MaitrePrivacy Policy
Earlier version: effective September 17, 2026. All changes: changelog.
In short
Maitre runs an AI host that restaurants put on their websites. Restaurant owners give us their account and menu details, and guests who chat with the host give us their messages. We use this only to run the service. We do not sell it, use it for ads, track you across other sites, or train AI models on it. Guest chats are deleted after 90 days, and we never keep voice audio. You can ask to see, correct or delete your information at team@hiremaitre.com.
1. Who we are and who this covers
"Maitre," "we" and "us" mean Jeshwanth Anthony, doing business as HireMaitre, of Arlington, Virginia, United States, a sole proprietorship. We plan to form a limited liability company; when we do, it will take over this policy and the information we hold, and we will email account owners with our normal notice before that happens.
This policy covers hiremaitre.com, the owner dashboard, and the public widget that restaurants put on their own websites. For owner accounts and visitors to hiremaitre.com, Maitre decides how information is used. For guests who talk to the widget, the restaurant decides, and Maitre acts as the restaurant's service provider and processor under our Data Processing Addendum. Maitre receives and stores guest messages only as the restaurant's service provider and uses them for no purpose of its own.
If you are a guest on a restaurant's website, the restaurant's own privacy policy explains its practices; contact the restaurant to use your rights over information it holds. A short version for guests is the Guest Privacy Notice.
2. Information we collect
Restaurant owners and visitors to hiremaitre.com.
| Category | Examples | Where it comes from | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers | Email address, sign-in identifiers, a one-way code made from your network address | You; your browser | Accounts, security, abuse control |
| Account and security records | Which policy version you accepted, when and how you signed in, trusted devices, multi-factor status | You; our servers | Security; proof of agreement |
| Commercial information | Plan, invoices and payment status (the card itself stays with Stripe), Square merchant and order references | Stripe; Square; you | Billing and ordering |
| Restaurant content | Name, locations, hours, menus, prices, photos, policies, custom instructions | You; your website; Square; Google | Running the host |
| Restaurant staff contacts | A work email address and role label for each person a restaurant adds to get order alerts, whether they confirmed it, when they marked an order as seen, and which team member answered a cancellation request | The restaurant owner; the staff member | Order alerts and cancellation answers the restaurant turned on |
| Guest message addresses | A work email address the restaurant adds to receive guest messages for a location, and whether it confirmed | The restaurant owner; the staff member | Guest messages the restaurant turned on |
| Internet activity | Pages and requests on hiremaitre.com, errors, approximate device and browser | Your browser | Security and reliability |
| Support and demo requests | Name, company, email, phone and message you send us | You | Answering you |
Guests who use the widget.
| Category | Examples | Where it comes from | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Messages and answers | What you type or tap, the host's answers, dish photos shown, the branch you picked | You | Answering you for the restaurant |
| Audio and voice text | The live audio of a voice call and the text made from it | You | Holding the call |
| Commercial information | Items in your order, choices, notes, the pickup name you enter, checkout status, the order's progress, refunds Square reports, and any cancellation request you make | You; Square | Taking your order for the restaurant |
| Identifiers | A one-way code made from your network address, a conversation number, an order number and the private code in your order link (we keep only a one-way code of it) | Your browser | Abuse control and limits |
| Approximate location | City, region and time zone from your connection (never a precise position) | Cloudflare | Local time and a weather note |
| Sensitive information you choose to share | Food allergies, religious dietary requirements, health-related diets, accessibility needs | You | Only to answer that question |
| Inferences | None. We do not build profiles. | Not applicable | Not applicable |
During a voice call, the AI provider analyzes the acoustic characteristics of the audio in real time to hear when you start and stop speaking and to tell you apart from background sound. Maitre does not store the audio and does not build a voiceprint or any speaker profile that could identify a guest across sessions. Voice text is kept with the conversation like chat messages.
Your network address is turned on our servers into a one-way code for abuse controls and rate limits; the raw address is not shown to restaurants. Cloudflare provides an approximate location (city and region, not a precise position) and time zone, which the host uses for local time and, through WeatherAPI.com, a short weather note. Only the city or region is sent to the weather provider, and it is not stored in a profile of you.
