Privacy Policy

Effective Date: June 28, 2026

Welcome to Food Trucks Gulf Coast (“the Site,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). We operate a community platform and directory designed to connect food enthusiasts with mobile food vendors across the Gulf Coast region, specifically serving Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

This Privacy Policy applies to Food Trucks Gulf Coast websites, tools, forms, newsletters, and related services, including foodtrucksgulfcoast.com, ftgc.app, the FTGC owner portal, newsletter signup and preference tools, advertising inquiry forms, and administrative review workflows. This single policy applies to both domains; ftgc.app links to this policy hosted on foodtrucksgulfcoast.com.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and disclose your personal information when you visit our website, use our services, claim or update a business listing, sign up for a newsletter, submit an advertising inquiry, or otherwise communicate with us (collectively, the “Services”).

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using and accessing any of the Services, you agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not use or access the Services.

1. How We Source and Collect Information

Because Food Trucks Gulf Coast functions as a community directory and platform, we gather information through a combination of public data aggregation, direct user contributions, and verified vendor updates.

The types of personal information we obtain depend on how you interact with our Site:

A. Publicly Available Information (Initial Aggregation)

To build a comprehensive and useful community guide, we initially pull, compile, and index publicly available information regarding food trucks operating in the Gulf Coast region from various online resources. This includes:

Business Details: Food truck names, cuisines, public contact details, menus, and operating hours.
Location & Schedule Data: Historically published routes, calendar entries, and routine stop locations.
Social Media & Media Files: Public social media handles, links, posts, and promotional imagery.

B. Information Submitted by Food Truck Owners (Claimed Listings & Owner Portal)

When a food truck owner or representative claims a listing, registers an account, or uses the FTGC owner portal to manage and update their profile, we may collect the business and contact information needed to verify ownership and operate the listing. This generally includes owner and business contact details, information used to confirm the owner’s authority over the listing, account and login information, the profile details submitted or updated through the portal (such as menu, schedule, location, links, and related listing content), and the internal status and review notes we maintain to process those requests.

C. Information Collected From General Users & Community Members

If you create a consumer account, sign up for alerts, or engage with the platform as a community member, we collect:

Basic Contact Details: Your name, email address, phone number, and account preferences.
User-Generated Content: Reviews, ratings, comments, tips, photos, bookmarks, and collections of your favorite food trucks.
Customer Support: Information you choose to include when sending a message through our contact forms, feedback tools, or support channels.

If you sign up for an FTGC newsletter or update your newsletter preferences, we may collect your email address, name if provided, audience type (such as fan, food truck owner, event organizer, advertiser, or partner), city or market interests, content preferences, email frequency preferences, subscription status, confirmation status, unsubscribe status, and consent history. We use this information to send relevant updates, manage subscription preferences, support unsubscribe or resubscribe requests, and understand audience interest by market.

E. Advertising Inquiry & Advertiser Data

If you submit an advertising inquiry, we may collect your contact information, business information, advertiser type, market or state interests, promotion goals, budget range if provided, message details, and related internal review notes. If an inquiry becomes an advertising relationship, we may also maintain advertiser records, campaign details, placement information, creative status, and manual reporting notes.

F. Information Collected Automatically & Location Data

Like most map-reliant and community platforms, we automatically track certain metrics and usage patterns when you navigate the Site:

Precise Geolocation Data: With your explicit, affirmative consent via your browser or mobile device, we may collect precise location data (such as GPS coordinates) to show you real-time food trucks nearest to you.
Usage Data & Device Identifiers: IP addresses, browser types, mobile device identifiers, operating systems, mobile carrier details, browser language, and requested/referring URLs.
Cookies and Tracking Pixels: Small data files used to power the Site, remember your preferences, keep you logged in, evaluate marketing performance, and measure traffic.

G. Security & Operational Logs

For security, fraud prevention, abuse prevention, and troubleshooting, we may collect operational logs related to account access, form submissions, failed login attempts, rate limits, spam prevention, IP addresses, browser information, timestamps, source paths, and related request metadata.

