Privacy policy

These Terms were first posted on 1st February 2025 and are effective immediately.

1. INTRODUCTION

We dream of a planet where everyone has access to affordable, quality food. At Refreshi (“Refreshi”) we are on a mission to bring new life to surplus food and provide more affordable meals. We do this by connecting Users of our App with Stores who have surplus food.

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) aims to give you information on how we collect and process personal information from Users, Partners, and any other individuals with whom we interact through any form of your engagement with us.  This Privacy Policy complies with, and facilitates the obligations required from, the South African Protection of Personal Information Act, No. 4 of 2013 (“POPI”), as amended.

It is important that you read this Privacy Policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your personal information. This Privacy Policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

2. ABOUT THIS POLICY

This Policy, which incorporates our Cookie Policies (to the extent applicable, a copy of which can be found on our Platforms) is designed to help you understand our information collection practices depending on your relationship with us.

The Policy should be read in conjunction with any other applicable policies, terms and conditions in place between you and us.

If you access our Platform from South Africa, the entity responsible for collecting your personal information is:

Refreshi (Pty) Ltd
GR06 Twickenham, Brookside Office Park
11 Imam Haron Rd, Claremont
Cape Town, 7708
South Africa

Company registration number: 2022/860860/07

ACCESSIBILITY – IF YOU ARE HAVING ANY TROUBLE ACCESSING THIS POLICY, PLEASE EMAIL US AT hello@refreshi.co.za

3. TERMS OF REFERENCE

To make this Policy more user friendly, we want to start by introducing you to what we mean when using some of the key terms in this Policy.

• “App” refers to the Refreshi app that can be downloaded to your phone or tablet.
• “Cookie Policy” (and collectively “Cookie Policies”) refers to the cookie policies applicable to users of the Platform.
• “Platform” is used to describe our Website, App, and any online services and products in unison.
• “Store” or “Partner” refers to the businesses (e.g. super markets, bakeries, canteens, restaurants, manufacturers etc.) using the Platform to make surplus food available for purchase.
• “Surprise Bag” refers to the surprise bags available for purchase in the App filled with a mix of surplus food items.
• “Refreshi” (and variously “we”, “us” and “our”) refers to our company Refreshi (Pty) Ltd
  GR06 Twickenham, Brookside Office Park, 11 Imam Haron Rd, Claremont, Cape Town, 7708, South Africa.
• “Website” covers all domains on www.refreshi.co.za.
• “User” refers to you as a consumer using the Refreshi Platform.

4. INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM USERS

4.1 Information needed to use the App

When you use the App, we will collect some personal information about you as a User. Without it, we would not be able to provide all the services requested. This information includes:

• Geo-location: country and your precise or approximate location depending on whether you choose to (i) share your location with us, or (ii) plot in your location manually.
• Responses from trusted payment providers: we do not collect any credit card information. However, when you place an order in the App, we will collect responses from trusted payment service providers. Depending on the payment method, this may include a subscription ID that is sent to the payment service provider.
• Delivery information: if you make a purchase in the App, we will collect your name and address, so we know who we are doing business with. If you choose to provide your email and phone number for receiving notifications, we will also collect this information.

We process this personal information because it is necessary for performing the agreement with you for providing the Platform.

With respect to geo-location, we process this information based on your consent, which you provide (and may at any time revoke) in the settings on your phone or tablet.

We may also process this personal information based on our legitimate interests to:

• provide, improve and develop our Platform
• communicate with you
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy. Where required by applicable legislation, we will ask for your consent before using your personal information for marketing purposes, including sending you direct marketing communications.

4.2 Information you choose to give us

You may choose to provide us with additional personal information about you. This information could include:

• Additional profile information: name, phone number, email, home address, work address, your gender identification, birth date, and information you chose to give us regarding your preferences e.g., favourite Stores, dietary preferences, other preferred location and preferred pick-up time.
• Other information: such as when you fill in a form, respond to surveys, participate in promotions, contests, or sweepstakes as well as when you communicate with our customer care team. This may include demographic and eligibility information as well as health information if you choose to share it with us.

Our legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest, or, where required by applicable legislation, your consent. If we rely on your consent for our processing, we will specifically ask for this.

Where we do not ask for your consent, we process this personal information because it is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve and develop the Platform
• communicate with you, including responding to your requests
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy.

We will never ask for or require that you submit any of your sensitive personal data to us (also known as special categories of personal data). However, if you choose to share health information or other sensitive personal information with our customer care team on your own initiative, e.g. information on allergies, we process this information based on our legitimate interests and in order for us to be able to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, where this is necessary.