If you mention food allergies, religious dietary requirements, health-related dietary needs or accessibility needs, that information is used only to answer your question in that conversation, is kept with the conversation, and is not used to profile you. Always confirm such matters with the restaurant's staff.
A restaurant can add staff email addresses to get order alerts. Each person confirms the address before any alert is sent and can stop the alerts from any alert email. Alerts name the dishes, the pickup time and the amount paid. They never include the guest's name, email or phone.
Before signing up, a restaurant can try an import or preview; we keep the website address, documents and menu text submitted and the drafts made from them, under this policy.
3. How we use information
We use information to create and secure accounts, set up restaurants, import and organize menus, answer guests, show dish photos, hold voice calls, take pickup orders through Square, run subscriptions and message allowances, prevent fraud and abuse, send account, security and billing emails, answer support and demo requests, fix problems, and meet legal duties.
No guest conversation, restaurant content or content received from Square is used by Maitre to train or fine-tune any AI model, and our AI providers are barred by their terms from using it to train theirs. "Improving the service" means debugging, checking answer quality and producing aggregate statistics that identify no restaurant or guest. We do not build profiles across restaurants and do not use information for advertising.
We do not treat a restaurant id, a price from a browser, a cart total, a plan name or a checkout-return page as proof of ownership, payment, entitlement or price. Our servers check provider and server records before any protected action.
4. AI processing and transparency
Restaurant menus, answers to common questions, profile details, ordering context and guest messages are sent to our AI provider, OpenAI, to find the relevant facts and write the host's answer; during a voice call the audio is streamed to OpenAI's real-time service for the same purpose. Under OpenAI's API data policy, API inputs and outputs are not used to train OpenAI's models; OpenAI may retain API data for up to 30 days for abuse and misuse monitoring under its own policy, after which it is deleted, unless a zero-retention arrangement applies.
The host is always presented as an AI, and it says so if asked. It can still be wrong, even when the restaurant's information is right. Guests should confirm allergies, ingredients, cross-contact, dietary and religious-diet requirements, prices, availability, alcohol rules and anything about safety with the restaurant's staff. The host makes no decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on anyone.
6. Payments and ordering
Stripe runs checkout and billing for Maitre subscriptions. Square runs checkout and payment for restaurant orders. Card details are entered on their pages, never in a Maitre form, and Maitre never receives or stores full card numbers or CVC security codes.
We keep the provider references and the limited order, checkout, status, amount and currency details needed to run and reconcile the service. For a guest order, the restaurant is the merchant of record and receives what it needs to prepare and hand over the food.
After a guest pays, Maitre makes a private link to the order's page. The page shows the order's progress, the pickup place and time, the items and total, and how to reach the restaurant. It does not show the guest's name, email or card. Anyone who has the link can see the order, the same as with a forwarded email. We keep only a one-way code of the link, and the link stops working 30 days after the pickup time. The restaurant can replace a link, which stops the old one.
To send order emails, we read the guest's email address from the restaurant's Square order each time and do not keep it. Our email provider tells us whether each email was delivered, bounced or was marked as spam. We keep that outcome for 30 days, without the address, subject or bounce text, and a flag on the order if the guest's email could not be delivered.
Guests can recover an order without an account; we keep scrambled lookup keys (name with the last 4 digits of the phone or card, and the email) for 30 days.
A guest can ask the restaurant to cancel a paid order from the order page, the chat or a call with the host. The restaurant decides and makes any refund in Square. Maitre passes the request on, keeps a record of it with the order, and shows the guest what Square reports. Maitre does not cancel orders or issue refunds. A cancellation request holds no free text from the guest.
7. Service providers and subprocessors
We use Supabase, Cloudflare, OpenAI, Stripe, Square, Google, Resend, WeatherAPI.com, Brave Search and Firecrawl. What each one does, where, and a link to its own policy is on the Subprocessors page, which is also our answer to anyone who asks for a list of the specific third parties we have shared information with.
They process information only to provide their service to us, under their own terms. We email restaurant account owners at least 15 days before we add or replace a provider that handles guest information.
