal requirements, and other factors by prominently posting notice of the update on our Services. Changes to our Privacy Policy will be effective when posted and the new effective date will be identified.

    If we make any changes to the Privacy Policy that materially impact previously collected personal information about you, we will make reasonable efforts to provide notice and obtain consent to any such changes as may be required by law.

    To request a copy of this Policy, or to request a copy of the Privacy Policy in place at the time you signed up for an account, please contact us at the details below.

11. Changes to this policy

    If you have any questions about this Policy or the way in which your personal information has been used, please contact us by email at contactus@restaurantguru.com or by postal mail at:

    SoftDeluxe, Inc.

    Palm Grove House, P.O. Box 438,

    Road Town, Tortola, VG1110. British Virgin Islands

    1043069