Last updated October 30, 2026

Privacy policy

Clearshelf (clearshelf.com) is run by SAACOT LLC (“we”, “us”). This page explains in plain words what we collect when you use the site, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. We don’t sell your personal information and we don’t share it for targeted advertising. Clearshelf is intended for people in the United States.

The short version

• You can browse without an account. Your cart, saved items, diet settings and ZIP code stay in your browser.
• You need an account to check out or use the Shopper Assistant. We then keep your email, your saved items and cart, and a record of which stores you went to.
• Your diet, allergy and health answers stay on your device unless you choose to save them to your account. You can turn that off at any time, and we delete the saved copy.
• The Shopper Assistant uses an AI model. What you ask it, and the settings it needs to answer, are sent to that model, never your name or email. The conversation is kept for 12 months.
• Clearshelf Plus is paid through Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us.
• Brands see only totals, never who you are.
• You can download your data or delete your account yourself from your Account page.
• We use Google Analytics, but it gets only the page you’re on: never your searches, ZIP code, filters, settings or questions. You can turn it off with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page.

What we collect

When you browse (with or without an account)

• Your cart, saved products and food interests. Kept in your browser so they’re there when you come back.
• Your diet and allergy settings (for example diets you follow, allergens or ingredients to avoid, nutrient limits, low-FODMAP mode, halal or kosher). Kept in your browser. They’re sent with each search so we can filter and label products, but we don’t store them unless you choose to (see “Diet, allergy and health information” below).
• What you search for. Your search words are sent to our servers to find products. To understand a search like “chips without seed oils”, we send the words you typed, and nothing else about you, to an AI service (see “AI services”). When you open a product from a search, we add one to a count of that search phrase (lower-cased, first 60 characters) for that product. That count isn’t linked to you: no account, time or IP address is saved with it.
• Your location, if you use “Near me”. You can type a US ZIP code, which is kept in your browser. If you choose “Use my location”, your browser asks your permission and then sends your approximate coordinates to our server once. We use them to find your nearest ZIP code and nearby places, and we don’t store them. We don’t use your IP address to locate you.
• Product views, saves and store clicks, counted per product per day without recording who did them. Brands see these totals.
• Product reports. If you use “Report an issue with this product”, we keep what you chose (allergen, score, ingredients or other), anything you typed, the product, its score at the time, the time and, if you’re signed in, your account. Your IP address is used briefly to limit how many reports can be sent.
• Basic technical data. Like any website, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) handles your IP address and browser details to deliver the site and keep it secure, and keeps short-lived request logs. We use the country Cloudflare reports only to decide whether to ask for your consent to analytics. Your IP address is also used, and briefly stored, to limit repeated sign-in attempts, form messages and reports.

When you create an account and sign in

• Your email address, whether you signed up as a shopper or a brand, when you signed up, when you last used the site, and whether your email has been confirmed.
• Your password, if you set one. We store only a scrambled form of it (a salted hash) that can’t be turned back into your password.
• Sign-in and password-reset links. We can email you a link to sign in or set a new password. Each link works once and expires after 30 minutes, and we store only a scrambled form of it. A sign-in link can also carry the cart and saved items you had at the time.
• Your sign-in session, kept in a cookie for up to 30 days or until you sign out.
• Your saved items, cart and food interests, copied to your account so they follow you to other devices.
• Store visits. When you leave for a store, we record which store, which products, how many items, their listed price, the time and your account. We never see whether you bought anything.

The setup walkthrough

The optional walkthrough (“Set up your shelf”) asks about your main goal, foods and ingredients you avoid (including allergies), how you eat (for example vegan, halal or kosher), health topics you’re paying attention to, where you shop, and products you buy now. Your answers stay in your browser while you go through it. When you finish, we keep on your account only that you finished, your goal, where you shop, the products you buy and your food interests, so we can build your starting page. Your allergy, avoid, eating-style and health answers and anything you typed about your goal are saved to your account only if you tick “Save my diet, allergy and health answers to my account”.

Diet, allergy and health information

Your diets, allergies, limits, eating style and health topics can reveal health or religious information. They stay in your browser unless you choose to save them to your account, either in the walkthrough or with “Save to my account” under Your data on your Account page. If you do, we keep a copy on your account so it follows you to other devices and the Shopper Assistant can use it. Turning it off deletes the saved copy straight away; the settings stay on your device. We use this information only to filter, label and suggest products for you, and to answer your questions in the Shopper Assistant (see below). We never use it for advertising, never share it with brands, and never sell it. We don’t try to work out any health condition from it.