9. How long we keep information
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Guest chats, voice-call text and each answer's diagnostic record | Deleted 90 days after they were created, by a daily job. The restaurant can delete them sooner, at once. |
| Guest orders placed through Maitre, with their Square payment and refund readings, history and order email records (never a card number or the guest's email address) | 400 days, so a refund or card dispute can still find the order. An order we are still reading from Square waits, up to 430 days. |
| Order page links | Kept only as a one-way code. The link works until 30 days after the pickup time; the code is deleted 30 days after that, and always with its order. |
| Find your order without an account: scrambled lookup keys (the name on the order with the last 4 digits of the phone or card, and the email; never the name, digits or address themselves) | 30 days. |
| Whether an order email was delivered | 30 days, without the address, subject or bounce text. |
| Cancellation requests and the restaurant's answers | With their order (400 days). The records of emails telling the guest the answer are deleted after 30 days. |
| Restaurant staff contacts for order alerts | Until the owner removes them, the person stops the alerts, or the account ends. An address that was never confirmed is deleted 14 days after its confirmation email. |
| Staff order alerts and test alerts | 90 days. A staff member's "seen" on an order stays with the order (400 days). |
| Guest message send records | 90 days (when a message was sent, the location, chat or voice, the result; no message text and no guest contact). Addresses that never confirmed: 14 days. |
| An unfinished order on our servers | 12 hours after its last change, then deleted within a day. |
| Checkout records and payment links | 7 days after the browser last used a checkout; 30 days after a finished checkout expired or a payment link closed. A link with an order stays with the order. |
| A checkout Square never confirmed | While it is being resolved, then 30 days. |
| Pickup time holds and pickup closures | Holds: 7 days after the hold ends. Closures: 30 days after the closed day. |
| Changes to a location's ordering settings | 400 days. |
| Square sale notices that are not orders through Maitre | 7 days. |
| Voice audio | Not stored by Maitre. It is streamed to OpenAI and discarded. |
| What the widget saves in a guest's browser | About one day for the chat, branch, menu and unfinished order. Up to 3 recent paid orders until the end of the pickup day, and never more than 30 days after pickup. Display preferences until the guest clears them. |
| The working record of an open conversation on our servers | 24 hours, then deleted within 7 more days. |
| Owner account, restaurant, menu, connection and settings | While the account exists; deleted when the account is deleted. |
| Policy acceptance and renewal consent records | 3 years after they are made, or 1 year after the account ends, whichever is longer. |
| Demo requests | Until we have answered and no longer need them, and never more than 12 months; sooner if you ask. |
| Support messages and problem reports | 24 months, or sooner if you ask and we no longer need them. |
| Admin and security audit records | 12 months. |
| Daily usage counters | 30 days. |
| Site and widget usage counts (daily numbers, nothing about a person) | 90 days. |
| Guest blocks for abuse | Until the block ends, then 7 more days. |
| Security and request records at Cloudflare (include network addresses) | Up to 31 days. |
| Our application logs at Cloudflare | Up to 7 days. |
| Platform logs at Supabase | 1 day on our current plan. |
| Database backups | None are kept on our current hosting plan, so deleted data is gone at once. |
| Invoices, charges and refunds | Kept by Stripe under its policy, as financial records. |
Guest conversations are deleted from Maitre's database 90 days after they were created by a scheduled database job that runs daily. A restaurant owner can delete individual messages, whole conversations, or the restaurant's entire history at any time in the dashboard, and those deletions are immediate.
When an account is deleted, its restaurant, menu, conversation, order, connection and settings records are deleted and connected Square access is revoked. Stripe keeps invoices, charges and refunds as financial records; Square and Google keep their own records under their own policies. Records needed to investigate abuse or answer a legal claim may be kept as long as that need lasts.
10. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to know what we hold about you and how it is used and shared, to get a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to opt out of sale, sharing and targeted advertising, to limit the use of sensitive information, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. These rights come from laws including the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, and the privacy laws of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Utah (and Oklahoma from January 2027 and Alabama from May 2027). Residents of Oregon, Minnesota, Delaware and Connecticut may also ask for a list of the specific third parties we have disclosed their information to; that list is our Subprocessors page.
