Privacy Policy
This page describes what The Grand Rapids Restaurant Guide collects, what we do with it, what we don't do, and how to get in touch if you'd like your data removed.
What we collect
Page-view telemetry. Basic analytics. Which pages were visited, what referrer sent you here, what browser you used, roughly where you are in the world. We don't tie this to your name or email.
Outbound click tracking. When you click a restaurant's website, menu, reservation, directions, or social link from a listing page, we log the click so restaurant owners can see how their listing is performing. We log the click type, the restaurant slug, your user-agent string, and the referring URL. We don't log your identity.
Newsletter signups. If you subscribe to The Dispatch, we store the email address you provide and the page you signed up from. That's it.
Featured-tier waitlist. If a restaurant owner joins the Featured waitlist on the pricing page, we store the email, restaurant name, and any optional notes you include.
Listing claim requests. If you submit a claim for your restaurant, we store the email and verification method you chose. We use it to confirm ownership; we don't share it with anyone.
What we don't do
We don't sell or rent your data. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't run third-party advertising trackers, audience-matching pixels, retargeting cookies, or social media trackers.
We don't accept paid placement that isn't disclosed. Paid listings show a "Verified Listing" badge on the page.
Third parties we use
Google Places API supplies restaurant data (names, addresses, ratings, reviews, photos). We refresh it on a schedule and store the result in our database. Google's privacy policy applies to data you've submitted directly to Google (e.g., reviews you've left on Google Maps).
Anthropic Claude API generates the editorial summary text on restaurant pages and the intro paragraphs on best-of pages. We send Claude the restaurant name, primary cuisine, and recent Google reviews as inputs. We do not send identifying information about visitors to the site.
Vercel hosts the site. Vercel logs basic request data (IP, URL, timestamp) for security and performance, retained per their policy.
Resend (planned) will deliver the newsletter when it launches. They will see the email addresses we send to.
Cookies
We use a small number of strictly-necessary cookies set by the framework (Next.js) to keep the site working. We don't use advertising or social-media cookies.
Your rights
You can ask us to delete your email from the newsletter or waitlist at any time. Newsletter emails include a one-click unsubscribe link. For everything else, email us (below) and we'll remove your data within a few business days.
Children
The site isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data about them.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update the "last updated" date at the top of the page and call out material changes in the next newsletter issue.
Contact
Email privacy@restaurantsgrandrapids.com with any questions, complaints, or data-removal requests.