Privacy policy
This policy explains what personal information Cook and Etc collects through this website, why we collect it, how long we keep it and what you can ask us to do with it. We have written it in plain language on purpose. If anything here is unclear, write to us and we will explain it.
1. Who we are
Cook and Etc is the business responsible for the personal information collected on this website.
- Legal entity: Cook and Etc
- Address: 7235 Boul. Gouin E., Montréal, QC H1E 6N1, Canada
- Website: www.cookandetc.com
- Phone: (514) 262-2015
- Governing law: the laws of Quebec and the laws of Canada that apply in Quebec, including the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector as amended by Law 25.
Our person in charge of protecting personal information (our privacy officer) is Cristina Mucciardi. You can reach her at info@cookandetc.com.
2. What personal information we collect
We only collect what you type into one of our forms, plus basic technical information that every website receives.
Contact form
- First name and last name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Company name (optional)
- Your message
- The language you prefer us to reply in
Event and catering request form
- First name and last name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Date and time of your event
- Number of guests
- Your estimated budget
- The type of event (corporate or private)
- What you tell us about the event
- Any inspiration photos you choose to upload
- The language you prefer us to reply in
Import and distribution enquiry form
- First name and last name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Company name
- The quantity you are enquiring about
- Your message
- The language you prefer us to reply in
Technical information collected automatically
- Your IP address and rough location (city or region level), your browser and device type, the pages you visit, how long you stay and the site that sent you to us. This comes from Google Analytics, which only runs once consent to analytics has been given (see section 8).
- When you submit a form, a short-lived anti-spam check runs in your browser. It sends your IP address and a technical signal to Cloudflare so we can tell a person from a bot. It does not read your form answers.
- The page address the form was sent from, and the date and time it was sent.
We do not ask for and do not want payment card numbers, health information, government ID numbers or any other sensitive information through this website. Please do not put that kind of detail in a form message.
3. Why we collect each piece
- Your name, phone number and email address — so we can answer you, and so we can reach you about the enquiry you sent.
- Your preferred language — so we reply in English or in French, whichever you chose.
- Company name and quantity (import and distribution) — so we can quote a realistic price and volume.
- Event date, guest count, budget, event type and description — so we can tell you whether we are available and prepare an accurate proposal.
- Inspiration photos you upload — so we understand the look you want for your event.
- Your message — so we understand what you are asking for.
- IP address and anti-spam signals — so our forms are not flooded by automated submissions.
- Analytics information — so we can see which pages people actually use and improve the site. We look at this as group totals, not to build a profile of you.
We do not sell your personal information. We do not rent it, trade it, or hand it to advertisers.
4. Our legal basis
Under Quebec law we must tell you why we are allowed to hold your information. Quebec law works from your consent, together with a defined set of situations where the law allows a particular use without asking for separate consent. Here is what applies to each use.
| What we do | Our basis |
|---|---|
| Store and answer what you send through a form | Your consent, which you give by ticking the consent box on the form before you submit it — the box is required, and the form cannot be sent without it. What you send is also necessary to take the steps you asked us to take before a contract is entered into. |
| Prepare a quote and carry out an event, catering or distribution order | No separate consent is needed: the information is necessary to carry out the contract you asked us for, and we use it only for that order. |
| Anti-spam checks on our forms | No separate consent is needed: the check is necessary for the security of this site and its forms, which we could not operate publicly without it. |
| Website analytics | Your consent. Analytics is a consent category on this site, so it is held back until that consent is given, and you can refuse or withdraw it at any time using the methods in section 8. |
| Keeping order and transaction records | No separate consent is needed: Canadian and Quebec tax and accounting law requires us to keep these business records. |
5. How long we keep it
| Category | How long | Then what |
|---|---|---|
| Form submissions (contact, event and catering, import and distribution), including uploaded photos | 365 days from the day you send it | Deleted from our form inbox. |
| Order and transaction history, including invoices | 7 years | Deleted, unless tax or accounting law requires longer. |
| Analytics information | 14 months | Deleted automatically by Google Analytics. |
If an enquiry turns into a booking, the details that became part of that booking are kept as order and transaction history for the seven-year window above.
6. Who we share it with
We share personal information only with the suppliers who run parts of this website for us. Each one may use it only to do the job we hired them for.
| Who | What they do for us | Where they hold the data |
|---|---|---|
| Nestor (Nestor Suite) | Hosts this website and stores the form submissions in our inbox. | Quebec, Canada (shared production infrastructure in the Beauharnois region). |
| Google Analytics (Google LLC) | Measures how the website is used. | Google servers, which include servers outside Canada. |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Runs the anti-spam check that protects our forms (Cloudflare Turnstile). | A global network of servers, which includes servers outside Canada. |
| Our outbound email provider | Delivers the notification email that tells our team a form has come in, and delivers our replies. | Servers that may be outside Canada. |
We may also disclose personal information if a law, a court order or a public authority with proper jurisdiction requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. If our business is ever sold or reorganised, information may be passed to the buyer, who must continue to protect it under this policy.
7. Transfers outside Quebec
Your form submissions are hosted in Quebec. However, some of the suppliers listed above — Google Analytics, Cloudflare and our email provider — operate servers outside Quebec and outside Canada, including in the United States. That means some information about your visit, and the email carrying your enquiry, may be processed outside Quebec.