Consumer health data. Some states (for example Washington and Nevada) treat this kind of information as consumer health data. We collect it only with your consent as described above, use it only to provide the features you asked for, share it only with the service providers that run those features (hosting, and the AI service when you use the assistant), and delete it when you turn saving off or delete your account. You can ask us what we hold and have it deleted at any time.

The Shopper Assistant

• What we keep: your questions and its answers, the products it suggested, any meal plan it built, and your thumbs up or down on its suggestions. If you choose to save your assistant profile (goals, budget, taste and staples) to your account, we keep that too. We count how many questions you asked each month, for the free allowance.
• What goes to the AI model: your question, the last few turns of your conversation, the settings it needs to answer (your diets, allergies, limits, eating style, health topics, goals and budget, whether they’re saved on your account or sent from your device for that one question), and the products it can choose from. Never your name, email or account details.
• How long: the conversation, meal plans and thumbs are deleted after 12 months, or straight away if you delete your account.

Clearshelf Plus

Plus is paid through Stripe. When you start a trial or subscribe, Stripe Checkout takes your card details directly; they never reach our servers. Stripe tells us your Stripe customer and subscription IDs, the plan, its status (for example trialing, active, past due or cancelled), when the trial ends and when the current period ends, and we keep those on your account. “Manage billing” opens Stripe’s own customer portal. Stripe handles your payment information under its own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy).

When you contact us or send feedback

• The contact form saves your name (if you give it), email address, subject, message, the page you sent it from, the time and, if you’re signed in, your account. A copy is emailed to our inbox so we can reply.
• The Feedback tab saves your star rating, any comment, the page you sent it from, the time, whether you were using the shopper or brand side, and, if you’re signed in, your account.

When you represent a brand

• Claiming a brand. We ask you to prove you work for the brand, either with an email address on the brand’s own website domain (we may send a six-digit code to it), or by giving your full name, your role, a link that shows you work there and an optional note, which our team reviews. We keep these details, and our decision, as a record of the claim.
• Your listings. Product details, photos and website pages you give us or ask us to import. Product details are public once listed.
• Promotions. The products you promote, your daily budget, and how many times they were shown and clicked. Billing for promotions isn’t switched on, so nothing is charged; we’ll contact you before it is.
• Listing help requests are emailed to our team so we can get back to you.

How we use it

• To run the site: show and filter products, keep your lists, answer your assistant questions, run your Plus subscription, sign you in, and send the emails you ask for (sign-in and password links, claim codes and decisions, account notices, replies).
• To show brands how their products are doing, always as totals.
• To check and correct products when shoppers report a problem.
• To keep the site and accounts secure, prevent abuse, fix problems and improve the site.
• To answer your messages and handle requests about your data.

We don’t send marketing email. We don’t sell or rent your personal information, and we don’t share it for targeted advertising.

What brands see

A brand’s dashboard shows only totals for its own products: views, saves and store clicks per day, how many times shoppers left for its store with a cart and the listed value of those carts, results of its promotions, and the search phrases that led shoppers to its products. A search phrase is shown only once at least five searches have used it, and phrases containing an email address or a long number are never shown. Brands never see your name, email, account, settings, questions or reports.

If you buy from a store we sent you to, that store can see that you came from Clearshelf (see “Links to stores”) and handles your order under its own privacy policy.

Links to stores

Clearshelf doesn’t sell food itself: you buy on the farm’s, brand’s or store’s own site, under their own terms and privacy policy. When we send you to a Shopify store’s checkout, your chosen items are already in the cart and the link is tagged so the store knows Clearshelf sent the visit (ref=clearshelf, utm_source=clearshelf, utm_medium=referral). The link doesn’t contain your name or email. We aren’t paid when you buy. If that changes (for example affiliate links that earn a commission), we’ll say so here before it starts.

Cookies and browser storage

“Clear this device” under Your data on the Account page removes Clearshelf’s browser storage (except your analytics choice). You can also clear it in your browser settings. Stripe sets its own cookies on its Checkout and billing pages.

