Flowdish Privacy Statement

Flowdish provides kitchen operations software for restaurants, including stock control, prep records, HACCP records, supplier product management, delivery records, sales imports, planning, waste logs, SOPs, cold storage records, and admin tools.

For customer account information and platform operation, Flowdish is the data controller. For restaurant operational records entered by a restaurant, the restaurant is normally the controller and Flowdish acts as a processor providing the software service.

Account and login data: name, email address, restaurant account, role, staff PIN usernames, encrypted PIN hashes, login/session information, and security checks.

Restaurant operational data: items, recipes, BOMs, supplier products, deliveries, inventory, prep records, HACCP checks, sales quantities, waste, SOPs, forecasts, cold storage monitors, and imported spreadsheet, PDF, image, or text content used to create reviewed records.

Technical and usage data: device/browser information, timestamps, error logs, AI parsing feature usage, token usage metadata where available, and basic security/audit information.

To create and manage Flowdish accounts, authenticate users, provide staff PIN access, and control permissions.

To run the kitchen management features requested by each restaurant, including inventory movement, HACCP record keeping, delivery review, sales import, forecasting, supplier price updates, and cold storage records.

To protect the service, prevent abuse, troubleshoot errors, improve reliability, and maintain audit trails for operational records.

Contract: to provide the Flowdish service to restaurants and account users.

Legitimate interests: to keep the platform secure, diagnose issues, improve the service, and maintain appropriate operational audit records.

Legal obligation: where records are needed to help customers comply with food safety, accounting, or data protection obligations.

Controller instructions: where Flowdish processes restaurant operational data as a processor under the Data Processing Agreement.

Flowdish may use OCR and AI parsing to convert delivery dockets, supplier price lists, sales Z-reads, or similar documents into reviewable rows.

For photographed delivery dockets, supplier price lists, and sales Z-reads, Flowdish displays a privacy preview on the user device. A suggested product or sales table selection can be moved, resized, deleted, or supplemented by the user. After the user confirms the preview, the browser creates a new image in which everything outside the selected area is permanently blacked out. Only that flattened copy is sent to the AI parsing provider; the original image is not sent.

For PDF, spreadsheet, CSV, and text imports from any supplier, Flowdish extracts text on its application server and applies the same privacy filter before AI parsing. Raw files, extracted text, and raw AI JSON are not intentionally stored after processing. Reviewed operational records, supplier changes, import summaries, and AI usage metadata may be stored.

For pasted or text-based imports, sales Z-read and POS content is reduced to sales-table rows before AI parsing, with customer, staff, address, payment, account, and contact details removed where detected.

Flowdish Enterprise uses the OpenAI API for AI-assisted parsing and drafting. OpenAI Ireland Ltd. is the contracted provider for EEA customers. Flowdish sends stateless requests with storage disabled. OpenAI states that API customer content is not used to train its models unless the customer expressly opts in; standard abuse-monitoring logs may retain content for up to 30 days.

Suggested image selections and automated text filtering reduce unnecessary disclosure but cannot guarantee that every unusual document layout or sensitive detail will be identified. Users must check the selected area before confirming and must not include unnecessary personal, banking, payment-card, or other sensitive information.

Flowdish uses trusted service providers to host and run the platform, database, authentication, security checks, OCR/AI processing, and deployment infrastructure.

These providers process data only as needed to provide their services to Flowdish. Flowdish does not sell restaurant data.

Some providers may process data outside Ireland or the European Economic Area. Where that happens, Flowdish uses appropriate safeguards such as adequacy decisions, contractual protections and European Commission Standard Contractual Clauses.

The current provider list is published on the Flowdish Subprocessors page.

Account data is kept while the account is active and for a reasonable period afterwards where needed for administration, security, legal, or accounting reasons.

Restaurant operational records are kept for as long as the restaurant chooses to use Flowdish, unless deletion is requested and Flowdish is legally or operationally allowed to delete them.

Temporary parsing content should not be retained longer than needed to process the import. Logs, audit records, backups, and security records may be retained for limited periods.

Flowdish uses access controls, role-based permissions, encrypted staff PIN hashes, server-side checks, CAPTCHA/security checks on public login flows, and hosted database/application security measures.

No system is perfectly secure. Customers should use strong passwords, limit admin access, remove staff PIN users who no longer need access, and avoid uploading unnecessary sensitive information.

Depending on the situation, individuals may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a copy of their personal data.

Restaurant staff should usually contact their restaurant administrator first, because the restaurant controls most operational records entered into its account.

You may also contact Flowdish about privacy requests, security concerns, or questions about this statement.