Privacy and compliance

VAT display

Every venue sets a VAT rate from /app/settings. The public menu’s footer note always reads “Prices include {rate}% VAT” with that rate filled in. Settings also has a “prices include VAT” checkbox, but it doesn’t change that wording today — the note states the rate the same way either way.

SFDA calories

Saudi menus are expected to show calories per item. Qaema has a calorie field on every item, and a separate estimate flag: a value your agent supplies during an import or a chat is marked as an estimate until you confirm it, and typing a number into the item drawer yourself always clears the flag. The public menu shows the plain number either way — a visitor never sees whether it came from you or from an estimate. See Allergens and calories.

Allergen disclaimer and attestation

Allergen tags on a menu are entered or confirmed by you, the venue — Qaema never infers one on its own. An agent-suggested allergen from an import is marked as an estimate until you attest to it. The public menu (and a visitor’s own AI assistant checking allergens through the public menu MCP server) always pairs a result with a disclaimer to confirm with staff before ordering, and the full allergen and calorie disclaimer covers how “safe,” “may contain” and “unknown” are defined.

Visitor privacy on the public menu

A public menu page sets no cookies and runs no advertising or third-party trackers. Where a venue has analytics switched on, each visit is counted with a session identifier derived by hashing the venue, the request address, the browser’s user agent and the local Riyadh calendar day together with a secret the platform holds — only that 16-character hash is ever written down; the address and user agent themselves are never stored, and the hash changes at midnight Riyadh time, so a visit can’t be tied to the same device on another day.

Analytics records are deleted 400 days after they’re written. A venue owner can switch analytics off at any time from the dashboard, after which its menu and printed QR codes stop counting anything at all. Feedback is separate from that switch — a rating submitted through the feedback form is kept regardless of whether analytics is on, but it’s deleted on the same 400-day schedule as analytics events, not kept indefinitely.

Full detail lives in the privacy notice, including exactly what’s recorded when analytics is on.

Where data lives

Data is stored with Neon (database) and Cloudflare (edge cache, media), in data centres outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; transfers rely on the safeguards the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) permits.