PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated: 08/13/2021

This Privacy Policy describes the information collection and use practices of Ruth’s Hospitality Group, Inc. (“we,” “us” or “our”) and the data we collect from and about you relating to your visit to one of our websites (www.rhgi.com; www.ruthscris.com) (the “Websites”), your visit to or interactions with one of our restaurants, as well as your choices about this use. 

Description of Users and Acceptance of Terms

This Privacy Policy applies to visitors to the Websites (“Visitors,” “you” or “your”).  By accessing our Websites, Visitors are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect and How We Use It

We collect information about our customers and visitors to our website in order to provide the services you request, to improve our website, to enhance our understanding of our customers and our business operations, and to market our services and measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.  The categories of Personal Information we collect include:

Information You Provide

We may collect personally identifiable information directly from you (such as name, address, telephone number, email address, device location, transaction information, credit card information, and date of birth) when you:

  • Dine at one of our restaurants or a restaurant operated by one of our franchisees
  • Make a reservation to dine at one of our restaurants or a restaurant operated by one of our franchisees 
  • Create an account at ruthschris.com
  • Purchase or receive a Gift Card
  • Inquire about our services
  • Sign up to receive emails from us
  • Are referred to us through a marketing promotion
  • Participate in a marketing survey, promotion, or event
  • Pay a deposit in advance of an event or special occasion, such as a wine dinner.

In some cases, such as where you sign up for a webcast, presentation or other event/service, we may receive your contact information from a third-party website, including those white-labeled under our brand. When we collect such contact information, our use of such contact information will be subject to this Privacy Policy.  

Information That is Collected Automatically

Like most websites today, we use web servers that keep log files that record data each time a device accesses those servers. These log files are maintained by our website hosting service and contain data about the nature of such access, including the device’s IP address, user agent string (for example, operating system and browser type/version), and referral URL (the external source by which you arrived at our Website or the pages you’ve clicked on while on our Website). We may wish to use these log files for purposes such as monitoring and troubleshooting errors and incidents, analyzing web traffic, or optimizing the user experience.

We may combine the information you provide and the information we collect during your visit to our website with data collected in person at one of our restaurants or a restaurant operated by one of our franchisees, and with data from other third parties, including publicly available data, in order to better personalize your experience with our website and at our restaurants.

We contract with a third-party fraud prevention service to identify suspicious or fraudulent activity and combat identify theft.  This service uses personal information collected about you on our website, including contact details (such as email address, postal address, phone number, and user login); information about your device (such as your IP address, session ID, mobile/desktop device properties, and metadata); transaction information (such as information about items you’ve purchased on our website, currency codes, billing method, and partial credit card information); and website communication information (such as feedback, messaging, reviews, or images you provide through our website).  This data may only be used by our service provider for the specific business purpose of protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity.

Cookies

We collect information using “cookie” technology.  Cookies are small packets of data that a website stores on your computer’s or mobile device’s hard drive (or other storage medium) so that your computer will “remember” information about your visit.  We use both 1st and 3rd-party session cookies and persistent cookies. Below is a general primer on session and persistent cookies. Information collected by cookies depends on its particular purpose.  Cookies enable us to enhance and personalize your online experience and permit us to remember you when you return to our web site, to deliver personalized marketing, and to better understand the way you use our website.

  • Session Cookies: We use session cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our Website. A session ID cookie expires when you close your browser.
  • Persistent Cookies: A persistent cookie remains on your hard drive (or other storage medium) for an extended period of time or until you delete them. To the extent we provide a log-in portal or related feature on our Website, persistent cookies can be used to store your password so that you don’t have to enter it more than once. Persistent cookies also enable us to track analytics and target the interests of our Visitors to personalize the experience on our Website.

In some cases, we may associate information that you have provided to us (for example, email address) with the cookies that we use. In addition to facilitating the purposes described above, this is useful in understanding your engagement with other content related to our Website (for example, email open rates and URL clickthroughs).  

If you do not want us to place any cookies on your device (or any third-party cookies if you’d like), you may be able to turn that feature off on your computer or mobile device. Please consult your browser’s documentation for information on how to do this. However, if you decide not to accept cookies from us, certain aspects of the Website may not function properly or as intended.

Third-Party Analytics Providers

Our website uses Google Analytics to analyze visits to our site and to help us improve our site and improve the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, including by personalizing advertisements you may be shown as your browse the web.  To learn more about Google Analytics and your choices, please visit: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.We may contract with other parties who use cookies or other online tracking tools such as beacons or pixel tags to measure the performance of a marketing effort on our behalf, including email marketing or to place advertising on our behalf across the internet.  To opt-out of Google Analytics, you may download the Google-provided browser add-on here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Third-Party Marketing Partners

We may also contract with third party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet. These advertising companies will use cookies or pixel tags to collect anonymous information about your visits to our website and your interactions with products and services, and may use this information and information about your visits to other websites to target advertisements. These targeted advertisements may appear on other sites that you visit. While www.ruthscrhris.com is not designed to recognize a web browser’s do not track setting, you may opt-out of receiving this kind of behavioral advertising by clicking here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/.

As noted above, you may also set your browser to block all cookies, but this may disable other aspects of the Website.

Geolocation Information

Certain features and functionalities of our Website may be based on your location. In order to provide these features and functionalities we may, with your consent, automatically collect geolocation information from your device via your browser’s location services. This consent may be provided by you on the device level (for example, you have consented to location services generally through your browser’s settings) or by accepting our request for geolocation access on the Website. Please consult your browser’s documentation regarding how to turn off location services. If you disable location services, you may not be able to use the full array of features and functionalities available through our Website.