4.3 Information automatically collected when using the Refreshi Platform

When you use the Platform, we will automatically collect some of your personal information. This may include:

• Usage Information: such as the pages or content you view, click on or share, the clickstream patterns and length of time spent on each site as well as searches you conduct, orders and purchases you make and which services in our App you are a customer of.
• Log Data and Device Information: such as details about how you’ve used the Platform (including if you clicked on links to third party applications), IP address, access dates and times, hardware and software information, device type, device event information, unique identifiers (e.g. Apple’s IDFA and IDFV), crash data, and the pages you have viewed or engaged with on the Platform and before or after using the Platform.
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: as described in our Cookie Policy.

We process this personal information based on our legitimate interests to:

• provide, improve or develop our Platform
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy.

4.4 Information we collect from third parties

We collect personal information from other sources, such as:

• Third party services: If you link, connect, or login to the Platform using a third party service (e.g. Facebook), you direct the service to send us profile information such as your name and email as controlled by that service or as authorised by you via your privacy settings at that service.

We process this personal information based on your consent which you provide upon directing the third party service to send us your profile information.

4.5 Information collected from recipients of our email communications

Refreshi makes use of external service providers to send out our email communications. These services may record the following information about recipients of our emails:

• who opens the email (IP address, user id, email address),
• when the email is opened (date and time),
• which links in the email that recipients are clicking on,
• whether the email is received and links are activated from a mobile device or a through a browser,
• which operating system is used, and
• Information about which communication/campaign from our side the above is related to.

Refreshi receives reports from our external service providers with the information mentioned above. We use this information to analyse which links in our email communications readers click through to, and use this information to design our future email communications.

We process this information based on our legitimate interest in being able to organise future email communications on the basis of the information collected.

5. INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM OUR PARTNERS, VENDORS AND OTHER BUSINESS CONTACTS

5.1 Information needed to use the Platform

When you register and create a Store account to make Surprise Bags available for ordering on the Platform or to use our digital solution to manage expiry dates within your Store, we collect some personal information about you as a contact person for your Store or as an individual Store owner.

This information includes:

• Profile information: name, email address, phone number, Store address, Store name, type of business, your role within the Store.
• Tax and banking information: your Store’s VAT number and bank details.

If you are an individual Store owner, we process this personal information because it is necessary for performing the agreement with you for your Store’s use of the Platform.

If you are an employee of a Store, our legal basis for processing this personal information is our legitimate interest in being able to provide the Platform.

We may also process the above personal information because it is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve and develop our Platform
• communicate with you
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy. Our legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest, or, where required by applicable legislation, your consent. If we rely on your consent for our processing, we will specifically ask for this.

5.2 Information automatically collected when using the Platform

When you use the Platform, we will automatically collect some personal information from your use of the system.

This may include:

• Usage Information: such as the pages or content you view, click on or share, the clickstream patterns and length of time spent on each site as well as searches you conduct, orders and purchases you process and actions you perform on the Platform,
• Log Data and Device Information: such as details about how you’ve used the Platform, IP address, access dates and times, hardware and software information, device type, device event information, unique identifiers (e.g. Apple’s IDFA and IDFV), crash data, and the pages you have viewed or engaged with before or after using the Platform,
• Cookies and Similar Technologies: as described in our Cookie Policy.

We process this personal information based on the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve or develop our Platform
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy and in our Cookie Policy for the Store side of the Platform.

5.3 Information collected from our vendors and other business partners

As part of our daily operations and communication and interaction with our vendors and other business partners, we collect some personal information about you as a vendor or other business partner or as an employee of one of our vendors or business partners:

• Business contact information: name, email address, phone number, company name, address and type of business as well as your role within the business.
• Tax and banking information: your company’s VAT number and bank details, if you are an individually owned business.

If you are an individual business owner, we process this personal information because it is necessary for performing the agreement that we have with you.

If you are an employee of one of our business partners, our legal basis for processing this personal information is our legitimate interest in being able to fulfil the agreement with your employer.

We may also process the above personal information based on the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve and develop our Platform
• communicate with you
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy.

5.4 Information you chose to give us

You may choose to provide us with additional personal information about you. This information could include:

• Email correspondence: information that you provide as part of our email correspondence with you.
• Other information: information that you provide to us on your own initiative in connection with support queries or other interaction that you have with us.

Our legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest, or, where required by applicable legislation, your consent. If we rely on your consent for our processing, we will specifically ask for this.

