Privacy Policy

1. Controller

The controller responsible for data processing on this website is:
Vitorino Cruz
TischGeist (sole proprietorship, Einzelunternehmen)
Werner-Schlierf-Straße 25
81539 München
Germany
Email: kontakt@tischgeist.de

This privacy policy applies to www.tischgeist.de and www.tischgeist.com, which are both operated by the controller named above.

2. Collection and storage of personal data

When you visit our website, the following data is collected automatically:

• IP address of the requesting device
• Date and time of access
• Name and URL of the page accessed
• Referrer URL (the page you came from)
• Browser and operating system

This data is used solely to establish a reliable connection and to keep our systems secure. It is not combined with other data sources.

3. Contact form / demo request

If you use our contact form, the data you enter (restaurant name, contact person, email, phone, number of locations, message) is stored to process your request. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (steps taken prior to entering into a contract). Your data is not passed on to third parties and is deleted once your request has been dealt with, unless statutory retention obligations apply.

4. Messaging services (WhatsApp & Telegram)

When you use our reservation assistant via WhatsApp or Telegram, your messages (text and voice messages) are processed in order to create, change or cancel reservations. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of a contract). Voice messages are transcribed for processing and then deleted.

5. Recipients and processors

We use service providers to operate the platform. They process personal data solely on our behalf and according to our instructions (processing on behalf of a controller under Art. 28 GDPR). They are:

• Google Ireland Ltd. / Google LLC: understanding guest messages and questions in the website chatbot (Gemini API). The content of your message is transmitted.
• Groq, Inc. (USA): transcription of voice messages. The audio recording is transmitted and deleted after transcription.
• Resend (USA): sending confirmation, reminder and system messages by email. Your email address and the content of the message are transmitted.
• Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. (Ireland) / Stripe, Inc. (USA): processing the subscriptions of our restaurant customers. No guest data is transmitted.
• Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd.: transmission of messages in the WhatsApp channel.
• Telegram FZ-LLC: transmission of messages in the Telegram channel.
• IONOS SE (Germany): hosting of the servers on which the platform runs.
• Cloudflare, Inc. (USA): DNS for our domains; delivery of www.tischgeist.com (your requests to that address pass through Cloudflare's network on their way to our server); and forwarding of visitors from tischgeist.com and from app.tischgeist.com / api.tischgeist.com to the correct address. In doing so, Cloudflare processes your IP address and the requested URL.

Where a recipient processes data in a third country, the transfer is based on the European Commission's adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework if the recipient is certified under it. Otherwise it is based on standard contractual clauses under Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR.

We do not pass your data on to anyone else. A reservation is, of course, sent to the restaurant you are booking with. That restaurant is responsible for its own processing of your data.

6. Cookies

This website does not use tracking cookies. We only use cookies that are technically necessary to run the website or that store a setting you have chosen:

• tg_locale: remembers your language. On www.tischgeist.com it is set on your first visit from your browser's language setting (Portuguese, Spanish, otherwise English). It is also set when you choose a language yourself. Lifetime: 1 year.
• tg_mode: remembers whether you chose light or dark display. Only set if you use the switch. Lifetime: 1 year.

Restaurant owners who sign up or log in also receive login cookies, which are needed to keep them signed in to their account.

These cookies do not require consent, because they are strictly necessary for the service you requested (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG; Art. 5(3) ePrivacy Directive). You can delete them in your browser settings at any time.

7. Your rights

You have the following rights regarding personal data that concerns you:

• Right of access (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR)
• Right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
• Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR)

To exercise your rights, please contact: kontakt@tischgeist.de

8. Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority about our processing of your personal data. You can contact the authority in the EU country where you live or work, or the authority responsible for us: Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany, www.lda.bayern.de. In Portugal this is the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD, www.cnpd.pt), and in Spain the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD, www.aepd.es).

9. Hosting

This website is hosted on a dedicated virtual server in Germany. The servers are located in the EU. The hosting provider collects information that your browser transmits automatically in so-called server log files. DNS for our domains is provided by Cloudflare, which also delivers www.tischgeist.com (see section 5).

10. Website chatbot

On this website we run an AI-powered chatbot (shown as a speech bubble in the bottom right corner) that you can ask questions about TischGeist. If you use it, we process the following data:

• The content of your messages and of our replies
• Your language and, where it can be derived from your locale, your country
• Browser user agent and referring page
• A salted SHA-256 hash of your IP address that changes daily; the raw IP address is not stored
• If you voluntarily write an email address or phone number in your message, we store it so that our sales team can contact you

Retention: 90 days in our live database. After that, conversations are moved into the founder's encrypted email archive (for internal analysis) and deleted from the live database. The archive is not shared with third parties.

Right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR): you can ask us to delete your chatbot conversation at any time. Write to vito@tischgeist.de and quote the session ID shown in the bottom right corner of the chatbot window (format: ID#xxxxxxxx). We delete it within 24 hours.

Legal basis: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in providing the service and assuring its quality. We do not share the content with third parties and do not use it for advertising outside TischGeist.

11. Online booking and the booking widget

You can book a table on a restaurant's page or through the booking widget a restaurant embeds on its own website. To make the booking we process your name, phone number, email address (if given), date, time, party size and any special requests, together with the time you gave your consent. This data is passed to the restaurant you are booking with. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

To measure how the widget is used, it sends short usage events to our server: the restaurant, the type of event (for example "widget loaded" or "booking form started"), a random ID that exists only for that page visit, and the time. No cookies are set for this. Before you give your consent in the widget, only the events "widget loaded" and "form started" are sent. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in operating and improving the widget (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

12. Language versions

This privacy policy is available in German and English. Both versions have the same content.