We do not sell or share personal information for advertising and do not use sensitive information beyond answering the conversation it was given in, so there is nothing to opt out of on those points.
Restaurant owners can correct most details, delete guest conversations, disconnect Square, remove the widget and change website settings in the dashboard, and can ask for access, a copy, correction or account deletion through the support form in the dashboard or by email to team@hiremaitre.com.
Guests should first contact the restaurant whose widget they used, because the restaurant decides how its chats are used. You can also email team@hiremaitre.com with the restaurant's name and the approximate date. We act on a verified request ourselves where we can and pass requests to the restaurant within 10 business days where the law makes it the restaurant's decision.
We verify a request using the account email or the details of the conversation, answer within 45 days (extendable once by 45 days where the law allows, with notice), and never require you to create an account. An authorized agent may ask for you with your written permission. If we decline, we explain why, and you may appeal by replying to our decision; if you are not satisfied with the appeal, Virginia residents may contact the Virginia Attorney General, and residents of other states their own Attorney General.
11. Security
We use safeguards designed to reduce unauthorized access, misuse and loss: secrets kept on our servers, row-level database access rules, signed widget sessions tied to the restaurant and website, optional multi-factor sign-in for owners, trusted-device checks, request size and rate limits, and security event logging. Our database host encrypts stored data with AES-256, and every connection uses TLS. We hold no security certification. Owners should use a unique password, protect their email, turn on multi-factor sign-in and report anything suspicious.
Maitre is offered in a controlled beta with a limited number of restaurants and may contain defects or undiscovered weaknesses. No internet service can guarantee complete security. If we confirm a breach affecting guest personal information, we tell the affected restaurant within 72 hours with what it needs for its own notices, and we notify people and regulators where the law requires.
12. Visitors outside the United States
The service is offered to restaurants in the United States, and we and our providers process information in the United States. If you visit from elsewhere, including the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Canada, your information is processed in the United States under this policy. You can reach our privacy officer, Jeshwanth Anthony (Owner), at team@hiremaitre.com. We have not appointed a representative in the European Union or the United Kingdom, because we do not offer the service in, or monitor people in, those places.
13. Children
Maitre accounts are for restaurant businesses and adults who represent them. The widget is not directed to children under 13, and we follow the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The host is instructed not to collect personal information from a child and to end a conversation that appears to be with a young child.
We have no actual knowledge of selling or sharing the personal information of consumers under 16, and we do not sell or share personal information at all. If we learn that a child under 13 has given us personal information, or a parent tells us so at team@hiremaitre.com, we delete it.
14. US state privacy details
| Item | Our answer |
|---|---|
| Categories collected in the last 12 months | Identifiers; commercial information; internet activity; approximate location; audio; sensitive information guests choose to share; restaurant content (Section 2). |
| Sources | You, your browser, the restaurant (including its staff contacts), Square, Stripe, Google, Cloudflare and our email provider's delivery reports (Section 2). |
| Business purposes | Running, securing, supporting and billing for the service (Section 3). |
| Sold or shared for advertising | None, in the last 12 months or ever. |
| Disclosed for a business purpose, and to whom | All categories above, to the service providers on the Subprocessors page and to the restaurant for its own guests (Section 8). |
| Sensitive information | Used only to answer the question it was given in; never to infer anything about you. |
| Consumers under 16 | No actual knowledge of selling or sharing; we do neither. |
| How to ask | Email team@hiremaitre.com; owners can also use the dashboard support form (Section 10). |
| Opt-out preference signals | Global Privacy Control is treated as an opt-out for that browser (Section 5). |
| Verification, agents and appeals | As described in Section 10. |
| Last updated | November 2026 |
15. Changes and contact
We will update this policy when our service, providers, practices or legal duties change. The version, effective date and month of the last update are at the top of this page, every change is listed on the changelog, and earlier versions stay available there. We email account owners before a material change takes effect.
Questions, requests and complaints: team@hiremaitre.com, or the support form in the dashboard. Jeshwanth Anthony, doing business as HireMaitre, Arlington, Virginia, United States.