Where we do not ask for your consent, we process this personal information because it is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve and develop the Platform
• communicate with you
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

as further explained in section 6 of this Policy.

We will never ask for or require that you submit any of your special categories of personal data to us. However, if you choose to share health information or other special categories of personal information with us on your own initiative, we process this information based on our legitimate interests and in order for us to be able to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. In special circumstances, where required by applicable legislation, we may rely on your consent for our processing.

5.5 Information we collect from third parties

We collect personal information from other sources such as:

• Third party services: If you login to the Platform using a third party service (e.g. Facebook), you direct the service to send us profile information such as your name and email as controlled by that service or as authorized by you via your privacy settings at that service.

We process this personal information based on your consent which you provide when directing the service to send us the above information.

We may also collect personal information in the form of your name, contact details and other relevant business related information, e.g. your role and the company you work for, from publicly accessible sources such as:

• Websites, and
• Online directories

if we need to contact you for a specific purpose as part of our daily operations, or, where allowed under applicable legislation, for marketing purposes, where your consent is not required by the applicable legislation. Our legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in being able to get in contact with you as part of our daily operations and to promote our services.

5.6 Information collected from recipients of our email communications

Refreshi makes use of external service providers to send out our email communications. These services may record the following information about recipients of our emails:

• who opens the email, (IP address, user id, email address)
• when the email is opened (date and time),
• which links in the email that recipients are clicking on,
• whether the email is received and links are activated from a mobile device or a through a browser,
• which operating system is used, and
• Information about which communication/campaign from our side the above is related to.

Refreshi receives reports from our external service providers with the information mentioned above. We use this information to analyse which links in our email communications readers click through to, and use this information to design our future email communications.

We process this information based on our legitimate interest in being able to organise future email communications on the basis of the information collected.

You may at any time opt out of receiving our marketing emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in our marketing emails or by submitting your email to unsubscribe via this link: https://refreshi.co.za/privacy.

6. HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

6.1 Provide, improve, and develop the Platform

We will use some of the personal information we collect about you for the purpose of providing you with the best possible Platform.

For Users of our App this includes:

• creating and managing your account with us and processing your orders,
• personalizing and customizing your experience based on your interactions with the Platform, your search and purchase history as well as your profile information and preferences e.g., by showing you a map or list view of nearby Stores and suggesting the most relevant Stores,
• performing analytics, debugging, and conducting research,
• conducting analyses in order to provide you with relevant functionality.

For users of the Store side of our Platform this includes:

• creating and managing your Store’s account with us and processing orders for Surprise Bags at your Store,
• inform your Store on orders, payment and required actions,
• inform Users of updates from your Store, e.g. cancellations,
• to manage payout to your Store for Surprise Bags sold,
• personalising and customising your experience based on your interactions with the Platform,
• performing analytics, debugging, and conducting research,
• conducting analyses in order to provide you with relevant functionality.

6.2 Communicate with you

We will use some of the personal information we collect about you for the purpose of allowing us to get in touch with you. This includes:

• responding to your e-mails and/or support inquiries,
• sending you notifications of technical or legal nature, e.g. upon revision of our policies, or if one of your orders has been cancelled by a Store,
• sending you notifications and announcements about us and our products via email, SMS and/or push notifications to the extent that you are opted in to receiving such communications.

To the extent permitted by local law, we may send you marketing communications without relying on your consent as a legal basis or rely on your soft opt-in to receive such marketing communications, as applicable.

6.3 Provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing

For Users:

We will use some of the personal information collected about you for the purpose of helping us in our continuous efforts to spread the word about food waste. This may entail:

• personalizing, measuring, and improving our advertising,
• analyzing preferences in order to tailor our promotional messages, marketing, advertising, and other information,
• sending you promotional messages, marketing and advertising based on your preferences as well as social media advertising through social media platforms,
• administering surveys, contests, or other promotional activities or events sponsored or managed by Refreshi or its Partners, and inviting you to events and relevant opportunities.

For Partners or employees of Partners:

We will use some of the personal information collected about you for the purpose of helping us in our continuous efforts to spread the word about food waste. This may entail:

• personalizing, measuring, and improving our advertising,
• analyzing how you and our other Partners use the Platform in order to tailor our promotional messages, marketing, advertising, and other information,
• sharing your data with third parties such as our advertising networks (only if you have opted in to marketing cookies on the Store side of the Platform), to help us identify other people and businesses that may wish to join us in our mission of minimising food waste,
• sending you promotional messages, marketing and advertising based on your preferences as well as social media advertising through social media platforms,
• administering surveys or promotional activities or events sponsored or managed by Refreshi or its Partners, and inviting you to events and relevant opportunities.

