Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 11, 2026

1. Who we are

Barda is a community platform connecting Montréal food businesses (the "merchants") with people who want to rescue their surplus food at a reduced price (the "users").

Person responsible for the protection of personal information:
Person responsible for the protection of personal information, Barda
Email: privacy@bardalocal.com

Any question, request for access, correction, or deletion, or complaint concerning your personal information may be addressed to the responsible person, at this address.

2. What we collect

We collect only what the platform needs to function:

For every account: your name, email address, preferred language (French or English), and password (which we never see in plain text — it is handled securely by our authentication provider). You may add a profile photo if you wish.

Your date of birth. We ask for it when you sign up, only to check that you are at least 16. It is kept only in your profile: it is not stored with your sign-in details, no merchant or other user can see it, and it is used for nothing else. If it shows you are under 16, the account is not created and the date you entered is not saved in our database.

Your acceptance of the Terms of Use. When you sign up and when you reserve, we record the version of the Terms you accepted, a digital fingerprint of the text you could read, the language of the page, the date and time and, for a reservation, the order identifier. This record serves as proof of the contract. This record may fail if there is a technical problem.

For users: your reservation history — item reserved, merchant, quantity, price, pickup code, and any note you choose to add.

Reservation confirmation email. After you reserve, we send you an email with the pickup code, the shop, the item, and the allergen and date information, provided your email address is confirmed and your order is still open when the sending starts. It does not mention your name. If the email cannot be sent or does not arrive, this information remains accessible in your account. To send it, we read your email address from your account at the moment of sending; it is not copied anywhere else on our side. Our technical log records neither your address nor your name: it keeps only the last six characters of the order identifier and technical codes about the sending (such as the provider's queue number).

Missed pickups and last-minute cancellations: when a store reports that an order was not picked up, or when you cancel less than one hour before pickup ends, we record the incident with the order details, along with any correction by the store or withdrawal by our team.

Your favourite stores: the stores you add to your favourites, and your notification settings for them. A store only sees how many people have it in their favourites, never who.

Alerts on your device, if you turn them on: the subscription your browser or phone gives us so it can receive alerts (push notifications) — an address, a public encryption key and an authentication secret — linked to your account, with the date it was turned on, the date it was last updated and Barda's display language at that time. We start collecting it only if you tap "Turn on alerts" and accept your device's request; while alerts stay on, your device sends it to us again from time to time to keep it up to date. For each alert we also keep a technical record of its sending (identifiers, attempts, result).

For merchants: your business information (name, type, description, address, geographic coordinates, phone if you provide one, website if you provide one, logo) and your listings. Business information is displayed publicly — that is its purpose. When you or a member of your staff report a missed pickup, we record who reported it and when.

Your location, only when you ask for it. When you tap "Locate me" on the map, your device's position is used to centre the map on you. When you turn on "Near me" in the filters and tap "Use my location", it is used to show listings within the distance you choose. In both cases your position is collected into your browser's memory for that visit only — the distance calculation runs entirely on your device — and your coordinates are not retained, not sent to our servers, not written to any database, not placed in a web address or log, and not linked to your account. Your browser's permission prompt is your consent, and you can withdraw it any time in your browser settings. We never read your position unless you tap one of those controls.

Your mode preference (shopper or merchant) and the identifier of the account it belongs to, stored in a cookie.

An authentication session cookie while you are signed in to your account.

What we do NOT collect:

• No payment data. Payment happens directly with the merchant, at pickup. Barda never processes, sees, or stores any banking or credit card information.
• No advertising trackers, no analytics tools, no third-party cookies. See section 5.

3. Why we collect it

We use your information only to:

1. Create and manage your account, in the language of your choice;
2. Run the marketplace: display listings, process reservations, generate pickup codes, show your in-app notifications, including new listings from your favourite stores, and, if you turned them on, send them to you as alerts on your device;
3. Check that you are at least 16 (date of birth, section 2);
4. Keep proof of the Terms you accepted;
5. Email you the confirmation of your reservations;
6. Protect the integrity of the platform and prevent abuse (see section 7);
7. Meet our legal obligations.

Automatic pause. If you miss pickups or cancel at the last minute more than once within 30 days, Barda may automatically pause your new reservations for 3 days, then 5, then 7 if it happens again. Each incident counts more or less depending on its type, the quantity, and whether the item was set aside. No one on our team is involved in this decision. You are told in the app when it applies, and your current orders stay valid. To get the information used and the reasons for the decision, have an incident corrected, or submit your observations to a member of our team who can review the decision, write to support@bardalocal.com.

We never sell your personal information. We do not use it for advertising. We do not share it with anyone except the technical providers described in section 6, who need it to host and run the service.

4. Your consent

By creating an account, you consent to the collection and use of your information for the purposes described above. You may withdraw your consent at any time by requesting the deletion of your account (section 8). Barda is for people aged 16 and over (Terms of Use, art. 2.1). If the date of birth entered at sign-up shows under 16, the account is not created. The service is not intended for people under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their information.

Alerts on your device need separate consent: they are turned on only if you accept them, and you can turn them off at any time in Barda or in your device's settings. If turning them off in Barda does not go through (for example with no connection), your device's settings stop them in any case.

5. Cookies

Barda only uses cookies stored under its own domain. No advertising, analytics, or cross-site tracking cookies are used.

• Authentication cookies: keep you signed in to your account.
• Mode preference cookies: remember whether you use Barda as a shopper or a merchant, and the identifier of the account that preference belongs to. This preference is kept even after you sign out.
• Language cookie: remembers your display language (French or English), even if you have no account.

