Terms & Conditions

DinnerMatch is a South African business operating from Cape Town. Where these terms say “we”, “us” or “DinnerMatch”, that is who they mean. Where they say “you”, they mean the person holding the membership.

Anything you need to raise about these terms goes to hello@dinnermatch.co.za.

You agree to these terms when you create an account or take out a subscription. If you do not accept them, please do not sign up.

How we handle your personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of this agreement.

By signing up you confirm that:

• you are at least 18 years old
• you can enter into a binding contract
• the information you give us about yourself is true, and you will keep it current
• you are signing up for yourself, and the membership is yours alone
• we have not previously removed you from the platform

We rely on what you tell us here. If any of it turns out to be untrue we may close your account.

For as long as your membership is active, we:

• seat you with a small group of other members, using your quiz answers and your stated preferences
• choose a restaurant that suits the group's budget, area and dietary requirements, and arrange a table for the group
• tell you when and where to be there, and who you will be eating with
• collect your feedback afterwards and use it to seat you better next time

We are a matching and coordination service. We are not a restaurant, a travel agent or a dating service.

Membership is a subscription. The plan, the price in South African rand and the billing period are shown to you before you confirm, and again in your account. We may change our prices, but not the price of a period you have already paid for; we will tell you before a change affects your renewal.

Your meal is not included and there is no booking fee. You order what you want at the restaurant and settle your own bill on the night. Your budget setting tells us which restaurants to pick — it is not a cap we enforce at the table.

Payments are handled by our payment provider, Paystack, under their own terms. We never receive your card number. If a recurring payment fails, your access may pause until it succeeds.

Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel it.

You can cancel at any time from your subscription settings, with no notice period and without giving a reason. Cancelling stops the next payment; it does not cut your access short. You keep your membership until the end of the period you have already paid for, and then it lapses.

Because access continues for the period you paid for, we do not refund part-used periods. If you were charged in error, or something on our side went wrong, tell us and we will put it right.

Dinners are on set dates at restaurants we choose. Taking a seat confirms you intend to be there. Seats are limited and your plan determines which kinds of event you can join.

You can withdraw from a dinner from your account, free of charge, up until we close the group off to finalise numbers. After that, email us and we will do what we can — but the table is already booked on the strength of your seat.

Come alone. A seat is for the member who booked it and you cannot bring a guest or send someone in your place, because the whole point is the group we matched.

Please tell us if you cannot make it. Five people are expecting you, and a restaurant is holding a chair.

You agree to treat the people at your table, our team and the restaurant's staff with respect, and not to harass, discriminate against, threaten or intimidate anyone. You agree not to use a dinner or a DinnerMatch chat to sell, recruit or promote anything.

After a dinner you can privately report someone at your table, including for not turning up. Reports are read by a person on our team. We may act on them, and we may act on what a restaurant tells us — up to and including removing someone from the platform.

If you ever feel unsafe at a dinner, leave, and tell us.

We choose the restaurant and arrange the group's table. We do not own or run it and we do not contract for your meal — that is between you and the venue, and their prices, service and food are theirs.

We pass on the group's dietary requirements and pick venues that can cater for them, but we cannot guarantee a kitchen will meet a particular requirement or handle an allergy safely. If a requirement of yours is serious, please confirm it with the restaurant yourself on the night.

A venue occasionally changes or cancels at short notice. If that happens we will move the dinner or tell you as soon as we can.

We put real work into who sits with whom, using your answers, your preferences and how past dinners went. But we are seating strangers, and we cannot promise a particular group, a particular age range or gender mix, a certain number of people, or that you will enjoy the company. A dinner may also be rescheduled or called off if too few members can make it.

Members of your group see your first name and a general sense of the table — the mix of interests and backgrounds. They do not see your email address, your mobile number, your date of birth or your ratings of them.

Ratings and reports you give are confidential to our team. Feedback about a venue or an evening may be used to run and improve the service, in a form that does not identify you.

Anything you write must be yours to write, lawful, and not abusive. We may remove content that is not.

You can stop being a member at any time by cancelling your subscription, and you can ask us to delete your account.

We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if you behave in a way that puts other members or restaurant staff at risk, if you give us false information, or if your payments fail and stay unpaid. Where it is serious — particularly anything affecting someone's safety — we may do it immediately and without a refund. Otherwise we will tell you what the problem is and give you a chance to fix it.

The DinnerMatch name, logo, site, copy and design are ours and stay ours. You may not copy, resell or reuse them, or scrape the platform, without our written permission. You keep ownership of what you write, and give us permission to use it to run and improve the service.

We take responsibility for providing the platform and for arranging your dinners with reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for how other members behave, for what happens between you and someone you meet at a dinner, for the restaurant's food or service, or for anything you decide to do after the evening ends.

The people at your table are strangers. We do not run background checks. Use the same judgement you would meeting anyone new.

As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for our own fraud.

We may change these terms as the product changes. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed, and we will tell you by email before a material change takes effect. If you carry on using DinnerMatch after that, you are accepting the new terms; if you would rather not, you can cancel.

These terms are governed by South African law, and the South African courts have jurisdiction over any dispute about them.

Before it gets that far, please email hello@dinnermatch.co.za. Most things are a misunderstanding and we would much rather simply sort it out.