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).
Google Analytics 4 (loaded via Google Tag Manager) records the page-view telemetry described above — which pages were visited, the referrer, browser, and approximate geographic region. Google receives this data and processes it on our behalf. We use it to understand which restaurants and lists are popular so we can write better coverage. We do not use Google Analytics' Advertising Features, Audiences, or user-ID linking. IP addresses are not stored in GA4's long-term reports.
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.
Railway hosts the site. Railway logs basic request data (IP, URL, timestamp) for security and performance, retained per their policy.
Resend delivers transactional emails: the sign-in link when you save restaurants to your account, the welcome receipt that confirms your saves are linked, and the confirmation message restaurant owners receive after joining the Featured Listings waitlist. Resend sees the email addresses we send to.
Beehiiv hosts and delivers The Dispatch newsletter. When you subscribe, we pass your email address and the page you signed up from to Beehiiv, which manages your subscription, delivers issues, and handles unsubscribes. Beehiiv records standard email engagement events (opens, clicks) on the issues it delivers. Their privacy policy governs that data.
Cookies
We use a small number of cookies. Some are strictly-necessary cookies set by the framework (Next.js) to keep the site working. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (named _ga and _ga_*) to count unique visitors and measure sessions; these do not identify you personally and are not used for advertising. We do not use advertising trackers 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 [email protected] with any questions, complaints, or data-removal requests.