Google Analytics

• What it gets: the page you’re on (the address without anything after “?” or “#”, so never your searches, ZIP code, filters or sign-in links), a cleaned version of the page you came from, your device and browser type, and your approximate location as Google works it out. It also gets a few events: signing up or in, adding to cart or saved items (product, name and price), leaving for a store’s checkout (store and value), claiming a brand, and that a search happened (without the words).
• What it never gets: your name, email, account, diet or health settings, search words, assistant questions or payment details.
• Off for ads: Google’s advertising features, ad personalisation and Google signals are switched off.
• Your choice: in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google Analytics doesn’t run unless you click Accept. Elsewhere it runs unless your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal or you’ve chosen Decline. Anyone can change their choice at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. Decline switches Google Analytics off and deletes its cookies.
• Google keeps this data for no longer than 14 months. Staff pages aren’t measured.

We don’t use any other analytics or advertising tools.

AI services

We use AI models through OpenRouter, a service that routes requests to model providers: Anthropic’s Claude for the Shopper Assistant, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna (which may be served by OpenAI, Microsoft Azure or Amazon Bedrock) for reading labels and scoring, and TypeSafe’s Jev, which helps interpret shop searches. Every request we send tells OpenRouter to use only providers that don’t store the data or train models on it.

• From shop and recipe searches: only the words you typed.
• From the Shopper Assistant: what’s listed under “The Shopper Assistant” above. Never your name, email, account, IP address or location.
• From brands and public sources: product names, descriptions, ingredients, nutrition panels, label photos, certifications and text from brands’ public web pages, to read labels and score products.
• From our team: what staff type or upload into internal tools.

To fill in nutrition for plain foods, we may also look up product names (never anything about you) in the USDA FoodData Central database.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the services that run the site for us, and only what they need:

Authorised Clearshelf staff can see account information (for example emails, saved items, store visits, feedback, messages, reports, brand claims and Plus status) when they need it to run the site, help you, or handle a request. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people or the site from fraud or abuse, or to a buyer or successor if the business is sold or reorganised, in which case this policy continues to apply to the information transferred.

How long we keep it

A clean-up runs every day to delete records that have reached these limits.

Your choices and rights

• Download your data: “Download my data” under Your data on your Account page (or brand dashboard) gives you a file with everything we store about your account, including your assistant conversation, walkthrough answers, reports and Plus status.
• Delete your account: “Delete my account” in the same place, or email us. This cancels any Plus trial or subscription at Stripe straight away (so you aren’t charged again), then deletes your account, sessions, sign-in links, saved items, cart, diet and health settings, walkthrough answers, assistant conversation and profile, brand claims and contact messages, and signs you out everywhere. We email you to confirm it’s done. Store visits, feedback and product reports are kept without your name. If you owned a brand, it goes back to being unclaimed: its public listing stays and any promotion stops. Copies in our backups are overwritten within 30 days. Your browser may still hold your cart and settings until you clear them.
• Diet, allergy and health settings: turn “Save to my account” on or off at any time.
• Plus: cancel at any time with “Manage billing” on your Account page.
• Analytics: Cookie settings at the bottom of every page, or Global Privacy Control in your browser.
• Other requests: to see, correct or delete your information, or ask a question, email hello@clearshelf.com. We may ask you to confirm the request from your account’s email address. We answer within 30 days (up to 45 days where the law allows), and SAACOT LLC handles these requests.

US state privacy rights. Depending on where you live (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington or Nevada), you may have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to get a copy, to correct it, to delete it, and to opt out of its sale, sharing for targeted advertising, or profiling. We don’t sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising or use it for profiling with legal effects, so there is nothing to opt out of, but you can still ask. You can use an authorised agent, and we won’t treat you differently for using your rights. If we turn down a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer, and we’ll respond within 45 days.

If you’ve been a member of our staff, your name stays on past decisions you made in our admin tools as an audit trail, even after your account is deleted.

Children

Clearshelf isn’t meant for children. You must be 16 or older to create a shopper account and 18 or older to subscribe to Plus or represent a brand. We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we’ll delete it.

Security

The site uses HTTPS. Passwords, sign-in links and session IDs are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form, and repeated sign-in attempts are limited. Card details are handled by Stripe and never stored by us. Only authorised staff can use our admin tools. No system is perfectly secure, so tell us right away at hello@clearshelf.com if you think something is wrong.

Changes

If we change this policy we’ll update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use information we already have, we’ll tell signed-in users on the site or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

SAACOT LLC, 318 N Carson St, Carson City, NV 89701. Email hello@clearshelf.com.

See also our terms of use.