ROOTS — Independently Owned and Operated provides a restaurant operations platform that helps restaurants manage employees, availability, time-off requests, schedules, notifications, and related operational records.
This Privacy Policy explains how ROOTS collects, uses, stores, shares, retains, and protects information when restaurants, managers, and employees use ROOTS websites, applications, portals, and integrations.
1. Roles and scope
Restaurants and employers decide what employee information they enter into ROOTS, who may access it, and how it is used for their operations. Depending on the circumstances, the restaurant or employer may be responsible for that employee information, while ROOTS processes it to provide the requested services.
This policy describes the ROOTS platform. A restaurant may provide additional privacy notices about its own employment and recordkeeping practices.
2. Information ROOTS processes
Employee information
Depending on the features a restaurant uses and the information authorized managers enter, ROOTS may process:
- Names, preferred names, employee identifiers, and employment status.
- Email addresses, mobile phone numbers, physical addresses, and emergency-contact information.
- Restaurant locations, departments, positions, roles, and employment dates.
- Availability, scheduling preferences, assigned shifts, schedule history, and hours.
- Time-off requests, request status, employee notes, and manager review notes.
- Qualifications, certifications, training records, skills, and operational permissions.
- Payroll identifiers, wage information, uniform sizes, and other manager-entered employment information.
- Performance reviews, corrective actions, documents, and manager notes when entered by an authorized manager.
Manager and account information
ROOTS may process manager names, login identifiers, restaurant and department permissions, password verifiers, session records, authentication events, failed-login information, and administrative audit records. ROOTS stores password and employee PIN verifiers rather than plaintext passwords or PINs.
Schedules and operational information
ROOTS may process restaurant locations, departments, staffing requirements, employee availability, scheduling rules, assigned shifts, draft and published schedules, schedule history, time-off information, manager-approved changes, and related operational notes.
Website and technical information
When a person visits a ROOTS website or hosted portal, the systems and providers delivering the service may process technical information such as an IP address, browser type, requested URL, timestamps, and security or diagnostic information. Authenticated portals use cookies needed for login, session management, and request security.
3. How ROOTS uses information
ROOTS uses information to:
- Create, review, manage, and publish employee schedules.
- Process availability and time-off requests.
- Provide employees with access to their requests and published schedules.
- Send schedule, time-off, access-setup, and related operational notifications.
- Help authorized managers make staffing and operational decisions.
- Manage accounts, permissions, authentication, and sessions.
- Maintain delivery, security, publication, and administrative records.
- Diagnose errors, prevent duplicate notifications, and troubleshoot the service.
- Protect ROOTS, restaurants, employees, and connected accounts from unauthorized access or misuse.
- Support operational recordkeeping and comply with applicable requirements.
4. Gmail integration
ROOTS offers an optional Gmail integration that lets an authorized manager connect a Gmail account and send schedule and time-off notifications through that account.
The Gmail integration requests only the following OAuth permission:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.send
This permission allows ROOTS to send email on behalf of the connected Gmail account. It does not authorize ROOTS to:
- Read or download inbox or sent messages.
- List or search mailbox history.
- Access Gmail contacts.
- Manage labels, drafts, filters, or mailbox settings.
- Delete or alter existing mailbox contents.
When a manager sends an email through ROOTS, Google receives the information needed to deliver it, including the recipient address, subject, and message body. Depending on the notification, the message may include an employee name, schedule, shift information, time-off status, restaurant information, public schedule link, or account-setup link.
ROOTS may retain delivery timestamps, outcomes, sanitized error information, recipient addresses, and Gmail message or thread identifiers. ROOTS does not intentionally store message bodies in its email-delivery audit records.
5. Gmail OAuth credentials
ROOTS stores the Gmail OAuth client configuration and authorized-account tokens in the local ROOTS application data directory. These files are excluded from the source-code repository. ROOTS uses restricted file permissions where the operating system supports them and uses atomic replacement when updating its Gmail token file.
These local credential files are not currently encrypted at rest and are not stored in an operating-system credential vault. Anyone with sufficient access to the computer and its files may be able to access them.
Disconnecting Gmail from ROOTS removes the locally stored Gmail authorization token. It may not revoke the authorization recorded by Google. A user may separately review or revoke ROOTS access through the security settings for the connected Google Account.
6. Other Google Workspace integrations
Separate from Gmail delivery, ROOTS can support optional Google Workspace connections for restaurant operations. If configured and authorized, these connections may request:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonlyhttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.filehttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheetshttps://www.googleapis.com/auth/documents.readonly
Depending on the selected feature and permissions granted, ROOTS may list metadata for accessible Drive files, read manager-selected Google Sheets or Docs, read scheduling or request-off information from configured spreadsheets, and write manager-approved schedule values or formatting to selected Sheets.
