1. Who You Are Agreeing With
These Terms of Use (“Terms”) apply when you use the Palate Employee app (the “App”) as a member of a restaurant’s staff.
The App is provided by FastSail Technologies LLC, a Michigan limited liability company doing business as Palate (“Palate,” “we,” “us”). Your restaurant (your “Employer”) subscribes to Palate and gives you access to the App.
Palate is not your employer. Palate is not a co-employer, joint employer, employer of record, or staffing agency, and has no role in your employment. Your Employer hires you, sets your schedule, sets your pay, decides your role, and decides what you may do in the App.
By signing in, you agree to these Terms and acknowledge the Privacy Notice for Employees.
2. What the App Is For
The App lets you do things your Employer has enabled, which may include:
- Viewing your schedule and upcoming shifts
- Clocking in and out, and viewing your time cards
- Requesting time off and viewing your balances
- Picking up, swapping, or dropping shifts through a shift pool
- Viewing your earnings, hours, and tip allocations
- Messaging your managers and coworkers about work
- Completing onboarding and uploading documents your Employer requires
Which of these you see depends on your Employer’s plan and settings.
3. The App Is a Tool, Not a Promise
Nothing in the App is a guarantee of employment, of hours, of a shift, or of pay.
- A schedule shown in the App may be changed by your Employer.
- Approval of a time-off request, a shift swap, or a shift pickup is your Employer’s decision, not Palate’s.
- Earnings, hours, and tip figures shown in the App are estimates calculated from what has been recorded, and are not a pay statement. Your official pay records come from your Employer and its payroll provider.
- Palate does not pay you, does not withhold or remit taxes, and does not hold or move any payroll funds. See Section 8.
4. Your Account and Your PIN
- Your account is created by your Employer. You sign in with your email and a PIN, and may enable Face ID, Touch ID, or fingerprint unlock on your own device.
- Keep your PIN to yourself. Do not share it, do not let anyone clock in or out as you, and do not clock in or out for anyone else. Doing so is a violation of these Terms and of your Employer’s policies, and may be a serious matter under wage-and-hour law.
- Tell your manager promptly if you think someone else has used your account.
- Repeated failed sign-in attempts temporarily lock the account. This is a security measure, not a disciplinary action.
5. Location at Clock-In
If your Employer requires it, the App checks your device location at the moment you clock in or out to confirm you are at the restaurant.
We want to be exact about this, because it matters:
- Your location is checked only when you perform a clock action. The App does not track you in the background, does not follow you between shifts, and does not record where you go when you are off the clock.
- The coordinates from a clock action are sent to Palate and checked against the restaurant’s location, and are stored with that time card as a record of where the clock action happened.
- Your Employer can see that record. Palate does not use it for anything else.
- If you decline the location permission, your Employer may require you to clock in another way — that is your Employer’s decision to make, not Palate’s.
6. Photos at Clock-In
If your Employer turns the feature on, the App captures a photo when you clock in, stored with the time card as evidence of who clocked in.
Palate does not perform facial recognition on these photos. We do not create, derive, or store a faceprint, a scan of face geometry, or any other biometric identifier or template from them, and we do not use them to identify you automatically.
Face ID, Touch ID, and fingerprint unlock work differently and are separate. Your device performs the match and tells the App only yes or no. No fingerprint or faceprint is ever sent to or stored by Palate.
7. Messaging
Messages you send through the App are workplace communications on your Employer’s system, not private correspondence. Your Employer can access them, and may retain and review them under its own policies and applicable law. Use the App for work, and please be respectful of your coworkers.
8. Pay, Hours, and Disputes — Talk to Your Employer
If you think your hours, tips, break, overtime, or pay are wrong, raise it with your Employer. Palate cannot correct your pay, cannot change your time card on its own, and cannot decide a pay dispute. Your Employer owns those records and is responsible for their accuracy and for meeting its wage-and-hour obligations.
Palate will help your Employer investigate, and will provide the underlying records to your Employer on request. Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under wage-and-hour law, and nothing here requires you to use the App instead of any process your Employer or the law provides.
9. Your Privacy
Palate processes your information on your Employer’s instructions, as its service provider. Your Employer decides what is collected, who can see it, and how long it is kept, and its own privacy notice applies to you.
What Palate does with employee data is described in the Privacy Policy. In short: your schedule, time cards, clock location, clock photos, pay rate, tip allocations, and messages are handled for the purpose of running your Employer’s restaurant, and for nothing else. Palate does not sell or share your personal information, and never shares your phone number for anyone’s marketing.
To see, correct, or delete your information, contact your Employer — it directs the processing. If you contact us at hello@palate.pro, we will pass your request to your Employer, help it respond, and tell you we have done so.
If your employment ends, your access to the App ends. Your records stay with your Employer’s account and are kept on the schedule in Section 6 of the Privacy Policy.
10. Your Own Device
You may use the App on your personal device. Your carrier’s data rates apply. Push notifications can be turned off in your device settings, though you may then miss schedule changes and messages.
Palate is not responsible for your device, and does not access your photos, contacts, or files except the specific items you choose to submit — such as a document you upload during onboarding.
11. Acceptable Use
Do not misuse the App. In particular, do not falsify a time record or a tip entry, do not clock in or out for another person, do not attempt to access data belonging to another employee or another restaurant, and do not attempt to bypass the App’s security. The Acceptable Use Policy applies to you.
12. Availability and Disclaimers
The App is provided “as is.” It needs a working internet connection for most functions; some actions queue and sync when you reconnect.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Palate is not liable for your Employer’s acts or omissions, including decisions about your schedule, your shifts, your pay, or your employment. Nothing in these Terms limits anything that cannot be limited by law, including any right you have under wage-and-hour or employment law, and no provision here waives a claim against your Employer.
13. Changes and Contact
We may update these Terms and will post the updated version with a new effective date.
Questions about your schedule, hours, or pay: your manager or your Employer.
Questions about the App itself: hello@palate.pro
FastSail Technologies LLC (d/b/a Palate)
442 W Delhi Rd
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
United States