How We Use the Data We Collect

We use the data we collect from you for the following purposes:

  • To provide you with information you have requested
  • To process your reservation requests
  • To provide you with services and products you have purchased, including Gift Cards
  • To personalize your experience on our website and our communications with you
  • To improve your experience at our restaurants or at restaurants operated by our franchisees
  • To provide you with relevant and personalized marketing
  • To measure and understand the way you use our website

How Data May Be Shared

We contract with others to provide certain services including web hosting, online reservation services, email distribution, market research, third party advertising, promotions management, payment processing, and fraud prevention and detection services.  These companies are prohibited by contract from using this information for their own marketing purposes.  Some restaurants operating under the Ruth’s Chris brand are operated by franchisees under agreements with us.  We may share information with our franchisees in order to facilitate a consistent Ruth’s Chris Steak House experience.  If you dine or make a reservation at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House operated by a franchisee and sign up to receive emails or if you sign up to receive emails through the email sign up page (https://www.ruthschris.com/registration) and your preferred location is a franchise location, we will provide your email address to the franchisee for that purpose.  Ruth’s Chris franchisees are required by contract to adhere to confidentiality safeguards and may not use your personal information to promote products or services unrelated to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. 

We reserve the right to share information we have collected under this policy with corporate affiliates, in connection with a sale or purchase of business assets, where necessary to protect Ruth’s Chris or Ruth’s Hospitality Group, Inc., or as required by law, including but not limited to in response to court orders and subpoenas.

Our Use of Email

You may sign up to receive emails from us by clicking here and providing your email address, by indicating your desire to be on our email mailing list when making a reservation, or when paying for a meal at one of our restaurants.  We use email to confirm your reservation and to follow up regarding your dining experience.   If you have signed up to receive emails from us, we will send you commercial and promotional emails advising you of menu changes, special events, promotions, or other information we believe may be of interest to you.  If you make a reservation at a restaurant operated by a franchisee and elect to receive emails or if you sign up to receive emails on our registration form and your preferred location is a franchise location, we will provide your email address to the franchisee, who may send you commercial and promotional emails relating to Ruth’s Chris Steak House.  You may choose to stop receiving email promotions and offers from us at any time by following the link provided in each email.   

Your Privacy Rights and Choices

If you would like to correct information you have provided to us, including updating your address or telephone number, please contact us at http://www.contact.ruthschris.com/. 
As described above, we may share personal information such as your name, email address, and preferred dining location with a franchisee operating a restaurant under the Ruth’s Chris brand.  The franchisee may use this information to send you commercial messages and promotions relating to Ruth’s Chris Steak House including emails (if you have signed up for email).  Other than franchisees, we do not share your personal information with any third parties for their direct marketing purposes.   

As described in the section on cookies, you may opt-out of receiving personalized behavioral advertising, including retargeting, by clicking here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/.  Residents of California may have additional privacy rights provided under state law as described below in the section below titled “Your California Privacy Rights”. 

Children

We do not knowingly collect information about children under 16 years of age.  

Important Notice to All Non-US Residents

Our computer servers are located in the United States.  If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that any information provided to us, including personal information, will be transferred from your country of origin to the United States. To the extent permitted under applicable law, your decision to provide such data to us or allow us to collect such data through our Website constitutes your consent to this data transfer.

Do Not Track

We do not respond to Do Not Track settings or other related mechanisms at this time.  As noted in the section above on cookies, you may visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ to learn more about behavioral advertising and to opt-out. 

Links to External Websites

The Website may contain links to third-party websites. We have no control over the privacy practices or the content of any such third-party websites. As such, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of such third-party websites. You should check the applicable privacy policy and terms of use when visiting or submitting any information through such third-party websites.

Your California Privacy Rights

This section describes the ways we collect, use and otherwise process personal information of individual residents of the State of California within the scope of the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”).  The term “Personal Information” in this section refers to that term as defined in California Civil Code Sec. 1798 and means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.  “Personal Information” does not include publicly available information from government records, information about job applicants, employees and other of our personnel, or information that has been deidentified, aggregated, or anonymized.  


If you are a California resident, the CCPA provides you with certain rights regarding your personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and how to exercise them. 

  • You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and verify your request we will disclose to you:
    • The categories of personal information we collected about you.
    • The categories of sources from which the personal information is collected.
    • The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you.
    • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling any personal information.
    • The purposes for which the categories of personal information we collected will be used.
    • The categories of third parties with whom we share personal information.
    • If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, and if so, any categories of personal information that were sold or disclosed and the categories of any third parties to whom personal information was sold or disclosed. Please note we do not sell personal information to businesses or third parties for monetary or other valuable consideration and have not done so in the previous 12 months.   

  • You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and verify your request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records unless an exception applies.
  • We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:
    • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our agreement with you.
    • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
    • Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
    • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
    • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
    • Enable internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
    • Comply with a legal obligation.
    • Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

To exercise the rights described above, please submit a verifiable request to us by calling us at (407) 333-7440 or by clicking on the following link: www.ruthschris.com/ccpa-form/.

Only you or a person that you authorize to act on your behalf may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. However, you may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

You may make a verifiable consumer request up to two times within a 12-month period without charge. Unfortunately, we cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm that the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

We try to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt.  If we require more time we will inform you of the reason and extension time period (up to 90 days). We will deliver our response by mail or electronically at your option. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding receipt. The response we provide will also explain any reasons we cannot comply with a request if applicable.  

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA we will not:

  • Deny you goods or services.
    • Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties.
    • Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
    • Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of the Last Updated date stated at the top of this Privacy Policy.  We may update this policy in the future.  Please check back for changes to this policy. 

How to Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy please email us at Contactus@ruthschris.com with “Privacy Policy” in the subject line or contact us at 1030 W. Canton Ave. Suite 100, Winter Park, Florida 32789, at comments@rhgi.com or at (407) 333-7440.