In short: Louvida collects what it needs to show you restaurants near you, take your table booking to the venue, keep the platform safe, and pay creators when payments launch. We do not sell personal information and we do not track you across other companies' apps. You can delete your account in the app at any time.
1. Who we are
Louvida ("Louvida", "we", "us", "our") operates the Louvida mobile app and the website at louvida.com (together, the "Platform"). Louvida is being incorporated in Australia; until incorporation is complete the Platform is operated by its founders, based in Melbourne, Victoria, and this policy will be updated with the company name, ABN and registered address as soon as the company is registered.
Privacy contact: privacy@louvida.com. General support: support@louvida.com.
We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), and we apply this policy to everyone who uses the Platform.
2. The kinds of personal information we collect and hold
What we collect depends on how you use Louvida.
Everyone
- Account details: name or display name, username, email address, a hashed password or the identifier returned by Sign in with Apple or Google, your profile photo and bio if you add them, and your own mobile number if you add it (we do not check it by SMS).
- Technical data: device type and operating system, app version, IP address, language, a push notification token for your device, and crash and performance logs.
- Support and safety records: messages you send us, reports you submit about content or people, and the outcome of those reports.
Diners
- Location, only while you use the app and only if you allow it in your device settings, so we can show venues and videos near you and sort them by distance. The app sends your current position with requests for nearby places, search and your feed. We do not store your coordinates, but we keep, with your account, a distance score for each place we showed you, which could be used to estimate where you were. If you check in at a place, we record that you checked in there and when. You can turn location off at any time and keep using the app.
- Activity, linked to your account: the venues and videos you are shown and in what position, the venues you open, like, save, share, follow, review, call, message or ask directions to, the videos you watch, the filters you use, and your taste preferences.
- Booking details you enter: party size, date and time, your name and phone number, and any note you add for the venue.
- Messages you send to friends, groups and venues, message requests, group plans and votes, reviews you write, and the photos and videos you upload.
- If you choose to find friends: you first add your own mobile number. The app turns the phone numbers in your address book into codes on your device and uploads only those codes, not names or other contact details. We keep the codes with your account, including codes for people who do not use Louvida, so we can tell you which of your contacts use Louvida; each new scan replaces them. A code can be matched back to a phone number by trying possible numbers. You can delete them at any time in Settings, Privacy and discovery, Disconnect contact sync. People who have your number can find your profile unless you switch off “Let people who have my number find me”.
- Dietary needs and allergies, if you add them: whether you are vegetarian, vegan, kosher or halal, the allergens you avoid, and a short allergy note (see Sensitive information below).
- Your birthday: when you create a diner account we keep the day and month you were born, never the year (see section 13).
- Open to eat, if you switch it on: that you are up for a meal and when, and the “up for a meal?” pings you send and receive (see section 7).
- The places and dishes you save, your lists and your top places.
Venues (restaurants, cafes and bars)
- Business details: business name, category, address, public phone, website, Instagram handle, opening hours, menu items, offers, and photos and videos you upload.
- Verification details, for example an ABN or proof that you control the venue's website or business listing.
- Bookings received, and messages with diners and creators.
Creators
- Profile: handle, bio, suburbs you work in, rates, and portfolio videos.
- Instagram data, only if you connect your account: your handle, basic profile information and your recent public posts, retrieved through Meta's official API. You can disconnect at any time.
- Bids, deliverables, and, once payouts launch, identity and bank details collected directly by our payments provider (Stripe). We do not see or store your full bank or card details.
Sensitive information
Dietary needs and allergies can be health information, and some, such as kosher or halal, may reveal religious beliefs; both are sensitive information under the Privacy Act. We collect them only with your consent, which you give by choosing to add them, at sign up or in Settings. They are private to you unless you switch on “Share with friends and groups”; then people you follow who follow you back, and members of your groups, see your needs and the allergens you avoid, never your allergy note. We use them to show how well a menu fits you, not to rank places, not in analytics and not for marketing. If you write dietary requirements, allergies or accessibility needs into a booking note, that is also sensitive information: we pass it to the venue so it can serve you safely, and we do not use it for any other purpose or for marketing.
3. How we collect personal information
- Directly from you when you sign up, complete your profile, book, message, review, upload content, or contact us.
- Automatically as you use the Platform (usage, device and, with your permission, approximate location).
- From services you connect: Apple or Google when you use their sign in, Meta when a creator or venue connects Instagram, Stripe when payouts are set up.
