The deal, in plain words.

1. Who the agreement is with

The agreement is between the business that registers the venue account ("you", "the venue") and the contracting company named on your sign-up confirmation and invoices, trading as Dinewise® ("we", "us"): [legal name, registered number and registered address]. Contact: info@dinewise.ie.

The service is for businesses. By signing up you confirm you are acting for a business and have authority to bind it. Consumer protection rules for private individuals do not apply to this agreement, except where the law says they cannot be excluded.

2. The service

The EMMA suite is an online service made up of modules. Which modules you have depends on your plan: the venue dashboard, EMMA Trains (training, assessments and Competence Records), the Menu Builder (recipes, menus, allergen and nutrition records), appraisals, and other tools we add. TAPPiTS™ and guest comment cards are a separate product (section 9).

We keep the service available and secure with reasonable care and skill. We may improve, change or withdraw features. If we withdraw a feature that is a main part of your plan, we will tell you at least 30 days in advance and you may cancel without charge for the remaining period.

3. Accounts, venue codes and PINs

The owner or manager account controls the venue. Staff sign in with the venue code and their own personal PIN; handlers (fire warden, first aider, allergen lead and other people you appoint) sign in with their own handler PIN.

• Each person uses only their own sign-in. Sharing a PIN, or signing for someone else, defeats the record and breaks these terms.
• You decide who is a handler and for which topics, and you are responsible for appointing people who are competent to judge those topics.
• When someone leaves or a PIN may be known to others, reset it or switch the person off straight away.
• Tell us at once if you think an account has been misused.

4. Training and competence records

EMMA Trains gives your staff training content and assessments, and keeps a Competence Record for each assessment: the score, the answers to put right, the floor checks your handlers watch at work, and your countersignature. Every sign-off is made online by a named person and kept in an audit trail that shows if any entry has been changed or removed.

• It is your venue's own record. A Competence Record shows what your venue trained, assessed and supervised. It is not a certificate, a licence or an accredited qualification, and it does not by itself prove that a legal duty has been met.
• The duty stays with you. Food business operators must make sure food handlers are supervised and instructed or trained in food hygiene to suit their work (Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter XII), and employers keep their duties under health and safety law. EMMA helps you do and show this; it does not take the duty over.
• Some roles need more. Where the law, your insurer or your own risk assessment requires a particular course or certificate (for example occupational first aid, or supervisory food safety training for the person running your food safety management system), EMMA does not replace it.
• Content is general. Training content reflects Irish and EU guidance as at the content version shown on each record. Your venue may need to add its own procedures. Tell us about anything you think is wrong and we will review it.
• A record is "Competent" only when the assessment is passed or put right, every to-do and floor check is signed, and an owner or manager has countersigned. Nobody can sign their own record, and a countersigned record cannot be changed.

5. Training records are not disciplinary files

Competence Records exist to train and protect people. You agree that:

• a test result, a wrong answer or an open to-do is a training need, not misconduct, and will not on its own be used as grounds for discipline or dismissal;
• any employment decision follows your own fair procedures and the law, and is your responsibility, not ours;
• staff are told what is recorded about them, why, and how to see it (section 7), before they first sign in;
• records are not used to monitor staff for any purpose other than training, supervision and showing compliance.

6. Menus and allergen information

The Menu Builder helps you record recipes, ingredients and the 14 allergens, and produces allergen information for your team and your guests. The allergen test in EMMA Trains is built from the same records.

• You are the food business operator. You are legally responsible for the allergen information you give guests, including for food that is not prepacked (Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 and, in Ireland, S.I. No. 489 of 2014, under which this information must be available in writing). Our tools help you organise and present it; they do not make that responsibility ours.
• Only confirmed lines count. An allergen line is treated as confirmed only when someone at your venue has checked it against the recipe, the product label or the supplier specification and recorded the answer. Anything not confirmed is shown as not confirmed, never as safe.
• Check your suppliers. You must check supplier specifications and labels, and check again whenever a recipe, supplier, brand or substitute changes. Suggestions EMMA makes from ingredient names are a starting point for that check, not an answer.
• Cross-contact is yours to judge. Shared fryers, surfaces and equipment can introduce allergens that no recipe shows. Record them as "may contain" where they apply.
• No guarantee. Because the information comes from your venue and your suppliers, we cannot and do not guarantee it is complete or correct. The allergen test checks that staff know what your records say; if a record is wrong, the test will teach the wrong answer, so correct the record first.

