Booking details
Your name, a phone number or email, the date and how many of you there are. Same fields whether it's a quiet midweek table or a poker night seat.
House paperwork · Happy Daydreams
Privacy policy
at Happy Daydreams
This is the privacy policy for Happy Daydreams, our restaurant and card room on the Oamaru waterfront. It covers what we note down when you book dinner or a poker night, why we need it, and what you can ask us to do with it. Updated March 2026.
The short version
We keep a list so the night runs, then it goes in a drawer
Restaurants run on bookings, and ours also runs on a poker seat list, so we hold a small amount of information about the people who come in. Names, phone numbers, who's allergic to what. Everything below is about that list: where it lives, who sees it, and when we throw it out.
The spirit of it is simple. We collect what we need to seat you and feed you, we don't sell it, and we don't keep it past its usefulness. When you book a poker night we take the same details we take for dinner, plus a note of which evening you played, and nothing cleverer than that.
House rules for evenings and bookings sit on the terms page.
Your details
stay in the room
stay in the room
What we collect
What ends up in the book
Everything we hold comes straight from you, usually across a booking form or a phone call. Here is the whole list. It isn't long.
Notes you give us
Allergies, dietary requests, access needs, the birthday someone forgot to mention. They attach to the booking so the kitchen and floor team see them on the night.
Poker evening records
Which night you played, which table, and whether you booked or walked in. The poker host keeps the seat list for the season, then it goes.
What we don't collect. Card numbers, for a start. The EFTPOS terminal handles payment and we never see them. We don't run accounts, log-ins or memberships either, so there's no password of yours sitting anywhere on our side.
Why we need it
Every field has a job
If a detail doesn't help us run the room or the kitchen, we don't ask for it. And there are a few things we simply never do with what we hold:
- No marketing blasts you didn't ask for
- No profiling, ad targeting or audience lists
- No selling or swapping lists with other venues
- No tracking you once you've left the site
If that ever changes, this page changes first and we ask before anything goes out under your name.
01
Holding your spot
Table bookings and poker seat reservations live in the same book, so the host knows who's coming and when.
02
Feeding you properly
Dietary notes go straight to the kitchen. Nobody wants a surprise allergy mid-service, and with this system nobody gets one.
03
Running card nights
Poker evenings need a seat list, a head count for the late menu, and a way to reach you if a night gets cancelled.
04
Keeping it legal
Poker nights are 18+, so we check ID at the door when we need to. We note that a check happened. We never keep a copy of the document.
Sharing & keeping
Who sees it, and how long it stays
Short answer: the people working that night, and nobody else. We don't sell data, rent lists or pass your details to marketers. It's a dinner book kept in a drawer, and it gets treated like one.
- Booking and contact details are kept up to twelve months, in case you ring about a past night
- Dietary notes travel with the booking they belong to
- Poker evening records sit with that season's seat lists, then get cleared
- Anything you ask us to delete goes, unless the law says we have to keep it
Who sees it
The floor team sees the booking book, the kitchen sees the dietary notes, and the poker host sees the night's seat list. Same room, same small team, same night.
Who we share with
No one, in practice. If a law or a court genuinely required it we would comply, and if you ask us to pass your booking to a taxi or a hotel, we will. Otherwise it stays at 1 Esplanade.
Your rights
New Zealand law is on your side here
The Privacy Act 2020 gives you real say over what we hold. These apply to every dinner booking, poker night note and phone message we've ever taken.
01
Ask what we hold
You can ask for a copy of the personal information we have about you. We'll pull it together and send it over, free.
02
Ask us to fix it
If your number changed or we spelled your name wrong, tell us and we'll correct it on the spot.
03
Ask us to delete it
Say the word and we'll clear what we hold, unless a law requires us to keep a record. If that's the case, we'll tell you plainly.
04
Complain
If you think we've mishandled your information you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Tell us first if you can, because most things get fixed faster over the phone.
How to ask. Ring +64 9 352 8417 during opening hours or write to happydaydreams@gmail.com. Ask for Daniel, who owns the place and handles privacy requests himself. In person, we're at 1 Esplanade, South Hill, Oamaru 9400.
Meanwhile, in the room
The places your details describe
Everything on this page describes a real drawer, a real book and a real seat list, photographed nightly.
Quick answers
Asked at the door
Four questions cover most of what people ask about privacy here. Anything else, find us through the contact page.
Privacy questions
Daniel answers these himself — same number and inbox as above.
No. No selling, no renting, no "trusted partners". The only people who see the book work here, and the only outside handover happens if you ask for it or the law insists on it.
A poker booking collects exactly what a dinner booking does, plus a note of which night you played and at which table. It sits on that season's seat list and gets cleared with it. Wins and losses stay where they belong — in the room, not the records.
Yes. The Privacy Act gives you that right outright. Ask in person, by phone or by email, and we'll show you what the book says about you.
A call or an email does it. We'll clear what we can and tell you honestly if some record has to be kept by law.
Kept in
the room
the room
Questions about
your details?
Ring, email or ask in person next time you're in. We'd rather explain it across the bar than leave you guessing.
Or write to happydaydreams@gmail.com. A human reads it.