27 articles
Compliance & legal
Recording consent, payments, allergens, and the rules around them.
- Call Recording and Consent: What Restaurants Should KnowCall recording consent rules vary by state, and a restaurant phone line sits squarely in scope. The questions to raise with your own attorney first.
- Who Owns Your Voice AI Data? Ownership and PrivacyCall recordings, transcripts, and customer records are business assets. What to ask about ownership, retention, portability, and deletion before you sign.
- PCI Compliance for Restaurant Phone PaymentsTaking cards over the phone pulls a restaurant into PCI scope. What PCI DSS actually asks of you, and how an agent's payment handling can shrink that scope.
- Who pays when a voice agent gets an order wrongAn AI phone agent will occasionally mishear an order. Here is how liability, refunds and your existing insurance policies actually handle the fallout.
- AI disclosure rules and the greeting that satisfies themDisclosure requirements for voice agents are arriving state by state. The honest fix is a greeting that says what the caller is talking to, in six words.
- How long to keep call recordings, and who gets to hear themNo law tells a restaurant how long to keep phone recordings. Four other things do, and they push in opposite directions. A workable retention policy.
- The DPA clauses that matter for a voice AI vendorA voice vendor holds recordings, transcripts and customer phone numbers. Here are the data processing agreement terms to read closely before you sign one.
- Which PCI self-assessment applies once you take phone paymentsTaking a card number over the phone changes which PCI questionnaire you owe. Here is how the SAQ types map to a restaurant that answers its own line.
- The allergen answer on the phone that creates real liabilitySaying a dish is safe is a different act from saying what is in it. On a phone order, that distinction decides who ends up holding the allergen risk.
- Card surcharges on phone orders: what has to be said aloudCard brand rules require surcharge disclosure before the customer pays. On a phone order there is no screen to put it on, so the script carries it.
- Junk fee rules and what a phone quote has to say out loudThe federal fee rule skips restaurants, but the price a caller hears still has to be the price they pay. What that means for a spoken quote.
- The only step that verifies age is the one at the doorA caller saying they're 21 proves nothing. What the phone step can usefully do on an alcohol delivery, and what has to happen when the driver is standing there.
- Why a voice agent should never complete a tobacco orderTobacco sits under stricter federal rules than beer does, and a phone order that gets delivered can trip them. Configure the agent to refuse rather than try.
- Alcohol rules on phone orders and how to configure for themEvery state writes its own alcohol rules and some counties rewrite them again. What a voice agent may safely do with a beer order, and what it must refuse.
- Phone accessibility obligations your voice agent has to meetA restaurant phone line is part of a public accommodation. What that means for deaf callers, callers with speech differences, and the agent answering for you.
- How to handle relay calls without hanging up on a deaf callerRelay calls sound wrong to anyone who hasn't taken one, so restaurants hang up. What the pauses mean, and how to set a voice agent up to stay on the line.
- When a US restaurant actually has GDPR exposure from callsMost American restaurants owe nothing under GDPR, and a handful genuinely do. How to tell which you are before a voice vendor sells you a policy you don't need.
- California privacy law and restaurant call recordingsA call recording is personal information under California law. Most single restaurants sit below the coverage thresholds, and growing groups cross them quietly.
- A2P 10DLC registration for restaurant text messagesTwo registrations stand between your restaurant and text messages that arrive. Here is what carriers ask for, why filings get rejected, and how to pass.
- Capturing SMS opt-in consent on a restaurant callGetting text permission during a phone order takes about four seconds if the wording is right, and produces nothing usable if it isn't. Here are the scripts.
- TCPA rules for restaurant order and marketing textsThe customer called you, so you can text them anything. That belief is wrong, and the gap between an order confirmation and a promo text is where the risk sits.
- Illinois voice privacy law and restaurant phone AIIllinois treats a voiceprint as biometric data with real per-person damages. That is why serious voice vendors refuse to identify callers by voice at all.
- New York call recording rules for restaurant phonesNew York needs one party's consent to record a call, but the caller on the other end may be sitting in a state that needs two. Here's how to handle that.
- Florida's all-party rule and your restaurant's phone lineFlorida requires consent from everyone on a recorded call. What that means for a restaurant taking orders from visitors, and what to ask a Florida attorney.
- California Call Recording Rules for RestaurantsCalifornia uses an all-party consent framework under CIPA. What that means for a restaurant phone line, why the exposure differs, and what to ask counsel.
- One-party consent, and why you should still announce recordingA one-party rule may permit recording without telling the caller. Three reasons a restaurant should announce it anyway, and what the notice should say.
- All-party consent states and what restaurants get wrongMemorizing which states require all-party consent is the wrong exercise. What actually determines the rule for a restaurant call, and how operators handle it.
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