- From public sources, for venue listings only (see section 4).
We give you a short collection notice at the point of collection (for example when you first turn on location, connect Instagram, or send a booking), as required by APP 5. Where it is reasonable and practicable, you can deal with us anonymously or under a pseudonym: browsing the website does not require an account, and diners may use a display name rather than a legal name.
4. Venue listings created from public information
To help diners find places, Louvida may create a listing for a venue that has not joined yet, using information that is already public: business name, address, phone number, website, opening hours, cuisine, price range, public rating information from services such as Google, and links to the venue's public social media. These listings are marked as not yet claimed, they do not imply that the venue endorses or is affiliated with Louvida, and they cannot be booked or messaged through the app.
If you own or manage a venue you may claim the listing, correct it, or ask us to remove it or any content on it, by emailing support@louvida.com. We action removal requests within 24 hours.
5. Why we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information
- To run the Platform: show videos and venues near you, pass your booking request to the venue, run offers, connect venues with creators, and process payments when they launch.
- To personalise what you see, for example venues similar to those you saved or that your friends recommend.
- To send you service messages you would expect: booking confirmations and updates, replies to your messages, security and account notices.
- To keep people safe: verify venues, review reports, moderate content, prevent fraud, spam and abuse, and enforce our Terms.
- To improve the product, using aggregated analytics and crash reports.
- To send marketing you have opted in to, and to run promotions you enter.
- To meet our legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
6. Automated processing and moderation
Some decisions on the Platform are made or supported by software rather than a person:
- Content moderation. Dish photos are screened automatically and shown to others only once they pass; videos added to a place are reviewed by a person before they appear. Text you post (messages, reviews, names, usernames, bios, captions and notes) is checked automatically, and refused if it contains strong language or slurs. Content flagged as unsafe is held for a person to review. Providers used for this screening are listed below.
- AI services. Some features send what you give them to an outside AI service, and only after you allow it in the app: each one asks the first time you use it, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings (on a venue account, the You tab), under AI features. Dish photos you post, and photos you send in a booking chat, go to Anthropic, whose AI, Claude, checks them for unsafe content before others see them; while you have not allowed this, you cannot add them. A photo of a menu that a venue scans goes to OpenAI, whose AI reads the dishes and prices into a draft that the venue checks before anything is published. Where answers about a place are switched on, your question goes to Anthropic with that place’s menu, hours, reviews and video captions. We send this content only to provide the feature you are using.
- Ranking. Your feed and search results are ordered automatically using your saves, likes, follows, taste preferences, distance and venue quality signals.
- Safety and fraud signals that may lead to content being hidden or an account being suspended. A person reviews any suspension, and you can contest a decision by writing to support@louvida.com.
We describe this here in plain terms, and we will publish the specific detail required by the automated decision making transparency rules of the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 before those rules take effect on 10 December 2026.
7. Who we disclose personal information to
- Venues receive the booking details you submit (name, phone, party size, time, and any note including dietary needs) and the messages and reviews you send them. Diners see the public profile and content of venues and creators.
- Other Louvida members. Your profile (name, username, photo and bio) and your reviews are visible to members unless you make your account private. While “Share my likes and saves” is on, signed in members can see the places you saved, and your top places and taste highlights appear on your profile. People in a conversation or group see the messages, plans and votes in it. If you switch on Open to eat, your friends (people you follow who follow you back, where neither has blocked the other) see that you are up for a meal and when, for 12 hours unless you switch it off sooner; a friend can ask to be told when you switch it on, and you are not told who asked; a friend can send you one “up for a meal?” ping a day, and your answer is sent to them. Your friends see your birthday (day and month) unless you switch off “Show my birthday to friends”, which is on when you sign up.
- Creators and venues see each other's brief, bids, messages and deliverables when they work together.
- Service providers that operate the Platform for us, under contract and only for our purposes:
- Supabase (database, authentication, file storage and serverless functions) · data hosted in Sydney, Australia; Supabase is a United States company
- Vercel (web hosting) · United States
- Cloudflare (media delivery and storage) · global network
- Apple and Google (app distribution, sign in, push notifications, maps and places data) · United States
- Mapbox (maps) · United States
- Sentry (crash and error monitoring) · United States
- Resend (transactional email) · United States and Europe
- Twilio (SMS, where used) · United States
- Sightengine (automated image and video safety screening) · France
- Anthropic (checking dish photos and booking chat photos and, where switched on, answering questions about a place, each only after you allow it in the app) and OpenAI (reading the menus that venues scan, after the venue allows it) · United States
- Expo (push notification delivery and app updates) · United States
- Our feedback tool, hosted by Vercel, which receives feedback you choose to send, with your username and email · United States
- Meta (Instagram connection, for creators and venues who connect their account) · United States
- Stripe (payments and payouts, once launched) · United States and Australia
- Booking platforms a venue uses, for example OpenTable or SevenRooms, when your booking is passed through to that system.