Like all cookies, they are sent to our servers with your requests. Each cookie expires at most about a year after it is set or updated (13 months for authentication). You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings; sign-in, language, and mode will then need to be set again on your next visit.

Barda also keeps a few notes in your browser's storage. They stay on your device and are not sent to our servers:

• your "Near me" preference and the distance you chose, never your position;
• if you open a team invitation link before signing in, the invitation code, erased as soon as it has been used;
• if you try to add a store to your favourites before signing in, that store, only used within 30 minutes and erased as soon as it has been used;
• whether you have already seen the notification settings card;
• whether this device has already answered the offer to turn on alerts, which account has its alerts on here, when they were last restored with the identifier of your session and, for the time of the operation, the identifier of the operation in progress and of the order or listing you have just opened;
• a small Barda program (a service worker) that receives alerts and shows them; it caches no pages and no account responses. An alert that is shown (its title, text and link) stays in your device's notifications until you open or dismiss it.

Only the result of these actions — the team you joined, the favourite you added or the alert subscription — is saved on our servers.

6. Where your data lives, and who touches it

Your personal information is hosted in Canada (Montréal region), in the database of our provider Supabase, which also handles account authentication.

Other technical providers are involved:

• Vercel hosts the application itself (the website). Vercel is a US company; our server functions run in its Montréal region. Like any web host, Vercel processes transient technical data (such as your IP address) to deliver pages to you.
• OpenFreeMap provides the base map. When the map is displayed, your browser downloads map tiles from their servers, the same way it downloads any image. OpenFreeMap uses no cookies or tracking and receives no information about your account.
• Cyberimpact sends our reservation confirmation emails. For each email it receives your email address and the message content (pickup code, shop, item).
• Apple's, Google's, Mozilla's and Microsoft's alert services deliver alerts to your device, depending on the browser or phone you use. These are US companies; their services may process this information outside Québec. The content of each alert is encrypted end to end: they cannot read it. They see technical delivery information: that Barda is sending an alert to your device, when, its size, its urgency level, how long it stays valid and a technical identifier of the alert.

We share your information with them only to host and run the service.

7. How long we keep it

• While your account is active, we keep your information to run the service.
• Incidents and pauses: kept 12 months (from the pickup end for an incident, from the end or lifting of the pause for a pause), then deleted. The notifications about them are deleted 12 months after they were sent. If you delete your account, they stay attached to the deleted account, which no longer carries your name or email address, until those 12 months have passed. Decisions our team makes about them (withdrawing a warning, lifting or applying a pause) are recorded in our administration log with their date and reason; those records are kept for 12 months, then deleted. These deletions run automatically and regularly; a service interruption or a processing backlog can delay them.
• If you delete your account (Profile › Delete my account), deletion is immediate, except during a pause on your new reservations (see below).
  • What is removed: your name, your email address, your date of birth, your favourite stores, your notification settings and your alert subscriptions. Your email address is kept only to send you a confirmation, then erased. If you are a merchant, your stores are deactivated, and their address, phone, website and description are removed from their profile.
  • What is cancelled: orders you placed that are pending or confirmed are cancelled.
  • What remains, without your name: the records of your orders, listings and stores (including the store's name and location), to preserve merchant history and our food-waste statistics. They are linked to a deleted account that no longer carries your name or email address.
  • Proof of your acceptance of the Terms: the record described in section 2 stays attached to the deleted account, which no longer carries your name or email address, as proof of the contract. No retention period is set yet; this policy will be updated when one is.
  • Confirmation email log: for each order, a record of the sending (order identifier, dates, outcome; no address or name) is kept as long as the order; records of sends that did not go through are deleted automatically after 30 days, and a processing delay can make them last longer.
  • Copy kept as evidence: a copy of your order notes and, for merchants, of your stores' contact details, descriptions and photos is kept for 90 days as evidence, or longer during a dispute, then destroyed. An abuse flag, if there is one, may also be kept.
  • Deletion during a pause: if you ask to delete your account while your new reservations are paused, it is scheduled for the end of the pause or, at the latest, 7 days after your request. Until then you can sign in, see your orders and cancel your request, and you can write to support@bardalocal.com to have it done sooner. Like any deletion, it can be delayed by a situation that blocks it (see section 8).
• If your account is closed for misconduct (for example, repeated reservations that are never picked up, or other abuse), we may retain a limited record strictly necessary to enforce that decision and prevent recurrence. This record is limited to what is indispensable for that purpose.

8. Your rights

Québec law (Law 25) gives you, among others, the right:

• to access the information we hold about you;
• to have it corrected if it is inaccurate;
• to withdraw your consent and request the deletion of your account and information;
• to obtain your information in a structured, commonly used technological format (portability).

To exercise any of these rights, write to the person responsible for the protection of personal information (section 1). We will respond within 30 days. You can also delete your account yourself in the app (Profile › Delete my account); deletion is immediate, except during a pause on your new reservations (see section 7). Some situations block it for a while, for example open orders; the app tells you what to take care of first.

If you are unsatisfied with our response, you may file a complaint with the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (CAI).

9. Confidentiality incidents

Should a confidentiality incident presenting a risk of serious harm — for example identity theft or fraud — occur, we would notify the Commission d'accès à l'information and the persons concerned with diligence, and we keep a register of any incident, as required by law.

10. Security

Your data is protected by, among other measures, encrypted communications (HTTPS), password hashing, and strict database access controls ensuring each user can access only their own information.

11. Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published here with its update date. If a change would meaningfully broaden how your information is used — for example, adding an analytics tool — the policy would be updated before that change is activated.