Privacy & cookies policy

(Last modified on September 29, 2023)

Welcome!

Welcome to the Website, Application and Services owned and operated by FoodHero Market Inc. (“FoodHero”, “we,“us” or “our”). The FoodHero Services seamlessly connect the whole ecosystem of food waste – farms, producers, merchants and consumers – reducing the impact at each point. It connects food merchants to local consumers, allowing consumers to save on delicious food and everyone to be Heroes.

When you trust us with your shopping preferences, nearby location and payment information, as well as other information, we understand that you expect us to keep this information confidential and secure.

We take that responsibility to heart and take all appropriate measures to protect your privacy. This Privacy & Cookies Policy (the “Policy”) explains how we collect, use, share and disclose information we receive through our Website and Services. Please note that the Policy does not apply to any third-party websites, services or applications, even if they are accessible through our Website or Services.

This Policy is valid when using our Website, Application, and Services. It also applies to any communication between you and us whether by phone, email, SMS notifications or any other means. However, please note that information sent to us via any non-secured, non-encrypted mode of communications such as email, instant messenger or other messaging service, or Twitter or any other social media, may be subject to interception, loss, or alteration; we encourage you to carefully examine what information you send to us via these methods.

This Policy should be read in conjunction with the Terms of Use, as both of these documents govern your use of the Services. The Terms of Use contain definitions that apply in this Policy as well.

Information we collect

There are a few different ways we collect information, each one being described below.

Information You Choose to Give Us

When you interact with the Application, visit our Website, make purchases, participate in our challenges and prizes or communicate with us, we collect the information that you choose to share with us. We use this information to improve our Website and Services to better cater to you. We always work on keeping our information up to date, relevant and useful. You acknowledge and agree that you are giving is this information with your informed consent, for the uses described in the next section of this Policy.

We gather information in a few ways:

1. We designed our registration process to ask for as little Personally-Identifiable Information (“PII”) as possible. But we need to collect a few important details to be able to identify you as a user and create your account so that you can use the Services:

  • ~ Email address
  • ~ Phone number

2. When you complete your profile, we also ask you to provide some additional, optional information such as:

  • ~ First name,
  • ~ Last name,
  • ~ Profile picture,
  • ~ Age range,
  • ~ Gender,
  • ~ Location.

Providing this information is optional and helps us to improve our Services and provide you with a more complete, tailored experience.

  1. When you place an order for Products, you shall provide your Billing Information to process your payment.

    FoodHero does not store your full Billing Information. Instead, we store an encrypted token that represents your Billing Information. What does that mean? It means no human at FoodHero can see your full Billing Information. For more details about how we treat your Billing Information, please see the “Secured Payments” section further in this Policy.
  2. We keep a record of all communication with us. This applies to phone calls, direct messages, social media and our newsletters.
  3. We keep a record of your purchases made through the Application, the details of what you purchased, as well as when and how you browse and use our Website and Application. This helps us understand what is relevant to you so we can adjust our Services to best suit your needs. It also helps us improve our Website and Application to make them easier to use.

Special Categories of Personal Data

We do not intentionally collect or store information related to your ethnic origins, religious beliefs, or physical or mental health. Since we do store communications (emails, social media interactions, etc.) any such personal information you choose to share in a communication will be stored as part of communication storage.

How We Use Your Personal Information

To improve! How you use FoodHero tells us a lot about what you like and don’t like, and what’s useful to you versus what isn’t. We use the data we collect primarily to improve your experience of FoodHero.

We may use also your PII and other information about you to:

  • Deliver our Services, including your orders, to help you complete orders with Stores;
  • Develop, operate, improve, deliver, maintain, and protect our Services;
  • Communicate with you for various purposes including but not limited to emailing you about your purchases of Products;
  • Help you efficiently access your information after you sign in to your account;
  • Remember information so you will not have to re-enter it during your visit, or the next time you visit and use the Services;
  • Monitor and analyze trends and usage;
  • Provide personalized content and information, which could include online ads or other forms of marketing;
  • Develop and test new features in the Services;
  • Enhance the safety and security of our Services;
  • Monitor metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic and demographic patterns to our Website and Services;
  • Diagnose or fix technology problems with our Website or Services;
  • Verify your identity to prevent fraud or other unauthorized or illegal activity;
  • Enhance the Services and your experience with them;
  • Run contests, special offers or other events or activities on the Services;
  • Enforce our Terms of Use and other usage policies;
  • Respond to and resolve inquiries.

We may also store some information locally on your Device. For example, we may store information as local cache so that you can open the Application and view content faster.

Where You Provide Consent
  1. To send you electronic marketing by email, telephone, SMS, and push notifications to inform you about our Services.
  2. To use User Content, meaning content created by you to share publicly (like on social media), which may display our brand or products.