The Gmail email feature does not use these Workspace permissions. Workspace connections are configured separately and should be limited to the files and operational purposes authorized by the restaurant. ROOTS stores connected Workspace credentials locally for each configured restaurant; these files are not currently encrypted at rest.
7. Google API data and Limited Use
ROOTS uses information received from Google APIs only to provide or improve the user-facing Gmail and Google Workspace features described in this policy.
ROOTS' use and transfer to any other application of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.
ROOTS does not sell Google user data or use it for advertising, credit decisions, or data brokerage. ROOTS personnel do not access Google user data except when the user has affirmatively agreed to allow access to the specific Google user data needed to provide user-requested support, when access is necessary to investigate security or abuse, when access is necessary to comply with applicable law, or when the data is aggregated and used for legitimate internal operations in accordance with applicable privacy and other legal requirements.
8. How information is stored
ROOTS uses a combination of local and hosted storage, depending on which features are configured.
Local ROOTS installations may store employee records, availability, time-off requests, schedules, publication records, notification ledgers, integration settings, and OAuth credentials on the computer running ROOTS.
When hosted features are enabled, ROOTS may transmit and store employee identities, phone numbers, restaurant and department assignments, time-off requests, notes, published schedules, notification state, authentication records, and delivery audits through hosted application and database services.
9. How information is shared
ROOTS may make information available to:
- The restaurant, employer, managers, and personnel authorized to use the relevant records.
- Google when an authorized user connects Gmail or another Google Workspace service.
- Hosting, database, network, security, and infrastructure providers used to operate ROOTS.
- Authorities or other parties when disclosure is required by law or reasonably necessary to protect rights, safety, or security.
Service providers receive only the information needed to perform the applicable service.
10. Security
ROOTS uses administrative and technical safeguards intended to protect information. Depending on the feature, these include restaurant- and department-based access controls, hashed passwords and PINs, hashed sessions and access tokens, login throttling and lockouts, session expiration, cross-site request forgery protections, secure and HTTP-only session cookies in hosted deployments, browser security headers, sanitized email-delivery diagnostics, audit records, atomic updates for selected local records, and HTTPS for public hosted services.
No security measure can guarantee absolute protection. Current limitations include:
- Some locally stored personal information and credentials are not encrypted at rest.
- Local file protections depend on the operating system and computer configuration.
- Anyone with a valid public schedule link may view the schedule information available through it.
- Public schedule links do not currently expire automatically.
- The security of hosted databases, backups, proxy configuration, and administrator devices depends partly on the providers and configurations used by ROOTS and the restaurant.
11. Published schedule access
Published schedules may include employee names, work locations, departments, dates, and assigned shifts. ROOTS may make a schedule available through a unique web link designed to be difficult to guess.
A schedule link acts as a bearer link: anyone possessing a valid link may be able to view the schedule without an additional login. Restaurants and employees should avoid sharing schedule links with unauthorized people.
12. Retention and deletion
ROOTS retains information as needed to provide scheduling and operational features, maintain historical and audit records, protect the service, and support applicable recordkeeping obligations. ROOTS does not currently apply one universal automatic deletion period to all information.
Deactivating or archiving an employee does not necessarily erase historical schedules, time-off requests, or audit records. Published schedules, revisions, delivery records, and administrative audits may remain until removed through an approved process. Messages sent through Gmail remain subject to the connected Google account's retention and deletion settings.
Authorized managers can delete certain time-off requests, revoke employee access, reset credentials, deactivate accounts, and disconnect supported integrations. Some deletion actions may be restricted when records are linked to operational history or must be retained by the restaurant.
Employees should ordinarily direct access, correction, or deletion requests to their employer or restaurant manager. Privacy requests may also be sent to the ROOTS privacy contact below. ROOTS may need to verify the requester's identity and authority before acting.
13. Restaurant responsibilities
Restaurants using ROOTS are responsible for deciding what employee information they enter, providing required employee notices, limiting access to personnel with legitimate operational responsibilities, protecting manager devices and credentials, keeping records accurate, protecting exported files and schedule links, and complying with applicable employment, privacy, and recordkeeping requirements.
14. Changes to this policy
ROOTS may update this Privacy Policy when the platform, integrations, legal requirements, or information practices change. The current version will be published at this URL with its effective date.
If a change materially affects how ROOTS uses Google user data, ROOTS will provide appropriate notice and obtain consent when required before using that data for a new purpose.