Privacy Policy


FoodCompanions BV

April 2020

1. Introduction

1.1 FoodCompanions BV and its group entities respect your right to privacy. For a list of our group entities, branches and their contact details, please see our contacts page. FoodCompanions Holding BV is registered at the Chamber of Commerce of Utrecht in The Netherlands under number 30223779 with VAT Number NL817668494B01. FoodCompanions Holding BV is the holding company and 100% owner of FoodCompanions BV, registered at the Chamber of Commerce of Utrecht in The Netherlands under number 30179741 and with VAT number NL817764525B01 and FoodCompanions Impact BV (registered at the Chamber of Commerce of Utrecht in The Netherlands under number 76710254). Bridge2Food is a trade name of FoodCompanions BV. This Privacy Notice explains who we are, how we collect, share and use personal information about you, and how you can exercise your privacy rights.

1.2  If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice.

1.3  We recommend that you read this Privacy Notice in full to ensure you are fully informed. However, if you only want to access a particular section of this Privacy Notice, then you can click on the relevant link below to jump to that section.

  • What do we do?
  • What personal information does FoodCompanions BV collect and why?
  • Who does FoodCompanions BV share my personal information with?
  • Legal basis for processing personal information (EEA visitors only)
  • Cookies and similar tracking technology
  • International data transfers
  • Data retention
  • Automated decision-making
  • Your data protection rights
  • Updates to this Privacy Notice
  • How to contact us

2. What do we do?

2.1 FoodCompanions BV is a provider of business information and organises a range of summit, courses, online conferences and webinars, awards, ecosystems, and research & consultancy headquartered in the The Netherlands. Our services help businesses succeed by delivering information, knowledge and solutions to customers and companies.

2.2 For more information about FoodCompanions BV, please see the “About us” section of our Website.

3. What personal information does FoodCompanions BV collect and why?

The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:

> Information that you provide voluntarily

3.1 Certain parts of our Website may ask you to provide personal information voluntarily: for example, we may ask you to provide your contact details in order to register an account with us, to subscribe to marketing communications from us, to receive subscriptions and attendance at events and/or to submit enquiries to us. The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide your personal information.

> Information that we collect automatically

3.2 When you visit our Website, we may collect certain information automatically from your device. In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered personal information under applicable data protection laws.

3.3 Specifically, the information we collect automatically may include information like your IP address, device type, unique device identification numbers, browser-type, broad geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location) and other technical information. We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our Website, including the pages accessed and links clicked. Collecting this information enables us better to understand the visitors who come to our Website, where they come from, and what content on our Website is of interest to them. We use this information for our internal analytics purposes and to improve the quality and relevance of our Website to our visitors.

3.4 Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, as explained further under the heading “Cookies and similar tracking technology” below.

> Information that we obtain from third party source

3.5 From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third party sources, but only where we have checked that these third parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us.

3.6 The types of information we collect from third parties include credit or debit card details and we use the information we receive from these third parties to collect payment for subscriptions and attendance at events.

4. With whom does FoodCompanions BV share my personal information?

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

4.1 to our group companies, third party services providers and partners who provide data processing services to us (for example, to support the delivery of, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our Website, to carry out audits to certify circulation), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. A list of our current group companies is available here.

4.2 to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;

4.3 to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Notice;

4.4 to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

5. Legal basis for processing personal information (EEA visitors only)

5.1 If you are a visitor from the European Economic Area, our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.

5.2 However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have your consent to do so, where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, or where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person.

5.3 If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

5.4 Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are. 5.5 If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

6. Cookies and similar tracking technology

We use cookies and similar tracking technology (collectively, “Cookies”) to collect and use personal information about you, including to serve interest-based advertising. For further information about the types of Cookies we use, why, and how you can control Cookies, please see our Cookie Statement.

7. How does Bridge2Food keep my personal information secure?

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. Specific measures we use include encrypting your personal information in transit.

8. International data transfers

8.1 Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country.

8.2 Specifically, our wwebsite server is located in the Netherlands, Belgium and Taiwan. Our group companies and third party service providers and partners operate in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States. This means that when we collect your personal information we may process it in any of these countries.

8.3 However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Notice. These include implementing the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers of personal information between our group companies, which require all group companies to protect personal information they process from the EEA in accordance with the Netherlands, and European Union data protection law.

8.4 Our Standard Contractual Clauses can be provided on request. We have implemented similar appropriate safeguards with our third party service providers and partners and further details can be provided upon request to vbrain@bridge2food.com.

9. Data retention

9.1 We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements

9.2 When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible, then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

10. Automated decision-making

10.1 In some instances, our use of your personal information may result in automated decisions being taken (including profiling) that legally affect you or similarly significantly affect you.

10.2 Automated decisions mean that a decision concerning you is made automatically on the basis of a computer determination (using software algorithms), without our human review. For example, we use automated decisions to enhance your experience with the Websites. We have implemented measures to safeguard the rights and interests of individuals, whose personal information is subject to automated decision-making, by checking that all automated decisions benefit you as a user of our services.

10.3 When we make an automated decision about you, you have the right to contest the decision, to express your point of view, and to require a human review of the decision. You can exercise this right by contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

11. Your data protection rights

You have the following data protection rights:

11.1 If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

11.2 In addition, if you are a resident of the UK or the European Union, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

11.3 You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us at vbrain@bridge2food.com or by using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

11.4 Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

11.5 You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and certain non-European countries (including the US and Canada) are available here.)

11.6 We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

12. Updates to this Privacy Notice

12.1 We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Notice changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.

12.2 You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.

13. How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy at any time, please contact us using the following details.

The data controller of personal information collected about you through this Website is FoodCompanions BV, a limited liability company registered in The Netherlands (registered number is 30179741) whose registered office is at Jan Provostlaan 69, 3723 RC Bilthoven. You can write to us at the address above (marked for the attention of the Data Protection Officer) or e-mail us at: vbrain@bridge2food.com