We will only ever do these two things with your explicit consent. For example, a screen asking you, “Do you want to share this publicly on Facebook?” or “Can we send you newsletters?” We will never try to get consent through sneaky fine print or privacy policies nobody reads ;-)

Sharing of Your Information

We will not rent, sell, trade, license or otherwise transfer your information to third parties outside FoodHero (or the group of companies of which FoodHero is a part) without your consent, except as noted in this Policy, particularly in the next section.

Parties with Whom We May Share Your Information

We may share non-identifiable User Content and information (including, but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that FoodHero is part of, or that become part of that group ("Affiliates").

Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand and improve the Services (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates' own Services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences). But these Affiliates will honor the choices you make about who can access your User Content.

We also may share your information (including PII), as well as information from tools like cookies, log files, and device identifiers and location data, with third-party organizations that help us provide the Services to you ("Service Providers"). Our Service Providers will be given access to your information and will use it only as is reasonably necessary to provide the Services, and under reasonable confidentiality terms.

We may also share certain information such as cookie data with third-party advertising partners. This information would allow third-party ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. We may remove parts of data that can identify you and share anonymized data with other parties. We may also combine your information with other information in a way that it is no longer associated with you and share that aggregated information. For more information about our advertising practices, please see the “Managing Cookies and Advertising” section further in this Policy.

Secured Payments

FoodHero uses Stripe for processing of secured payments for payments made through the Services. Stripe is certified as a PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) Service Provider Level 1, the highest-volume level for credit card transaction companies. When you make a payment through the Services using Stripe, you are subject to the Privacy Policy of Stripe, which we encourage you to read. When you make a payment through the Services, your Billing Information is transferred securely and all payments are processed through an encrypted internet connection.

No Billing Information is ever seen by FoodHero. No Billing Information is ever stored on servers controlled by FoodHero. Stripe has our permission to store, on behalf of FoodHero, the data pertaining to the executed transactions by Services users (including all Billing Information) with the goal of ensuring a secure method of payment and proof of payment archive, allowing for the protection of Services users, for follow-up as needed, and to facilitate repeat payments if you choose store your Billing Information through the Application. Transactional data may be used for validation and registration purposes, and to trace any fraudulent activities if necessary.

Parties with Whom You May Choose to Share Your User Content

Any information or content that you voluntarily disclose to the Services, such as User Content, becomes available to the public, as controlled by any applicable privacy settings that you set. To change your privacy settings on the Services, please change your profile settings when you are a Logged-in User. Once you have shared User Content or made it public, that User Content may be re-shared by others.

If you remove User Content that you posted to the Services, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the Services, or if other users or third parties using the FoodHero API have copied or saved that User Content.

Responding to Do Not Track Signals

Please note that our Website does not have the capability to respond to “Do Not Track” signals received from various web browsers.

What Happens in the Event of a Change of Command or Control

If we sell or otherwise transfer part or the whole of FoodHero or our assets to another organization (e.g., in the course of a transaction like a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, or liquidation), your information such as name and email address, User Content and any other information collected through the Services may be among the items sold or transferred. You will continue to own your User Content. The buyer or transferee will have to honor the commitments we have made in this Policy.

Responding to Legal Requests and Preventing Harm

We may access, preserve and share your information (including PII) in response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside of Canada or the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law in that jurisdiction, affects users in that jurisdiction, and is consistent with internationally recognized standards. We may also access, preserve and share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity, to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations, and to prevent death or imminent bodily harm. Information we receive about you may be accessed, processed and retained for an extended period of time when it is the subject of a legal request or obligation, governmental investigation, or investigations concerning possible violations of our terms or policies, or otherwise to prevent harm.

How We Store and Protect Your Information

The Security of Your Information:


We take all reasonable administrative, physical and electronic measures designed to protect the information that we collect from or about you (including your PII) from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. If we request any sensitive information from you, we’ll encrypt this data and use SSL or other technologies. Please be aware, however, that no method of transmitting information over the Internet or storing information is completely secure. Accordingly, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of any information.

Storage and Processing:


Information collected through the Services may be stored and processed in Canada or the United States or any other country in which FoodHero, its Affiliates or Service Providers maintain facilities.


FoodHero, its Affiliates, or Service Providers may transfer information that we collect about you, including personal information, across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world. If you are located in the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from Canadian or U.S. law, please note that your PII may be transferred to, and maintained on, computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your jurisdiction. If you’re located outside the United States and choose to provide your PII to us, we may transfer your PII to the United States and process it there.

By registering for and using the Services you consent to the transfer of information to Canada or the U.S. or to any other country in which FoodHero, its Affiliates or Service Providers maintain facilities and the use and disclosure of information about you as described in this Policy.