7. Staff data and data protection

For the personal data of your staff and handlers kept in the service (names, roles, start dates, PIN sign-ins, assessment results, sign-offs and the audit trail), you are the controller and we are your processor. Our data processing terms, which meet Article 28 of the GDPR, form part of this agreement.

• We process that data only to run the service for you and on your instructions, keep it confidential and secure, and tell you without undue delay about a personal data breach that affects it.
• You give staff a short data notice before they first sign in. A template is in the Competence File (Document 9).
• From the staff screen you can export everything held about a person, and erase a person who has left. Erasure replaces their name with "Erased staff member" so the audit trail stays intact.
• Do not enter health, medical or disciplinary information about staff into EMMA.
• DRAFT for solicitor How we protect it: encrypted in transit (https only) and at rest (AES-256, with the key kept apart from the data); passwords and PINs stored only as one-way scrambled values; a change log that shows any tampering. We never sell your data or share it with anyone for their own use. We use only the service providers named in our privacy policy, under data processing contracts, and we will tell you before that list changes. See How we protect your data.
• Our own use of your account details (for billing and support) is covered by our privacy policy.

8. Appraisals

DRAFT for solicitor Appraisals are completed and stored on your own device. We do not receive or keep your answers or the full reports. Keeping them safe, backing them up and handling them under data protection law is your responsibility.

If you choose Save summary to my dashboard at the end of an appraisal, we keep only that summary: the date, the headline score and section scores, up to five top findings and the follow-ups you tick, with their due dates. It is stored encrypted like the rest of your account, appears in your data download, and you can take it off the dashboard at any time. Do not write names or personal details into follow-ups.

9. TAPPiTS™ and guest comment cards

TAPPiTS™ tap cards and guest comment cards are a separate product with their own price and terms. Comment-card counts appear on your dashboard for convenience; using the dashboard does not sign you up to TAPPiTS™.

10. Plans, fees and cancelling

• Your plan and its price are shown when you sign up and on your invoices. Prices are in euro and exclude VAT, which is added at the rate in force.
• Paid plans are billed monthly in advance unless you choose another period. You can cancel at any time; the plan runs to the end of the period already paid and is not refunded part-way.
• We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice. If you do not accept the change, you may cancel before it takes effect.
• If a payment fails and is not put right within 14 days of our reminder, we may move the account to the free plan or suspend paid features. Your records are kept and you can still export them.

11. Acceptable use

Do not: share sign-ins; let anyone sit a test for someone else; sign for something you did not see; try to get round security or the audit trail; copy or resell training content or questions outside your venue; or upload anything unlawful or anything you have no right to share. We may suspend access that puts the service or other users at risk, and will tell you why.

12. Content and your data

Training content, questions, software, the EMMA, EMMA Trains, Dinewise® and TAPPiTS™ names and the design of the service belong to us or our licensors. You may use them inside your venue while your plan is active.

Your data (menus, recipes, staff records, Competence Records) belongs to you. We use it only to provide the service to you, and we may use anonymous, combined figures that identify no venue or person to improve the service.

13. Liability

• Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow to be limited.
• We are not liable for loss caused by information your venue or your suppliers entered or confirmed, by your staff's actions, or by decisions you make using the service, including allergen information given to guests and employment decisions.
• We are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, business or goodwill, or for indirect or consequential loss.
• Otherwise, our total liability in any 12 months is limited to the fees you paid us for the service in those 12 months.

14. Ending the agreement

You can close your account at any time from My account → My data. DRAFT for solicitor A close request deletes nothing straight away: we contact you to confirm, remind you to download your records, and only then delete. We may end the agreement with 30 days' notice, or straight away if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms. After the account closes you have 30 days to export your records; we then delete them, except where the law requires us to keep something, and except backups that are overwritten in the normal cycle.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of any change that is to your disadvantage. The version number and date at the top show which version applies.

16. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Ireland, and the courts of Ireland have jurisdiction over any dispute.

See also: Legal centre · Privacy policy · Questions: info@dinewise.ie