1. Who is responsible?
Better Drinking Ventures BV is the controller for the website and the enquiries it receives. Address: Creyboschlaan 24, 2520 Oelegem, Belgium. Enterprise and VAT number: BE 1002.888.443. For privacy questions or requests, email hello@betterdrinkingventures.com or write to that address. This notice covers the BDV website; OurNextSpot, Bar Hootch and external platforms have their own notices.
2. Enquiries and business contacts
Contact buttons currently open your email app. The website does not transmit a message when you click them; you choose whether to send it. We receive the details you include, such as your name, email address, company, phone number and message, in Microsoft 365. We use them to answer questions, prepare quotations, carry out agreed work and maintain relevant business correspondence.
The legal basis is taking steps at your request before a contract or performing a contract where you are the contracting person. For contact people acting for a business and general enquiries, we rely on our legitimate interest in responding and maintaining business relationships. Legal obligations may require us to retain accounting or other records. You do not have to contact us, but we need sufficient details to answer your enquiry. Please do not send unnecessary sensitive information.
Enquiries are retained while needed to handle the request and relevant follow-up. Contract-related correspondence may be retained for the relationship and applicable statutory or legal-claim periods. Retention depends on the nature of the record, the need to resolve a dispute and applicable legal obligations; it is not indefinite merely because an email was received.
3. Hosting, security and administration
ChatGPT Sites and Cloudflare provide the website hosting infrastructure; Combell manages the domain, and Microsoft 365 handles the existing mailbox service. Technical processing can include IP addresses, request times, URLs, browser information and security or diagnostic logs. It supports our legitimate interests in operating a reliable website, preventing abuse and investigating faults, and any applicable legal obligations.
The administration area is restricted to an authorised BDV account using ChatGPT sign-in. Authentication involves the sign-in provider’s cookies and account identifiers. These are separate from optional public-site analytics. The public website has no customer account system or checkout. Hosting and authentication providers manage their own operational logs and retention under their service arrangements; the 90-day analytics limit below does not describe all provider logs.
We use access controls, HTTPS and safeguards appropriate to the website. No transmission or storage method is completely risk-free. Do not send passwords, payment-card information or other secrets through an enquiry.
4. Optional website analytics
With your consent, our first-party analytics measure page visits, referral website domains, approximate countries, broad device and browser categories, and clicks on email, telephone, contact and external links. This helps us understand how people find and use BDV. Reports include visits, pages per visit and popular pages. They reflect consenting traffic and are estimates, not a count of every individual.
The browser creates random visitor and session identifiers only after you accept optional cookies. The server stores hashed versions. These are pseudonymous data, not a claim of complete anonymity. The analytics database does not store raw IP addresses, full referral URLs or search queries, precise GPS location, contact-message contents, or typed form fields. Country estimates come from hosting network metadata. Hosting providers may still process IP addresses to deliver and secure requests.
The legal basis for optional analytics and its browser storage is consent. No Google Analytics, Meta Pixel or advertising tracker is included in this website’s code. Analytics is not used to make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you.
5. Cookies and similar browser storage
The same consent choices apply to cookies and similar technologies such as local storage. The table below describes the storage set by our website code. Essential hosting or sign-in cookies may also be set by the relevant providers for those services.
| Purpose | Storage | Duration | Choice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remember your consent | bdv-analytics-consent-v2 | 180 days, then asked again | Necessary to remember your choice |
| Recognise consenting visits | bdv-analytics-visitor-v1 | 30 days | Optional analytics |
| Group pages into a visit | bdv-analytics-session-v1 | Session renewed after 30 minutes of inactivity | Optional analytics |
Local-storage entries have no automatic browser deletion timer. Expired identifiers are replaced or cleared when the website code next runs, and you can clear them in your browser at any time. Analytics events are retained for up to 90 days under the application’s cleanup process, which runs on collection or reporting. A dormant database can retain expired records until that process next runs.
