1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how FastSail Technologies LLC, a Michigan limited liability company doing business as Palate (“Palate,” “we,” “us”), collects, uses, and shares personal information in connection with the Palate restaurant management platform (the “Service”). Palate operates in the United States, and this Policy describes our US practices.
Palate plays two different roles, and which one applies decides who you should contact.
- As a business (controller) — for information about restaurant accounts and the people who administer them, our billing relationship, and our direct support communications. We decide how that information is used, and you can exercise your rights directly with us.
- As a service provider (processor) — for information about guests and restaurant employees that we process on behalf of a restaurant. The restaurant decides why and how that data is used; we act on its instructions. Its own privacy notice governs, and rights requests go to the restaurant. We describe our practices here for transparency and we will help the restaurant respond to you.
In plain terms: if you are a restaurant owner or manager, Palate is the business. If you are a guest who ordered from a restaurant, or an employee of one, the restaurant is the business and Palate is its service provider.
2. Information We Collect
2.1 Information provided to us
| Category | Examples | Whose data | Our role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant account | Business name, owner and manager names, email, phone, password | Restaurant administrators | Business |
| Billing | Subscription plan, billing contact, payout account details held by Stripe | Restaurant | Business |
| Employee data | Names, contact details, schedules, time cards, role assignments, pay rates, tip allocations, payroll inputs, workplace messages, and — where the restaurant turns the feature on — a photo and the device location captured at clock-in | Restaurant employees | Service provider |
| Guest data | Names, emails, phone numbers, order and reservation history, dietary and seating preferences, loyalty activity, marketing and SMS consent choices | Guests | Service provider |
| Support communications | Messages to support, bug reports, account recovery requests | Various | Business |
A note on clock-in photos. A restaurant may require a photo at clock-in to confirm who is clocking in. Palate stores that image as evidence attached to the time card. Palate does not perform facial recognition. We do not create, derive, or store a faceprint, face-geometry scan, or any other biometric identifier or biometric template from these photos, and we do not use them to identify anyone automatically. Whether the feature is on is the restaurant’s decision.
A note on employee location at clock-in. Where a restaurant requires it, the Employee app checks a device’s location at the moment an employee clocks in or out, to confirm they are at the restaurant. Those coordinates are sent to Palate, checked against the restaurant’s location, and stored with the time card. The app does not track employees in the background, between shifts, or when off the clock — location is read only during a clock action. The restaurant can see the record; Palate uses it for nothing else.
A note on device biometrics. Palate’s mobile applications may offer Face ID, Touch ID, or fingerprint unlock. Your device performs the match and returns only a yes-or-no result. No fingerprint, faceprint, or other biometric identifier is transmitted to or stored by Palate.
2.2 Information collected automatically
- Device and usage data — browser type, operating system, application version, screen interactions
- IP address and the approximate location it implies, used for security and fraud prevention
- Cookies and similar technologies — see the Cookie Policy
- Authentication and security events — sign-in times, device identifiers, and security log entries
2.3 Payment information
Payment card data is collected and processed by Stripe, not by Palate. This is true for both online payments and in-person card payments taken on a Stripe Terminal card reader in a restaurant.
Palate stores transaction metadata — amounts, timestamps, references, and the card’s last four digits, brand, and funding type — so that a receipt or a refund can be matched to a sale. Palate never receives or stores a full card number, magnetic-stripe or chip data, or a CVV.
3. How We Use Information
As a business (controller), we use information to:
- Provide, operate, secure, and support the Service
- Authenticate users and protect accounts, including multi-factor authentication and fraud prevention
- Process subscription payments and enable payouts through Stripe
- Communicate about the Service, including security notifications and transactional email
- Respond to support requests
- Comply with legal obligations and enforce our agreements
- Improve the Service using de-identified, aggregated data
- Send marketing communications where permitted — email subject to opt-out, and SMS only with your prior express written consent
As a service provider (processor), we process guest and employee data only on the relevant restaurant’s documented instructions and as described in our Data Processing Addendum. We do not use that data for our own purposes, and we do not combine it with data from other sources, except as a service provider is permitted to under applicable law — to provide and improve the Service, to detect and prevent security incidents and fraud, and to comply with law.
4. How We Share Information
We share information with:
- Service providers and sub-processors who help us operate the Service. They are contractually restricted to using the data only to provide services to us. See Section 9.
- Stripe, for payment processing and payouts.
- The relevant restaurant, for data we process on its behalf.
- Payroll providers you choose — when a restaurant exports payroll data to Gusto, ADP, Paychex, Toast Payroll, or another provider, the export is directed by the restaurant.