6.3.1 Targeted advertising

We may ourselves, or with third-party vendors, use your information to deliver targeted advertising to you when you use our Platform or visit other websites. Cookies, clickstream data, and other similar technologies may be used in this process. For example, if you are searching for information related to our services, we or our vendor may cause an advertisement to appear on other websites you view with information on our App and our services. This form of advertising, sometimes called “targeted advertising,” “behavioral advertising,” or “cross-context behavioral advertising,” enables us and our vendors to know about your interests in connection with the delivery of a specific ad. We believe that such advertising is helpful because it allows you to see advertisements that are relevant to your interests.

For targeted advertisements delivered through mobile apps, Users may opt out of certain ads or reset advertising identifiers via their device settings. To learn how to limit ad tracking or to reset the advertising identifier on your iOS and Android device, visit the following links:

• iOS – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074
• Android – https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en

7. REASONS WE SHARE INFORMATION

7.1 Sharing with your consent or at your direction

Where you provide consent, we share your information as described at the time of consent, such as when authorising a third-party application or website to link to your Refreshi account or participating in promotional activities with Refreshi Partners or third parties.

If you have opted-in to marketing cookies on our Platform, we may share your data with third party advertising platforms to increase awareness of our Platform and mission, drive traffic to Refreshi, or otherwise promote our Platform as further described in section 6.3 of this Policy and our Cookie Policies for Users and the Store side of the Platform, respectively.

7.3 Data processors

We may share personal information with service providers to help us run our business and deliver the Platform. These service providers may assist us to fulfil the purposes set out in this Policy, including (but not limited to) by:

• Processing payments for orders, purchases and refunds on the Platform,
• hosting software functions which enable the functioning and development of our Platform,
• providing hosting services,
• supporting tools for improving the functionality, availability, resilience and security of the Platform,
• performing data analytics,
• providing performance measurements for our ads and campaigns,
• automating SMS, email and ads delivery, such as e.g. sending out newsletters,
• managing our social media and online advertising presence,
• providing integrated tools which helps us deliver customer care services.

Whenever we use a service provider to process personal data on our behalf, we make sure that they are contractually bound to protect your personal information by way of a data processing agreement.

7.4 Third party geo-location services

We use third party geo-location services, whom we share data with, to provide our Platform and to help us run our business as described below. These third party geo-location services may process personal information for their own purposes as controllers.

If you are a User of our Website we may share your approximate geo-location (city level) (subject to your consent as described in section 4.1) with our third party geo-location service provider, Google.

If you make a purchase in the App, which is available for delivery, we share the specified delivery address with our third party geo-location provider, Google, to validate the delivery address. Our legal basis for sharing this information is our legitimate interest in being able to verify that the specified delivery address is in fact an existing address so that our courier is able to deliver your order.

If you are a user of the Store side of the Platform, we share the address of your Store with our third party geo-location provider, Google, based on our legitimate interest in being able to see where your Store is located on a map for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us in order to:

• provide, improve and develop the Platform
• communicate with you
• provide, tailor, measure, and improve our advertising and marketing.

Google Maps features and content is subject to the then-current versions of the: (1) Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service at https://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html; and (2) Google Privacy Policy at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. We encourage you to familiarise yourself with these terms before using our Services.

7.5 Public authorities

We may disclose your personal information to courts, law enforcement, governmental or public authorities, including to the police in connection with criminal investigations, only if and to the extent we are required or permitted to do so by law.

7.6 PR and media agencies

We may share your personal information with third parties such as PR, media and or other types of promotional agencies, if you have consented to participate in our promotional activities or have entered into a contract with us for participation in such promotional activities. Depending on the circumstances these PR and media agencies may be processing personal information as either independent controllers or as processors, processing personal information on our behalf and under our instruction. Where the PR or media agency is processing personal information as data processors, our relationship will be governed by a data processing agreement in accordance with applicable legislation.

7.7 Business transfers

In the event we are involved in a bankruptcy, insolvency, merger, acquisition or reorganisation event, your personal information may be transferred or shared as part of that transaction (e.g., for due diligence purposes) with advisors, counterparties, authorities and other relevant third parties as necessary. This Policy will continue to apply to your information also after the information has been transferred or shared with any new Refreshi entity.