The homepage’s rotating photos do not require a persistent photo preference. Our code removes the previous photo-selection entry and no longer saves it. This does not affect the automatic image transitions.
6. Your cookie choices
Choose “Accept optional cookies” to allow the analytics described above, or “Essential only” to decline. Both choices allow you to use the website. General conditions and the privacy policy are available from the banner, but reading or accepting terms does not grant analytics consent.
Use “Cookie settings” in the footer at any time to change your choice. Selecting “Essential only” stops further analytics events and removes our analytics identifiers from that browser. It does not undo processing that lawfully took place before withdrawal or automatically erase earlier database events. Those events follow the retention process above; you may also contact us about your rights.
We respect Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control by suppressing analytics even if a previous stored choice allowed it. Choices apply to the browser and origin where they are made; another browser, device or domain may ask again. Clearing browser data also removes the saved preference.
7. Vimeo films and external links
Embedded Vimeo players remain disconnected until you select “Allow Vimeo & play” for a film. That separate choice enables that player and is not granted by accepting analytics in the cookie banner. Vimeo then receives technical data, including your IP address and information about your device and the page, and may use cookies or other storage under its own policy. The player uses Vimeo’s Do Not Track option, which does not prevent all processing.
The film choice is not remembered between page visits. Select “Disable Vimeo films” to reload the page and disconnect the embeds. This does not erase information or cookies already received by Vimeo. You can instead follow the external video link. Read Vimeo’s privacy policy for its processing, storage periods and rights information.
Social icons and venture links are ordinary links. Opening Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bar Hootch or OurNextSpot takes you to a separate service governed by its own terms and privacy notice.
8. People in project photographs
Our portfolio can include photographs and films supplied or commissioned for client projects and events. Identifiable people may appear in this material. Depending on the circumstances, publication relies on a suitable permission or on legitimate interests in documenting and presenting professional work, balanced against the rights of people shown. This notice does not itself grant image rights or permission to use someone’s likeness.
If you appear in an image and have a privacy concern or wish to object, contact hello@betterdrinkingventures.com with the page and enough detail to identify the image. We will assess the request and the relevant rights. Portfolio material is reviewed when a project is updated, its relevance ends or a valid rights request requires action.
9. Recipients and international processing
Access is limited to BDV personnel and service providers who need it for the purposes described. Relevant providers include ChatGPT Sites/OpenAI and Cloudflare for hosting and administration, Microsoft for email, Combell for domain services, and Vimeo when you enable a film. Professional advisers or public authorities may receive relevant information where necessary for legal obligations or claims. BDV does not sell website visitor data.
Some providers use international infrastructure and may process data outside the European Economic Area. Where GDPR transfer rules apply, a valid transfer mechanism is required, such as an applicable European Commission adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards including Standard Contractual Clauses. Contact us for information about the relevant recipients and safeguards for your data. This notice does not imply that all information remains in Belgium or the EU.
Resend is not currently enabled for public contact-form delivery. Contact is by your own email app. Before enabling a new sending service or changing the purposes of collection, we will update the information shown to visitors.
10. Your rights
Subject to the conditions in data-protection law, you may request access, correction, erasure or restriction of your personal data. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests, and may request portability where it applies to automated processing based on consent or contract. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing.
Email hello@betterdrinkingventures.com to exercise a right. We may ask for proportionate information to verify your identity and locate the data; do not send identity documents unless specifically needed and requested securely. We normally respond within one month. Where a lawful extension is needed because of complexity or the number of requests, we will explain this within that first month. Some records must be retained where a legal obligation or justified legal claim prevents erasure.
You may complain to the Belgian Data Protection Authority or another competent supervisory authority, including in the country where you live or work. You do not need to contact us first to exercise that right.
11. Updates
The date and version above identify this policy. We will update it when website functionality or relevant processing changes. A material change requiring a new consent choice will be presented before the new optional processing begins.