Privacy Policy — The Cool Table

Effective date: October 20, 2026

The Cool Table ("we," "our," "the app") is a restaurant discovery app that replaces star ratings with community and culturally-informed endorsements. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, and the choices you have. It covers the iOS app and the thecooltable.app website.

Information We Collect

Account information

You can sign up with an email address and password, or sign in with Apple or Google. We store your user ID, email address (including an Apple private relay address if you choose "Hide My Email"), and a display name (the one you pick, or the name from your Apple or Google account on first sign-in). Authentication is handled by our backend provider, Supabase.

Home profile (optional)

You can tell us where you were born (a country), up to three places you've lived, and up to three food cultures you identify with. All of these are optional, and you can leave any or all of them blank.

What other people see. We turn your home profile into one short public line: your first food culture, then ", from " and your birthplace (or, if you gave no birthplace, the first place you lived). For example: "Italian, from Italy", "Italian", or "From Italy". This line is shown next to your name:

• in your public profile header;
• on your posts in other users' feeds;
• on your reviews on restaurant pages;
• in people lists and palate-match lists;
• on your mini profile card;
• in the list of people who reacted to a post; and
• on photos you uploaded.

These places are visible to every user of the app and to people who are not signed in. Before your home profile is saved, the app shows you the exact line other people will see, and it is only saved after you tap SHOW THIS & FINISH. We record the time you acknowledged it.

Your full answers (every place you've lived and every food culture you listed) are shown only to you, on your own profile.

Signals derived from your home profile that are also public:

• An INSIDER badge on your review when one of your food cultures matches the restaurant's cuisine.
• A per-culture breakdown on each restaurant page: how many endorsers share each culture label. A label is shown only when at least 3 people share it.

How we use it privately. We also use your home profile to compute the Insider score (which weights endorsements by how close the endorser's food culture is to the cuisine) and your "palate match" with other users. The weights and similarity values behind these scores are never shown to anyone as raw data.

Changing or removing it. You can edit or clear every home-profile field at any time in Edit Profile. Once cleared, the public line, INSIDER badges and your place in culture breakdowns disappear. Deleting your account also removes it.

Endorsements, notes, and posts

When you publicly endorse a restaurant ("Like" or "Really Like"), your name, your endorsement, and any note you write are visible to other users on that restaurant's page. Every review is also a post: it appears on your profile (with your profile picture, your home-profile line, the number of posts you've made, and the number of people you follow) and in other users' Feed, in Following for people who follow you and in Discover for people who don't. Reviews are always public; the private option is the "not for me" signal below.

The Cool Table is positive-only: there is no public downvote, star rating, or negative review. If a place isn't for you, you can log a private "not for me" signal. It is never shown to anyone, including the restaurant and other users, and never counts against a restaurant's score.

Photos

You can upload photos of restaurants you visit. Uploaded photos are public: anyone can see them on that restaurant's page, with your name and home-profile line. They are stored with our storage provider (Supabase Storage). Before upload, photos are resized and re-encoded on your device, which removes embedded metadata, including any GPS location your camera recorded. You can delete your own photos at any time from your profile.

Profile picture (optional)

If you add a profile picture, it is public: shown to everyone, including people who aren't signed in, next to your name wherever your name appears. It is resized and re-encoded on your device the same way as restaurant photos. You can remove it at any time, and it is deleted with your account.

Location

If you allow it, the app uses your device's location only while the app is in use, to center the map on your area and sort restaurants by distance. Your coordinates are sent to our backend only to run that nearby search and are not stored. The Discover feed works the same way: each request sends your approximate location (rounded to about 1 km) so nearby posts can rank higher, and it is used for that one request and not stored. If you deny location access, the map uses a default view and Discover works without the nearby boost.

Social features

Follows. If you follow someone, we store that connection so we can show you their activity. The app shows how many people a user follows, never how many follow them.

Reactions and comments are public. You can react to a post with one of a small set of emoji and comment on it. Your reactions and comments are shown to other users with your name, profile picture and home-profile line, and a post shows how many people chose each emoji. The author of a post can delete any comment on it; you can remove your own reactions and delete your own comments at any time.

Reporting. If you report a comment, the report (which comment, who reported it, and an optional reason) goes into a queue that only the people who run the app can see; we review it by hand. Nothing is hidden automatically. The person you report is not told who reported them.

Blocking. You can block another user. Blocking hides each of you from the other everywhere in the app (posts, comments, reactions, reviews, photos, profile cards, suggestions, and activity), removes any follow between you, and stops either of you from following the other until you unblock. We keep your block list so we can enforce it and show it to you in Settings; nobody else can see it, and the person you block is not told.

Activity. The Activity screen lists reactions and comments on your own posts from the last 30 days. To show an unread dot, we store one timestamp: when you last opened Activity. We do not send push notifications, and we do not notify you when someone follows you.

How We Use Information

• To provide the app: the map, restaurant pages, Community and Insider scores, endorsements, posts, photos, and palate matching.
• To keep the app secure and prevent abuse (for example, rate-limiting uploads and reviewing reports).
• We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell your data.

Third Parties We Work With

• Supabase — hosts our database, authentication, and photo storage.
• Mapbox — provides the map and map SDK. The Mapbox SDK's telemetry is on by default in our app, so Mapbox may collect location and usage data from the map as part of its own service. See the Mapbox privacy policy.
• Google Places — restaurant information (name, address, hours) and Google-sourced photos.
• Foursquare — restaurant place data (name, address, category) only. We do not send your personal data to Foursquare.
• Apple and Google sign-in — if you use them, Apple or Google authenticates you and shares your name and email (or an Apple relay email) with us, as you choose during sign-in.

We do not use third-party advertising or analytics SDKs.

Where Data Is Stored

Your data is stored on Supabase's cloud infrastructure in the United States (AWS us-east-2, Ohio).

Data Retention and Deletion

We keep your information for as long as you have an account. You can delete your own photos at any time in the app. You can delete your account in Settings (DELETE ACCOUNT). This permanently removes your account, home profile, endorsements and notes, posts, follows, palate matches, reactions, comments, blocks, reports, and uploaded photos from our systems (a post is your endorsement, so its reactions and comments go with it). Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone. If you can't access the app, email hello@thecooltable.app from the address on your account and we will delete it for you.

Your Choices

• Clear your home profile at any time in Edit Profile.
• Turn off location in iOS Settings → The Cool Table → Location.
• Delete your photos from your profile.
• Block or report people and comments you don't want to see.
• Delete your account in Settings → DELETE ACCOUNT.
• Email us at hello@thecooltable.app with any question or request about your data.

Children's Privacy

The Cool Table is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us at hello@thecooltable.app and we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. When we do, we'll update the effective date above and post material changes in the app.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: hello@thecooltable.app.