Your information and choices.

Effective September 30, 2026. This policy explains how SommPal LLC handles information when you use SommPal.

iPhone launch alert

If you separately request an alert about SommPal for iPhone, we store your email and consent only to send one message when the app becomes publicly available on the App Store. After the launch email is accepted for delivery, we delete your address from the separate launch-alert list and keep only a protected, non-reversible marker to prevent a second launch alert. This signup does not enroll you in recommendation or other marketing emails. If you separately create a SommPal account, its service emails and any email choices you make there are separate. To remove your address before the alert is sent, email support@sommpal.app.

Information we collect

We may collect your name, email address, sign-in identifiers, a ZIP code you optionally provide and a separate approximate ZIP inferred from your connection at signup when available, which ZIP is used for recommendations, email recommendation preferences, versioned Terms and Privacy acceptance records, uploaded menu photos or text, extracted menu items, pairing results, pairing-chat questions and replies, taste quiz answers, liked beverages, ratings, support messages, subscription status, referral links and attribution, device information, and security or usage logs. An estimated ZIP may be inaccurate and is not necessarily your home ZIP.

How we use it

We use information to authenticate accounts, read menus, generate and personalize pairings, save account history, process subscriptions, prevent abuse, answer support requests, analyze service performance, and improve SommPal. Optional SommPal emails may include nearby restaurant pairing ideas, trending-food and at-home pairing tips, quizzes, recipes, reminders to rate pairings, and related SommPal app news and offers. Your location estimate, taste profile, and relevant pairing activity may help personalize these messages. The signup checkbox is optional, and you can create an account without choosing it. We record the consent wording version and signup source rather than treating an app update as new consent. You can stop these optional emails using their unsubscribe link. We may use Customer.io to deliver them; it receives your email, account ID, recorded consent status and version, signup platform, approximate location, time zone, and relevant pairing activity. Account verification, password reset, and other essential service messages remain separate.

Menu and chat processing

When you upload restaurant-menu photos, SommPal sends those images to Google's Gemini API to identify food and beverage items. Pairing-chat questions, prior extracted chat context, and any attached menu or plated-food photos are also sent to Gemini to interpret your request; SommPal's pairing engine chooses the actual recommendations. We may send extracted menu text, available drinks, and pairing inputs to Gemini to rank menu recommendations. SommPal currently uses a paid Gemini API project for this processing. Google's Paid Services terms state that Google does not use submitted prompts, images, or responses to improve its products. Google may log prompts and responses for a limited period to detect and prevent prohibited use, maintain service safety and security, and make required legal or regulatory disclosures. SommPal saves chat questions, replies, and extracted dish or drink context in your account, but does not save chat photo files. Standard menu uploads and their photos are stored according to the retention terms below.

Service providers

We use service providers for hosting, identity, image and language processing, payments, email, customer relationship management, analytics, security, and advertising. These may include Apple, Meta, Google, Stripe, Resend, HubSpot, and Cloudflare. Stripe processes payment details; SommPal does not store full card numbers.

Advertising and cookies

Free accounts may see advertising served by Google AdSense. Google and its partners may use cookies or similar technologies to serve and measure ads, including advertising cookies based on prior visits where permitted. Learn how Google uses information from sites at Google's partner sites policy. You can manage personalized advertising in Google Ads Settings. Where required, a consent message lets you accept, reject, or revisit advertising choices.

Pairing shares and referrals

When you create an eligible pairing link, we record the pairing, share attempts, link visits, referred account, qualification status, and reward. The public pairing card shows the dish and beverage but not your name or email. A first-party referral cookie keeps attribution for up to 30 days. We use this information to operate the reward, prevent self-referrals and abuse, and measure whether shared pairings help new users.

Product analytics

With your permission, SommPal uses PostHog to understand which product features are useful and where the app needs improvement. We use explicit, allowlisted events and may record a small sample of masked sessions. We do not send menu photos, recognized menu text, dish or beverage names, passwords, payment details, ZIP codes, email addresses, or support-message text to PostHog. All form inputs and visible text are masked before an approved session replay leaves your browser. You can accept, decline, or change this choice at any time through the Analytics choices link in the site footer.

Anonymous traffic totals

Separate from optional PostHog analytics, SommPal counts successful page requests in daily totals by page path and hourly totals for the site as a whole so we can understand traffic and improve the service. These records contain only the date or hour, page path for daily totals, and number of requests. We also count daily signup starts when someone selects the signup action or begins filling out its form. A first-party cookie avoids counting the same browser again for 30 minutes. We do not store IP addresses, browser details, email addresses, device identifiers, account identifiers, or individual browsing histories in these aggregate counts. An administrator-only exclusion cookie prevents SommPal’s internal devices from being counted; its value is not stored with the totals. Because the records are anonymous aggregates, they cannot be connected back to you.

Retention and security

Account records are retained while your account is active or as needed for the purposes above. Uploaded source photos may be removed under our storage policy, including after 90 days or when storage limits are reached, while extracted menu and pairing records may remain in your account. We use access controls, encryption in transit, validation, rate limits, and other safeguards, but no service can promise absolute security.

Your choices

Entering a ZIP code and choosing optional pairing, app-news, and offer emails are optional. If you leave ZIP blank at signup, we may attach an approximate ZIP to your account when one is available; you can ask us to correct or remove it. You can unsubscribe using the link in any optional SommPal email. The separate one-time iPhone launch alert is not part of this email choice. You can also update taste preferences in the app, manage or cancel a paid subscription through the billing portal, and delete your account from your profile after the subscription is inactive. For access, correction, or deletion help, email support@sommpal.app. Browser and Google settings may also control cookies and personalized ads.

Age and contact

SommPal is intended only for adults of legal drinking age. Questions or privacy requests may be sent to SommPal LLC at support@sommpal.app.