- Legal and safety — where required by law, to respond to lawful requests, to protect rights and safety, or in connection with legal proceedings.
- Business transfers — in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.
We do not sell or share your personal information
Palate does not sell personal information, and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under California and other US state privacy laws. We have never done so.
We do not run advertising networks, advertising pixels, or third-party ad-tech on our properties, and we do not disclose guest or employee personal information to any third party for that third party’s own marketing purposes.
Your mobile phone number and your SMS consent record are never shared with, sold, or rented to third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes.
5. Text Messaging (SMS)
If you provide a mobile number and opt in, you may receive text messages: one-time verification codes, order and reservation updates, and — only with a separate marketing opt-in — promotions from a restaurant.
We do not share, sell, or rent your mobile phone number or your SMS opt-in/consent information with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes.
Message frequency varies with your activity. Message and data rates may apply. You can stop at any time by replying STOP, or reply HELP for help. We record your opt-in and opt-out choices in order to honor them.
Full details are in the SMS / Messaging Terms.
6. Data Retention
We keep personal information for as long as we need it to provide the Service and to meet legal and legitimate business requirements.
| Data category | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Restaurant account data | For the life of the account. After termination: 30 days of read-only access, then 90 further days of retention, then permanent deletion — 120 days in total |
| Guest data (as service provider) | On the restaurant’s instructions, and deleted with the restaurant’s account on the schedule above |
| Employee data (as service provider) | On the restaurant’s instructions, and for as long as the restaurant’s own wage-and-hour and payroll recordkeeping obligations require. The restaurant, as employer, sets this period |
| Clock-in photos | With the time card they are attached to, on the same schedule as employee data |
| Security and audit logs | 13 months in active systems, then archived to cold storage and purged |
| Transaction and tax records | As long as tax and financial recordkeeping law requires, typically seven years |
| Marketing and SMS consent records | While you are opted in, and for four years after you opt out, so that we can prove we honored your choice |
| Cookie consent records | 12 months, or until you change your preferences |
| Support communications | Three years from the last message in the conversation |
| Backups | Encrypted backup copies are overwritten on our ordinary backup cycle and are not used for any other purpose |
7. Your Privacy Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- Know and access the personal information we hold about you, and how we use and disclose it
- Correct inaccurate personal information
- Delete personal information we hold about you
- Obtain a portable copy of personal information you provided to us
- Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information and of targeted advertising — Palate does none of these, so there is nothing to opt out of
- Limit the use of sensitive personal information — see Section 7.2
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights
Where to send your request depends on whose data it is.
- Restaurant account data — where Palate is the business — contact us at hello@palate.pro.
- Guest or employee data — where Palate is a service provider — contact the restaurant, which directs the processing. If you send the request to us, we will pass it to the restaurant and help it respond. We will tell you we have done so.
7.1 How to exercise your rights
Email hello@palate.pro with the words “Privacy Request” in the subject line, and tell us what you would like us to do.
Verification. To protect your information, we will verify your identity before acting. For an account holder, we will typically verify through the email address on the account. For a request that is not tied to an account, we may ask for additional information to match you to our records. We will not use that information for anything else.
Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent. We will ask for written permission signed by you, and we may still ask you to verify your identity directly.
Our timeline. We acknowledge requests within 10 business days and respond substantively within 45 days. If we need more time, we will tell you within that 45-day period and may extend once by a further 45 days.
If we say no. You may appeal by replying to our decision or writing to hello@palate.pro with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line. We will respond to an appeal within 45 days and, if we deny it, tell you how to contact your state Attorney General. This appeal right is available to every person who asks, whether or not their state requires one.
7.2 Sensitive personal information
Palate does not collect personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you, and does not use or disclose sensitive personal information for any purpose other than providing the Service.
Three categories deserve a plain statement.
Precise geolocation is collected in one place only: at an employee’s clock-in or clock-out, where the restaurant requires it, to confirm the employee is at the restaurant. It is never collected in the background, never collected from guests, and used for no other purpose. Because it is used solely to perform the service the employer asked for, it falls within the exemption for sensitive information used only to provide the service — but the right to limit its use is honored on request regardless, by contacting the employer, which decides whether the feature is on.
Dietary and allergen preferences a guest gives a restaurant may indirectly suggest a health condition or a religious practice. We collect them only to pass them to the restaurant so it can serve you safely, and we use them for nothing else.
Account credentials are treated as sensitive and are used only to sign you in.
7.3 California residents (CCPA/CPRA)
If you are a California resident, you have the rights listed above, and the following disclosures apply.