- The Australian Taxation Office, where the sharing economy reporting regime requires us to report creator and transaction details once payments launch.
- Authorities and advisers where required or authorised by law, including the eSafety Commissioner and law enforcement in response to a valid request, and professional advisers under confidentiality.
- A buyer or successor if Louvida is sold, merged or restructured, in which case we will tell you and the information stays subject to this policy.
We do not sell personal information, we do not disclose it to data brokers, and we do not use it for third party advertising or tracking across other companies' apps and websites.
8. Overseas disclosure
As the list above shows, we are likely to disclose personal information to recipients located in the United States, the European Union (including France, Ireland and Germany), the United Kingdom and Singapore, depending on the provider and the region their infrastructure serves. Before disclosing personal information overseas we take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure the recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles, including contractual data protection terms, restricting the provider to our instructions, and reviewing the provider's security and privacy commitments. Under section 16C of the Privacy Act we remain accountable for what those providers do with the information.
9. Marketing and messages
We send two kinds of messages. Service messages (booking confirmations, replies, security notices) are part of the Platform and are not marketing. Marketing messages (news, offers, launch updates) are sent only if you opt in, and every one of them tells you who sent it and includes an unsubscribe link, or STOP for SMS, which we action within five business days. You can also turn push notifications off in your device settings. We never use sensitive information for marketing.
10. How we hold and protect information
Personal information is stored with the providers named above and is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is limited to the people who need it, protected by individual accounts and multi factor authentication where available. Payment card and bank details are handled by Stripe and never stored on our systems.
No system is perfectly secure. If we suspect a data breach we assess it promptly, and within 30 days at the latest, and if it is likely to result in serious harm we notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable, telling you what happened, what information was involved and what we recommend you do.
11. How long we keep it, and deletion
We keep personal information while your account is active and for a reasonable period after, then delete it or anonymise it. You can delete your account at any time in the app (Settings, then Delete account) or by emailing us; we complete deletion or anonymisation within 30 days, except where we must keep records by law (for example transaction records for seven years), or where information is needed to resolve a dispute, prevent fraud or enforce our Terms.
Deleting your account deletes your profile and the content you posted, including your reviews, photos, videos and messages. Records of how the app was used are kept without your account identifier, and copies may persist for a short time in backups and caches. If you created your account with Sign in with Apple, deleting it also removes Louvida from your Apple Account when the app can confirm this with Apple; otherwise the app shows you how to remove it in your iPhone’s Settings.
12. Accessing and correcting your information
You can view and edit most of your information in the app. You can also ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, by emailing privacy@louvida.com. We respond within a reasonable period, normally 30 days, and we do not charge for correction. If we refuse access or correction we will tell you why in writing and how to complain, and you may ask us to attach a statement noting that you consider the information inaccurate.
13. Children and minimum age
A Louvida diner account is for people aged 16 and over. A business or creator account is for people aged 18 and over, because it involves a binding commercial arrangement. Browsing without an account does not require either. When someone creates a diner account we ask for their date of birth once. We store whether the answer met the minimum age and, as your birthday, the day and month (never the year); we do not use the answer for advertising or profiling. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone below the minimum age for their account type. If you believe a child has created an account, email privacy@louvida.com and we will delete it.
14. Cookies and the website
louvida.com uses only cookies and local storage that are necessary for the site to work and to remember your preferences, plus Google Analytics, which sets cookies, to measure visits to the website. Forms on the website send the details you enter to us by email so we can reply. The app does not use advertising cookies.
15. Complaints
If you think we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles, email privacy@louvida.com with the details. We will acknowledge your complaint within 7 days and aim to resolve it within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, or we do not respond within 30 days, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints, phone 1300 363 992, or GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001.
16. Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our practices change. The date at the top shows the current version. If a change materially affects you we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
17. Contact us
Louvida · Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Privacy: privacy@louvida.com · Support: support@louvida.com