Privacy Policy

We built the PDX Food Week app to help you find delicious local food, plan your routes, and share favorites with friends—not to track you. We believe in keeping things simple, transparent, and privacy-first. Here is exactly how we handle your data (spoiler: we don't collect much at all!).

1. Data Stored on Your Device (Keep it Local)

To make the app super fast and let it work even when your cellular connection is spotty, we save your choices directly inside your browser's local storage. This is like a private notebook stored on your own phone or computer, and it contains:

• Saved & Passed Dishes: The list of food week dishes you bookmarked (Like) or swiped past (Pass).
• Your Notes & Ratings: Any personal reviews, notes, and star ratings you add to your saved spots.
• Friends' Lists: The names and lists of friends you choose to add so you can see where your cravings overlap.

This data stays on your device. We do not automatically send it to any servers. If you ever want to wipe the slate clean, you can clear your browser's cache/site data or click the reset options inside the app.

2. Magic Link Sharing (Only If You Choose to Share)

If you decide to use the Magic Link feature in the Friends tab to share your bookmarks with friends:

• The app bundles up your saved dish IDs, the current food week name, and an optional nickname you provide.
• It uploads this bundle to a secure Google Firebase database and generates a unique, random 5-letter web link for you (like ?list=abcde).
• Anyone you send this link to will be able to see the dishes you saved and your nickname.
• You're in Control: Sharing is totally optional. Entering a nickname is also optional—if you leave it blank, your list is completely anonymous. The shared data never contains your email address, phone number, physical location, or passwords.

3. Friendly Helpers (Third-Party Services)

To show you maps, calculate distances, and support sharing, our app talks to a few standard web services. When your browser requests info from them, they may see your device's IP address and browser type (standard internet stuff):

• Google Firebase: This is where your shared lists live when you generate a Magic Link. It runs under Google's robust security standards.
• OpenStreetMap: We load map graphics from here to show you where restaurants are located in Portland.
• Zippopotam.us: When you sort dishes by "Distance" and enter a zip code, this service translates that zip code into map coordinates. This calculation happens instantly and is not saved by us.

4. Links to Other Websites

We link out to websites like The Actual Portland, EverOut, Google Maps (for driving/walking directions), and our developer GitHub profiles. Once you click those links and leave our site, the privacy policies of those other websites will apply to you.

5. Updates to This Policy

If we update how the app works, we might tweak this policy. If we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.

6. Say Hello

Have questions, ideas, or want us to manually delete a shared Magic Link list from our database? You can easily contact us by clicking our GitHub profile links at the bottom of the main app's sidebar.