7.8 Sharing with other third parties

In order to provide you with our services, we may need to engage third party service providers such as freight carriers or logistics partners, to assist us in fulfilling our contractual obligations and for purposes of our legitimate interest in sending out advertisements. These service providers will have access to personal information solely for the purposes of performing the services on our behalf. We ensure that any third party service providers that we engage are bound by appropriate data protection and confidentiality obligations.

8. INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFERS

We may share and process your personal information outside of South Africa for the purpose of cloud storage, to engage with third parties, and as part of our company structure. Whenever we may transfer your personal information out of South Africa, we will ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented. We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have appropriate data protection legislation in place similar to that of South Africa. Where we use service providers, we may use specific contracts/clauses which ensure personal information is processed and secured lawfully.

Please contact us if you want further information regarding transfer of personal information out of South Africa.

9. STORAGE PERIOD

We retain personal information for as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained and consistent with applicable law. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include:

• the length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you and provide our Platform to you e.g., for as long as you have an account with us or keep using the Platform,
• whether there is a legal obligation to which we are subject as certain local laws require us to keep records of your transactions for a certain period of time before we can delete them, and/or
• whether retention is advisable in light of our legal position e.g., in regard to applicable statutes of limitations, litigation or regulatory investigations.

10. DATA SECURITY

The security of your personal information and our Platform is a top priority for us.

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational (including physical) security measures to protect your personal information from accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, the personal information transmitted, stored or otherwise processed by us.

We also only use suppliers that implement appropriate technical and organisational security measures in accordance with industry practises for good IT security.

11. YOUR RIGHTS

You have rights in relation to your personal information where we are the relevant “Responsible Party” over such personal information, subject to the conditions and exceptions set out in applicable law:

• Right of access: you have a right to gain access to the information that we process about you.
• Right to rectification: you have a right to have incorrect information that we hold about you rectified.
• Right to erasure: you have the right to have information about you erased. However, please note that there may be limitations to exercising the right to erasure in accordance with applicable law.
• Right to restriction and objection: you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information and similarly a right to object to processing.
• Right to data portability: you have the right to receive your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
• Right to withdraw your consent: if processing of your personal information is based on consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that withdrawal of your consent will not affect the lawfulness of the processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.

Please note that certain personal data may be exempt from the above-mentioned rights pursuant to applicable data privacy laws, or other laws and regulations.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Users with citizenships from jurisdictions other than South Africa, please note that we comply with South African data protection laws when processing your personal information as we are a South African entity. Should foreign law be applicable to your use of the Services and/or the Platform in any way, including how we may process your personal information, please contact us and we will gladly engage with you on your rights.

11.1 Easy access to exercise your rights directly in our App

Our App provides you with full control over your own personal information. We have incorporated privacy by design and privacy by default on our Platforms and have user-friendly features for you to be able to exercise your rights directly in the App, e.g. to delete your personal information as well as an option to retrieve a copy of the personal information that we process about you. If you wish to exercise your rights directly in the App, please visit your account settings in the App. 

You may also:

• unsubscribe from our newsletter
• request a copy of your data, or
• delete your account

by submitting your email address to us.

11.2 Still have questions or wish to file a complaint

If the self-service that our App provides has not solved your query, or you wish to exercise other rights than provided for directly in the App or as set out above, you are welcome to contact us at: _______________________.

We will make sure to answer your request without undue delay and in any event within one month of receiving your request. If your request is complex, we may need more time to process it, and can extend this deadline by two further months.

You always have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority of competent jurisdiction, if you are not satisfied with our response. However, we encourage you to always reach out to us first so that we may have the opportunity to help you with your request.

12. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

Our Platform is intended for Users 18 years of age or older, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from data subjects under the age of 16. When we become aware that personal information (or other information that is protected under applicable law) from a child under 16 has been collected, we will use all reasonable efforts to delete such information from our databases. If you believe we might have any personal information from or about a child under 16, please contact us by using the information the section below titled “CONTACT INFORMATION.”

13. CHANGES TO THE POLICY

You can stay updated on any changes to this Policy by visiting our Website and App. In case we make material changes to the Policy, we will notify you on the Platform or by using the email you provided when signing up to our Platform.

14. CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions about our processing of your personal information, please contact our privacy team using below contact details.

Where required under local law, we have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) in accordance with local legislation to handle your request.

Refreshi (Pty) Ltd
GR06 Twickenham, Brookside Office Park
11 Imam Haron Rd, Claremont
Cape Town, 7708
South Africa

E-mail: hello@refreshi.co.za