Before using these suppliers, we assessed whether the information would receive adequate protection, taking into account how sensitive it is, how it will be used, the protections the supplier commits to by contract and the legal framework where the information is handled. Each supplier is bound by a written agreement that limits them to our instructions and requires them to protect the information. You can ask our privacy officer for more detail about any of these assessments.
8. Cookies and tracking
We want to be straightforward about this: analytics is now set up as a consent category on this website, so Google Analytics is held back until consent to analytics has been given. The consent banner is now shown to visitors on this site, so you can accept or refuse analytics on the site itself, and reopen that panel at any time to change your choice. Here is exactly what runs and what you can do about it today.
- Strictly necessary — a small number of cookies and browser storage items keep the site working: remembering your language, and the anti-spam check on our forms. The site cannot work without these.
- Analytics — Google Analytics sets cookies that recognise a returning browser so we can count visitors and see which pages are used. These are not necessary for the site to work, and they are only ever set once consent to analytics has been given — until then the analytics tag is blocked and no analytics cookies are set.
We do not run advertising or retargeting cookies on this website, and we do not share visit data with advertising networks.
As well as refusing analytics in the on-site consent panel, you can refuse it in these ways, and either one works immediately:
- Install Google's official Analytics opt-out browser add-on, which stops Google Analytics on every site you visit.
- Block or delete cookies for this site in your browser settings, or browse in a private window. Every major browser lets you do this, and turning on "Do Not Track" or your browser's tracking protection also limits what is collected.
Blocking analytics cookies will not stop you from using any part of this website. You can also email our privacy officer and ask us to exclude you, and we will confirm what we have done.
9. Your rights
Quebec law gives you real control over your information. You can ask us to:
- See it — get a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and be told where we got it and who we shared it with.
- Correct it — fix anything inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
- Delete it — have it erased, or ask us to stop spreading it, where the law allows. We may have to keep records that tax or accounting law requires us to keep, and we will tell you if that applies.
- Take it with you — receive the information you gave us in a structured, commonly used technological format, or have it sent to someone else you name.
- Withdraw your consent — at any time, for anything we do on the basis of consent, including analytics and hearing from us. Withdrawing consent does not undo what we did lawfully before you withdrew it.
- Complain — if you are not satisfied with how we handled your request.
To use any of these rights, write to our privacy officer:
Cristina Mucciardi, privacy officer
Email: info@cookandetc.com
Mail: Cook and Etc, 7235 Boul. Gouin E., Montréal, QC H1E 6N1
We will answer you in writing within 30 days of receiving your request, as Quebec law requires. We may need to confirm your identity first so that we do not hand your information to someone else. If we refuse a request, we will tell you why, tell you which part of the law we are relying on, and tell you how to challenge that decision.
10. Children and young people
This website and its forms are meant for adults. We do not aim any part of this site at children, we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 14, and none of our services are marketed to them.
If someone under 14 does send us personal information through one of our forms, we will only collect and use it with the consent of a parent or guardian — unless collecting it is clearly for that child's benefit, which is the one exception Quebec law allows.
If we find out that we have received personal information from a child under 14 without that consent, we will delete it, and we will not use it in the meantime.
If you are a parent or a guardian and you think your child has sent us something, write to our privacy officer, Cristina Mucciardi, at info@cookandetc.com. She will tell you what we hold about your child, answer your questions about it, and delete it at your request.
11. Automated decisions and profiling
No decision about you is made by a machine alone. A person at Cook and Etc reads every enquiry, prepares every quote and confirms every booking. We do not build profiles of visitors, and we do not score, rank or sort people automatically.
There is one automated step on this website, and it judges a submission rather than a person: the anti-spam check on our forms (Cloudflare Turnstile). It looks at signals from your browser and your IP address to decide whether a submission came from a person or from a robot, and it blocks the ones it judges to be automated. It does not read your answers, and it plays no part in whether we take your booking or what we quote you.
If that check blocks you by mistake, please do not give up on us. Call (514) 262-2015 or email info@cookandetc.com and a person will take your enquiry directly.
If this ever changes and we do start making a decision about someone based only on automated processing, we will tell that person at the time the decision is made. They will then be able to ask us which personal information we used and what the main factors behind the decision were, and to send their own comments to a member of our staff who is able to review the decision.
12. How we protect your information
This website is served over an encrypted connection. Access to the form inbox is limited to the people at Cook and Etc who need it to answer you, and each supplier listed in section 6 is bound by contract to protect what we send them. No system is perfect, but we review these measures as our site changes.
13. If there is a breach
If personal information we hold is lost, accessed or disclosed without authorisation, we will investigate immediately and take reasonable steps to reduce the harm. If the incident presents a risk of serious injury, we will notify the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (CAI) within 72 hours of confirming the breach, and we will notify the people affected with equal promptness. We keep a register of all confidentiality incidents, as the law requires.
14. How to make a complaint
Please come to us first — email info@cookandetc.com and our privacy officer will look into it. Most things are sorted out quickly that way.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, or we do not respond in time, you have the right to complain to Quebec's privacy regulator:
Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec
525, boul. René-Lévesque Est, bureau 2.36, Québec (Québec) G1R 5S9
Toll free: 1 888 528-7741
Website: www.cai.gouv.qc.ca
15. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and change the date below. If the change is significant, we will make it obvious on the site.