Privacy Policy

When you use topshelf.recipes, we may collect information you provide directly, such as your name and email address when you subscribe, register, or contact us. We also automatically collect certain information about your device and how you interact with our site, including your IP address, browser type, pages visited, and referring URLs.

When you use Sous-Chef, we retain the cooking questions you submit, the assistant's responses, conversation timing and size, recipe context when applicable, and technical success or error information. We associate these records with a pseudonymous identifier rather than storing your IP address with the transcript.

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve our services
• Send you newsletters and updates you've requested
• Respond to your comments and questions
• Understand how visitors use our site to improve the experience
• Serve and measure advertising (see Section 5)
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not sell or rent your personal information to third parties for their own marketing purposes. We share information with:

• Service providers who assist in operating our site (email delivery, hosting, analytics), subject to confidentiality obligations
• Advertising partners as described in Section 5
• AI service providers (including Google and OpenAI) who process content data to help us develop and improve site content
• Law enforcement or government authorities when required by law

We use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, and similar tracking technologies to operate our site, understand usage patterns, and serve advertising. Specifically:

• Essential cookies enable core site functionality such as user login and preferences.
• Sous-Chef identifier is an essential, pseudonymous cookie set when you use the cooking assistant. It lets us measure conversations, prevent abuse, and review assistant responses for safety and quality. The raw cookie value is not stored with transcripts.
• Analytics cookies (Google Analytics) help us understand how visitors interact with our site. IP addresses are anonymized.
• Advertising cookies are placed by our advertising partners, including Google AdSense. These allow third parties to display relevant ads and to measure ad performance. Third parties may place and read cookies on your browser, or use web beacons and IP addresses, as a result of ads served on our site.
• Pinterest Tag is used for analytics and ad performance measurement on Pinterest.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, some features of our site may not function properly without cookies. You may also opt out of interest-based advertising at any time via Google's Ad Settings.

topshelf.recipes uses Google AdSense to serve advertisements. Google AdSense uses cookies and similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our site and other sites on the internet.

• Google may use data about your visits to this and other websites to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you.
• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits.
• You may opt out of Google's use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings.
• Alternatively, you may opt out of third-party vendor use of cookies by visiting www.networkadvertising.org.

For more information on how Google uses data collected through our site, please visit: How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps.

Some pages on topshelf.recipes contain affiliate links, primarily through the Amazon Associates program. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate relationships do not influence our editorial content or recommendations.

We retain personal information, including Sous-Chef transcripts, only as long as necessary to provide, secure, moderate, and improve our services and comply with legal obligations. If you wish to have your information deleted, please contact us at hello@topshelf.recipes.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete personal information we hold about you. EU/EEA residents have additional rights under GDPR, including the right to withdraw consent for data processing and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at hello@topshelf.recipes.

Our services are not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and we do not direct interest-based advertising to children. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will promptly delete it.

For users in the European Union, European Economic Area, and United Kingdom, we comply with applicable data protection laws including GDPR. We display a cookie consent notice on your first visit and do not serve personalized ads until you have provided consent. You may change your consent preferences at any time by clearing your browser's local storage or contacting us.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any significant changes by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of our site after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of those changes.

You are welcome to use one image from a post on topshelf.recipes on your website to promote or reference our content, such as in a recipe roundup, provided that you link back to the original recipe or article.

Please credit the photo to “TopShelf Recipes” or “TopShelf.recipes”.

All other uses of our photographs are not permitted without permission. For licensing inquiries or questions about using a photo, please contact us at hello@topshelf.recipes.

Republishing recipes from topshelf.recipes is not allowed without permission. All content on topshelf.recipes, including recipes, articles, and photography, is protected by copyright.

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact us at hello@topshelf.recipes.