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OpenALaCarte

Where our listing data comes from

This directory is built from public open datasets rather than from entries we wrote ourselves: every listing links back to the source record it was created from, so you can check it at the source. Below are the datasets we use and the licences they are published under.

Food Standards Agency (United Kingdom)

The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme feed is a public register of food businesses in the United Kingdom. UK listings are sourced from it — we take the business name, address, location and the regulator's business type (restaurant, takeaway, pub, retailer), and nothing else. The data contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and the Food Standards Agency does not endorse OpenALaCarte. Hygiene ratings are not displayed anywhere on this site, because showing one requires the official unmodified FHRS badge graphics.

Coverage
United Kingdom

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world built by volunteers. Listings outside the United Kingdom are sourced from it, across more than forty countries in Europe. The data is made available under the Open Database Licence, and the credit belongs to the OpenStreetMap contributors who survey and maintain it.

Coverage
Europe outside the United Kingdom

Every listing links to its source record

If a listing is about you

Most listings describe a company, and a company's details are not personal data. But a sole trader's or a partnership's business name, address and phone number often identify a person — so for those, this page is the privacy notice UK GDPR Article 14 requires when data is collected from a public source rather than from you. We publish it to help people find and choose places to eat, relying on legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)). We hold only what the source published: business name, address, contact details and, where present, the food-hygiene rating reference. We keep a listing for as long as it is listed and refresh it from the source.

You can object to the listing, ask us to correct it, or ask us to remove it — email privacy@openalacarte.com with the listing's name and address and we will action it. We do not require you to prove a legal basis for objecting to a directory entry, and removal is not conditional on claiming the listing or buying anything. Removing a listing here does not change the underlying public record: the Food Standards Agency and OpenStreetMap hold their own copies, and only they can amend those.

If you are unhappy with how we handle a request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Reporting an error

If a name, address or opening time is wrong, the correction belongs upstream at the source: fixing it there reaches everyone who uses the dataset, not just this directory. Edit OpenStreetMap directly, or use the Food Standards Agency's own contact route for UK records — and if you would rather we passed it on, tell us and we will.