We use commercially reasonable safeguards to help keep the information collected through the Website or Services secure and take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your account. However, despite FoodHero's best efforts to ensure that third parties will not access or obtain your PII through your use of the Website or Services, complete confidentiality and security cannot currently be guaranteed on the Internet and / or where data is transferred via wireless digital technology of any type. Communication via the Internet is subject to interception, loss, or alteration. You acknowledge and agree that FoodHero cannot be held responsible for damages resulting from the transmission of information or PII over the Internet and that such communications are at your own risk.

Please do your part to help us. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information, and for controlling access to emails between you and FoodHero, at all times. Your privacy settings may also be affected by any changes made by the social media services you connect to FoodHero. We are not responsible for the functionality, privacy, or security measures of any other organization.

Your Choices About Your Information

Your Account Information and Profile/Privacy Settings:

You can update your account at any time by logging in and changing your profile settings. You can also unsubscribe from email communications from us by clicking on the "unsubscribe” link provided in such communications. Please note that you cannot opt out of Services-related communications such as account verification, purchase and billing confirmations, changes/updates to features of the Services, technical and security notices, etc.

Storage Time of Information and User Content:

If you choose to terminate or deactivate your account, FoodHero, its Affiliates, or its Service Providers may retain information (including your profile information) and User Content for a commercially reasonable time for backup, archival, and/or audit purposes. You can terminate your account by accessing your profile through the “More” menu link within the Application.

Your Rights to Verify, Correct and Delete the PII We Hold

You have the right to: (i) verify what PII FoodHero holds about you; (ii) ask for your PII to be corrected or updated; and (iii) withdraw your consent to the use by FoodHero of your PII and have it deleted from our records. If you wish to inquire about and verify and / or correct PII FoodHero holds about you, or if you wish to have all your PII permanently deleted from our records, please contact us using the contact information further below in this Policy. Please note that deletion of your PII may make it impossible for you to use the Services, or certain portions thereof, and FoodHero and its Representatives accepts no responsibility for any damages, pecuniary or otherwise, resulting therefrom. If you request deletion of your PII, FoodHero reserves the right to retain some of your PII for a reasonable time in order to satisfy our legal obligations or under a legal procedure of any sort.

Other Websites and Services

Our Website or Services may contain third-party links to other websites or services, include third-party integrations, or be a co-branded or third-party-branded services that’s being provided jointly with or by another company. By accessing those links, using the third-party integration, or using a co-branded or third-party-branded services, you may be providing information (including PII) directly to the third party, us, or both.

You acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. As always, we encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party website or services that you visit or use, including those third parties you interact with through our Services or via our Website.

Please remember that when you use a link to go from our Website or Services to another website or services, our Policy does not apply to those third-party websites or services. Your browsing and interaction on any third-party website or services, including those that have a link from our Website, are subject to that third party's own rules and policies. If you are using a third-party website or services and you allow them to access your User Content or any PII or other information, you do so at your own risk.

We may let other companies use cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies through the Services or on the Website. These technologies only track usage and behaviours and do not gather PII. These companies may collect information about how you use the Services and other websites and online services over time and across different services. This information may be used to, among other things, analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, and better understand your online activity.

What are cookies?

A "cookie" is a small electronic file stored on your device by your web browser when you visit a website. Cookies allow us to retain information about you (as described below) to recognize you when you visit our websites.

The word "browser" here refers to the software that allows you to access the Internet, such as Chrome or Firefox. The word "device" refers to your computer, smartphone, tablet, or any other device used to access the Internet.

Cookies can either be temporary or persistent: temporary means they are deleted from your device after your browsing session and browser are closed, and persistent means they are stored on your device until their deletion.

In this policy, the term "cookies" also includes similar technology used by us or our partners to analyze a user's browsing habits and device data.

What types of information can be stored in a cookie?

With your approval (except where a cookie is necessary), the following information may be stored by a cookie on your device in a temporary or persistent manner:

  • The point of entry of your visit to our websites (e.g., social media, email, website, etc.);
  • Your activities on our websites (e.g., day and hour of the beginning and end of your visit, pages visited, clicks, forms started or completed to sign up for a product, etc.);
  • Advertising and links you clicked on;
  • The type and version of your browser (e.g., Chrome or Firefox);
  • The type and version of your operating system (e.g., Microsoft or iOS);
  • The type and model of your device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, or computer);
  • Any other information you provide to us while using our websites (e.g., language preference and sign-in credentials) or that allows us to respect your preferences regarding the use of cookies.

While IP addresses are not stored by cookies, they may be transmitted to our partners when you approve the use of cookies. An IP address is the numeric code used to identify a device connected to the Internet. The IP address may locate the region and Internet service provider of a device.

