Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 19, 2026

Overview

ONDA Menu reads restaurant menus for you — translating them, explaining dishes, and remembering places you liked. It is built on one rule: we store information about restaurants our users provide. We store nothing that identifies our users. Menus you read and photograph become shared, anonymous restaurant information. Everything personal stays on your phone.

What Stays on Your Phone

The following is stored only on your device and is never sent to us:

  • Photos of places and of your food

  • Your own copies of menu photos

  • The places you save, and the names you give them

  • Your ratings, tags, notes and "want to try" marks

  • Any changes you make to a dish's name, description, price or labels

  • Your likes and limitations — language, home currency and food preferences

  • Your filter settings

If your phone's own backup (such as iCloud Backup) is turned on, this data is included in that backup, which is controlled by you and Apple.

What Is Shared, and How It Is Made Anonymous

When you photograph a menu in the app, it is sent to our server so the dishes can be read and added to a shared menu database that helps other travelers.

  • Menu photos are sent for reading, then deleted from our server as soon as the dishes are saved. If reading fails, the photo is deleted within 7 days. Before any photo leaves your phone, the app removes its hidden information (location, date and phone model).

  • Menu text from a website: when you paste a menu's web address, your phone opens that page itself and sends only the menu text and the address.

  • The dishes read from the menu — names, descriptions, prices, ingredients and diet labels — become shared restaurant information. Other people see only this text, never anyone's photos.

  • The restaurant's location: if you are at the restaurant, your phone's location is used to place it on the map. This becomes the restaurant's location; it is not stored as information about you.

  • When and where a menu was read is stored only as the date and an area of about 100 meters — never the exact time or spot.

  • An anonymous ID is sent so we can limit how many menus one phone reads per day. It is a random number that changes every day, is not linked to your name, phone or account, and is erased from our records after 2 days.

Services That Handle This Data

  • Xano hosts our database and server, in the United States.

  • Anthropic (maker of Claude) reads menu photos and text, and translates dishes.

  • Apple: when you search for a restaurant by name or address, the search is handled by Apple's location services on your phone.

  • ExchangeRate-API provides daily exchange rates. Your phone downloads them; nothing about you is sent.

  • Restaurant websites: when you paste a menu address, your phone visits that website directly, as your web browser would.

  • Like any internet service, these can see your device's internet (IP) address when your phone connects. Our menu records do not store it.

No Account Required

ONDA Menu does not ask you to create an account or sign in, and never asks for your name, email address or phone number. There is no user tracking or analytics.

No Advertising, No Selling

ONDA Menu contains no advertisements. We do not sell or share data with advertisers or data brokers, and restaurants cannot pay to appear higher in results.

Data Deletion

You can delete photos within the app at any time. Deleting the app removes everything it stored on your phone. Shared menu information is restaurant information and is not linked to you, so there is nothing personal of yours to delete from our server.

Camera, Photos and Location

  • Camera: to photograph menus and places.

  • Photos: to use a photo or screenshot you choose. Only the photos you pick are used.

  • Location (only while using the app): to place a restaurant on the map when you are there. You can search for the restaurant instead.

Children's Privacy

ONDA Menu is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The effective date at the top shows when it was last revised.

This Website

onda.menu is hosted by Squarespace, which may set functional cookies needed to run the site and keep standard server logs (such as IP address and browser type). We add no analytics, tracking or advertising cookies, and we don't use these logs to identify you.

Contact

Questions about this policy or how your data is handled: david.richardson@ondareplay.com