Privacy

What this policy covers

Restaurant Palette is a contemporary Australian restaurant, and this policy explains how we handle the personal information you give us. It applies to what you send through restaurantpalette.com — booking enquiries, emails, any form on the site — and to the information we collect in person when you dine with us.

When this policy says "we" or "us", it means Restaurant Palette. When it says "personal information", it means information or an opinion about an identified person, or someone reasonably identifiable from it: a name, a phone number, a booking note, a dietary requirement.

We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. This policy does not cover other websites you may reach from ours, or platforms that run their own privacy policies.

The details we collect

When you book a table or send an enquiry, we ask for your name, a phone number or email address, the date, time and size of your booking, and any notes you choose to add. If you mention a dietary requirement or an allergy, we keep that note so the dining room and the kitchen can prepare properly for your visit. It is used to look after that visit and nothing else.

Where payment is taken by card, the transaction is handled by a payment provider and we keep only the record needed for our accounts. We do not hold full card numbers in our own systems.

Our website may also collect limited technical information — the pages you view, the browser you use, the approximate region you are browsing from — so that the site loads correctly and we can see which pages are useful. You can read more about this under the cookies section below.

Why we use your information

We use your details to respond to your enquiry, hold and manage your booking, prepare for dietary requirements you have told us about, take payment for your meal, and keep the records a hospitality business is required to keep.

We also use booking patterns in an aggregated way to understand how the dining room is running — which sittings fill, which days are quiet — so we can plan service and staffing sensibly. That analysis does not identify you personally.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not add you to a marketing list because you booked a table. If a newsletter is ever offered, you will be asked to opt in separately and can opt out at any time.

Who we share information with

We share personal information only where it is needed to run the restaurant. That can include the providers who host our website, take bookings, process payments or deliver our email, and professional advisers such as our accountant, all of whom are expected to handle it for that purpose only.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it — for example in response to a lawful request from a regulator or enforcement agency — or where disclosure is necessary to protect someone's health and safety.

If the business were ever transferred or restructured, booking and contact records would form part of what moves across, and this policy would continue to apply until a replacement is published. We do not otherwise pass your details to other businesses for their own marketing.

Cookies and how the site remembers you

A cookie is a small file a website stores in your browser. Ours are used to keep the site working properly during a visit, to remember preferences such as a dismissed notice, and to measure which pages visitors find useful. Some cookies are set by the services that support the site, such as analytics.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings at any time. If you do, the site will still work, though a few conveniences may not. Clearing cookies also removes any preference we had remembered for you.

We do not use cookies to collect sensitive information, and we do not build advertising profiles of visitors to this site.

Security and how long we keep records

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, loss, and unauthorised access or disclosure. Access is limited to the people who need it to look after your booking or answer your question, whether that is in the dining room, the kitchen or our administration.

No system is completely secure, and email in particular travels over networks we do not control. Please take care with what you send by email, and tell us by phone if something is urgent rather than relying on a message arriving in time.

We keep booking and contact records only for as long as we need them for the purpose they were collected, for our accounting and legal obligations, or to resolve a query you have raised. When they are no longer needed, they are deleted or de-identified.

Access, correction and complaints

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you and request a copy. You can also ask us to correct anything that is out of date or wrong — a changed phone number, a misspelt name. We will respond within a reasonable period, and if we cannot do what you have asked we will explain why in writing.

If you think we have mishandled your information, tell us first using the contact details below so we can look into it and respond. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can raise the matter with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which deals with privacy complaints under Australian law.

Asking for access, a correction or lodging a complaint will not affect the way you are looked after in the dining room.

Common privacy questions

Do I have to tell you about a dietary requirement? Not at all. You only need to share what helps us look after you, and you can keep that note brief. If you would rather discuss it in person on the day, that is fine — the kitchen will work through it with you when you arrive.

Can I book without giving an email address? A phone number is enough for a booking. We ask for one reliable contact so we can reach you if a sitting changes or a table needs confirming.

Will booking put me on a mailing list? No. A booking is a booking. Anything beyond that would need your separate agreement.

Can I ask you to delete my details? Yes, once we no longer need them for the booking, for our records or for a legal obligation. Ask us and we will tell you what can be removed and what has to stay.

How to reach us about privacy

Questions about this policy, requests for access or correction, and privacy complaints can all go to the same place. Phone +61 433 658 077, or email [email protected], and we will write back with a clear answer or a time frame for one.

We may update this policy from time to time as the way we take bookings or run the site changes. The current version is always the one published on this page, and it applies from the moment it appears.