How We Use Cookies

There are 4 different types of cookies we use:

  1. Necessary cookies: These cookies let you navigate our Website and Application. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to use the Services, access your account or browse information.
  2. Analytic cookies: These cookies collect information about how you use our Application and Website. For example, they may track how often certain pages or tabs are visited, if you encounter any error pages or if elements of a page fail to load. We may also use analytic cookies to test out new features or page designs. Data collected from analytic cookies is used to continually improve your experience.
  3. Preference cookies: These are the cookies that let us remember your choices and settings such as your preferred language, your username so you don’t have to re-enter it each time, your custom fonts or text size or any other customization you choose to make.
  4. Targeting cookies: These cookies are typically placed by third parties such as ad networks. They are used to display ads targeted to your interests or location, as well as to control the frequency of ad displays. They also remember when you visit particular websites and may share that information advertiser (although no identifiable information is stored or shared). In addition, we use Google Analytics Data Collection for Advertising Features, including Remarketing and Advertising Reporting Features to gather data from people who have allowed Google to associate their web and Application browsing history with their Google account. This is something you would opt into with Google and it allows advertisers to customize ads in Google Search and Display Advertising. Please refer to the next section of this Policy for more information.
Who places cookies on my device?

When you authorize the use of cookies on your device, cookies may be stored by us or our partners.

Our partners' cookies, known as "third party cookies" also allow them to access the information they contain (e.g., your browsing statistics) and handle it in accordance with their privacy and cookie policies.

How long do we keep your cookie preferences?

We store your cookie preferences for 6 months. Once this period has expired, we present our cookie banner to you again so that you may indicate your preferences anew.

However, for users of certain browsers such as Safari and Firefox, this storage period may be different. Some browsers erase cookies automatically, including those which allow your browser to retain your cookie preferences, after a set number of days. This means that, if you use one of these browsers, our cookie banner may be presented to you sooner than the 6-month delay described above. For further details, please consult your browser's user guide.

Additionally, our cookie banner may be presented to you again if you erase cookies or if we modify our websites.

Managing Cookies and Advertising

Upon accessing our Website or Application, you will be shown a banner advising you of our cookie use. If you choose to continue with cookies enabled, you agree to our use of cookies and other similar technologies for the purposes described in the previous section of this Policy.

Cookies are managed through your browser or Device’s settings. If you choose to disable all or some types of cookies, to withdraw cookie consent, or to delete cookies, you can do so from your browser or Device settings. Please note that deleting or disabling certain cookies may limit your access to our Website and/or Application, thereby disabling functionality, including the ability to purchase Products.

To learn more about cookies, visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and/or customize Google Display Network ads, visit https://www.google.com/settings/ads or Google Analytics' currently available opt-outs for the web.

FoodHero also advertises using Facebook Custom Audience and other Facebook ads, to display advertisements to you on Facebook that will be of interest to you, and by using the Services you consent to this use. Facebook may collect or receive information from our Application and use that information to provide measurement services and targeted ads. If you do not want to receive such Facebook advertisements, please contact us by email at support@foodhero.com.

How to erase the information collected by cookies?


To delete cookies, you need to clear your browsing history by selecting cookies in your web browser. To erase this history, we invite you to consult your browser's user guide to know how to manually erase this data.

Our cookie banner enables us to modify the changes in real time. However, modifying your preferences does not erase information already stored by other cookies.

Social media platforms and third-party sites

We are present on some social media services such as Meta and LinkedIn. When you interact with us via social media, you do so in accordance with the conditions and policies of these platforms.

Our websites may contain links to websites and services that are not our own. When you leave our websites, this Policy therefore ceases to apply.

We invite you to carefully read the privacy and cookie policies for the social media platforms, other websites, and services before you provide them with any personal information.

Contacting Us About a Deceased User

In the event of the death of a FoodHero User, please contact us. We will usually conduct our communication via email. Should we require additional information, we will contact you at the email address you provide in your request.

We Are Compliant with Privacy Laws

This Policy and FoodHero’s practices in general are designed to be compliant with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”, S.C. 2000, c. 5) and Quebec’s An Act Respecting the Protection Of Personal Information in the Private Sector (R.S.Q. c. P-39.1). If you have any questions regarding this compliance, please contact us using the contact information in the next section of this Policy.

How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Policy or the Website or Services, or if you wish to inquire about and / or access any PII FoodHero holds about you, please contact us via the following means:

privacy@foodhero.com

or:

FoodHero Privacy Officer

2200 rue Stanley

Montréal, Québec

Canada

H3A 1R6

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may modify or update this Policy from time to time. The date at the top of the Policy will always indicate when it was updated. When we make modifications or updates, we will let you know. Sometimes, for minor changes we’ll let you know by revising the date at the top of this Policy that’s available on our Website and Application. If there are any significant changes to the Policy that materially affect the way we treat your information, we will provide you with additional notice such as adding a statement to our Website’s homepage, providing you with an in-Application notification, or sending you an email. Your continued use of our Website or Services after any modification to this Policy will constitute your acceptance of such modification.