Categories of personal information we have collected in the preceding 12 months, using the statutory categories:
| Category | Collected | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| A. Identifiers | Yes | Name, email, postal address, phone number, IP address, account identifier |
| B. Customer records (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80) | Yes | Name, phone, payment metadata |
| C. Protected classifications | No | Not collected. Dietary preferences may indirectly imply one — see Section 7.2 |
| D. Commercial information | Yes | Orders, reservations, loyalty activity, transaction history |
| E. Biometric information | No | Not collected. See the notes in Section 2.1 |
| F. Internet or network activity | Yes | Device and usage data, application interactions |
| G. Geolocation data | Yes | Approximate location inferred from IP address, for security. Precise location captured at an employee’s clock-in or clock-out, where a restaurant enables it |
| H. Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information | Yes | Clock-in photos, where a restaurant enables them |
| I. Professional or employment information | Yes | Schedules, time cards, roles, pay rates, tip allocations |
| J. Education information | No | Not collected |
| K. Inferences | No | We do not build profiles or draw inferences about individuals |
Sources. Directly from you; from the restaurant that uses the Service; automatically from your device as you use the Service; and from Stripe for payment outcomes.
Business purposes for collecting are listed in Section 3. Categories disclosed for a business purpose in the preceding 12 months: A, B, D, F, G, H, and I, to the service providers listed in Section 9 and to the relevant restaurant.
Sale and sharing. Palate has not sold personal information and has not shared personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising in the preceding 12 months, and does not do so today. Because we do not, we do not offer a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link — there is nothing for it to turn off. We honor Global Privacy Control and similar browser opt-out signals as a matter of course.
Retention is described in Section 6. Non-discrimination: we will not deny you service, charge you a different price, or give you a lesser quality of service for exercising your rights.
7.4 Other US state privacy laws
Residents of other states with comprehensive privacy laws — including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Florida, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Minnesota, Maryland, Rhode Island, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee — have substantially the rights described in Section 7, subject to each law’s own scope and thresholds.
We have chosen to apply one standard nationwide rather than sort people by state: every person who contacts us gets the same rights, the same verification process, the same timelines, and the same appeal right set out in Section 7.1, whether or not their state requires it.
Palate does not conduct targeted advertising, does not sell personal information, and does not engage in profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. Where a state law requires a data protection assessment for those activities, none is triggered.
8. Security
We protect personal information with technical and organizational measures, including:
- Encryption in transit (TLS with HSTS) and encryption at rest for the database and for sensitive secrets
- Role-based access control, scoped so that one restaurant location cannot reach another’s data
- Multi-factor authentication available for owner and manager accounts; PIN-based staff access with manager overrides for sensitive actions
- Argon2id password hashing, breach-password screening, rate limiting, and account lockout
- A tamper-evident, insert-only audit log of significant actions
- Error and performance monitoring with personal information scrubbed from reports
- A web application firewall, CSRF protection, and restricted cross-origin access
No system is perfectly secure. We maintain an incident response process and will notify affected parties and regulators as required by applicable US state breach notification laws.
9. Sub-Processors
We use the vendors below to operate the Service. The current list is maintained at https://palate.pro/subprocessors.
| Sub-processor | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Payment processing, payouts, card readers | US |
| Cloudflare | Hosting, CDN, object storage, WAF, bot prevention | Global edge |
| Twilio (including SendGrid) | Transactional and marketing email and SMS | US |
| Sentry | Error and performance monitoring | US |
| DigitalOcean | Application hosting, managed database and cache | US |
| Google Workspace | Business email and documents | US |
| Instatus | Public status page — holds only the email address of anyone who subscribes to status updates | EU |
We give customers at least 30 days’ advance notice of a new sub-processor, by email to the account’s billing contact and by updating the sub-processor page. A customer may object on reasonable data protection grounds within that period; if we cannot resolve the objection, the customer may terminate the affected part of the Service and receive a refund of prepaid fees covering the period after termination.
10. Children’s Privacy
The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we have, we will delete it promptly. A parent or guardian who believes we hold a child’s information may contact us at hello@palate.pro.
Palate does not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16 — we do not sell or share personal information at all.
11. Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies as described in our Cookie Policy.
12. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Policy. We will post the updated version with a new effective date. For changes that materially affect how we handle your personal information, we will give advance notice by email where we have your address, or by a prominent notice in the Service.
13. Contact Us
Questions about this Policy or our data practices:
Email: hello@palate.pro
Mail:
FastSail Technologies LLC (d/b/a Palate)
442 W Delhi Rd
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
United States