2. How We Use Your Personal Information

We leverage the collected information to operate, maintain, and optimize a thriving community platform. Specifically, we use your data for the following purposes:

Directory Functionality: To map out food trucks, verify listing ownership, process claimed listings, and accurately post hours, menus, and routes across the Gulf Coast region.
Owner Portal Operations: To review and approve owner accounts, listing claims, new listing requests, and profile, menu, schedule, location, link, catering, and event update requests.
Community Engagement: To display your public reviews, ratings, and shared photos to other users, enhancing the marketplace for both consumers and vendors.
Location-Based Tools: To utilize precise coordinates to deliver localized searches (e.g., “Food Trucks Near Me”) and map overlays.
Communication & Alerts: To send service updates, security notifications, transactional alerts, and promotional newsletters or special offers (which you may opt out of at any time), and to manage subscription preferences, unsubscribe, and resubscribe requests.
Security & Fraud Prevention: To detect malicious actions, investigate fraudulent reviews, verify authentic truck owners, log and limit access attempts, and safeguard the platform’s integrity.
Audience Understanding & Outreach Measurement: We collect the information needed to operate newsletter subscriptions, manage preferences, improve FTGC services, understand audience interest, and measure the performance of our outreach. We do not sell your personal information.
Aggregated Audience Insights: We may use aggregated or de-identified information to understand audience interest and support advertising, sponsorship, editorial, and business planning. For example, we may report subscriber counts by market, popular city interests, general newsletter interest categories, sponsorship interest, or campaign/source performance. These reports are intended to describe audience trends and should not identify individual subscribers.
Analytics & Optimization: To run diagnostics, fix technology problems reported by users or engineers, and better understand user interaction with the Services.

We do not sell your personal information. We may share aggregated, de-identified, or summary information that does not reasonably identify you, such as audience size by market or general newsletter interest trends. To foster a connected community and operate the Services, information is shared under the following conditions:

Public Display: Any user-generated reviews, ratings, photos, or public vendor profile updates are inherently visible to anyone visiting the Site.
Service Providers: We share necessary data with third-party vendors who perform support services on our behalf, such as hosting, security, database, authentication, email delivery, analytics, spam prevention, storage, and customer support providers. These providers are authorized to use your information only as needed to deliver services to us.
Map and Location Vendors: We share routing requests and anonymized coordinates with third-party mapping and location providers to render location features and map interfaces.
Corporate Transactions: If the platform undergoes a business transaction such as a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, or asset transfer, user and vendor databases will be treated as part of the transferred business assets.
Legal Compliance and Protection: We reserve the right to disclose personal data if required to do so by a subpoena, search warrant, court order, statute, or law enforcement request, or if necessary to defend the safety, property, and rights of Food Trucks Gulf Coast, our users, or the general public.

4. State-Specific Disclosures & Consumer Rights

Residents of the Gulf Coast states (Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana) enjoy distinct privacy protections and rights under evolving state consumer protection frameworks (including the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act and the Florida Digital Bill of Rights).

To ensure fairness, we provide a uniform baseline of privacy rights for all users across these states:

Right to Confirm and Access: You have the right to confirm whether we are processing your personal data and to request a copy of the specific personal information we have collected about you.
Right to Deletion: You can request that we delete the personal data we have collected directly from you or maintain regarding your consumer profile.
Right to Correction: You have the right to correct inaccuracies in the personal information or business listings we maintain.
Right to Opt-Out of Targeted Ads: You can manage or disable trackers that deliver personalized or targeted advertising based on cross-contextual browsing behavior.
Consent for Sensitive Data (Geolocation): We treat precise geolocation as sensitive personal information. We will always seek your affirmative, opt-in consent through your app or browser settings before accessing your precise location, and you can revoke this permission at any time.
Non-Discrimination: We will not discriminate against you, deny you services, or alter your user experience for exercising any of your consumer privacy rights.

5. Email Preferences and Unsubscribe

You may unsubscribe from FTGC marketing or newsletter emails using the unsubscribe link in an email or by contacting us. We may keep a limited record of unsubscribed or suppressed email addresses to help prevent accidental re-subscription.

Unsubscribing from a newsletter stops future newsletter emails but may not delete all related records. We may retain limited unsubscribe or suppression records to avoid accidentally adding you back to a mailing list. If you request deletion of personal information, we will review and process the request as required by applicable law.

6. Cookies and Choice Control

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies by default, but you can configure your browser controls to reject, block, or eliminate them.

Please note that removing or completely blocking cookies can negatively impact your experience on our platform. Core location features, custom dashboard layouts, or user login capabilities may fail to work properly or become entirely unavailable.

7. Children’s Privacy

The Services are intended for a general audience and are not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, please do not create an account or send any information about yourself to us.

If we discover that a child under 13 has bypassed our intent and submitted personal information without verified parental consent, we will take steps to purge that data from our servers as quickly as possible. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we have accidentally gathered information from a child under 13, please reach out to us through our contact form.

8. Data Security and Retention

Please be aware that no data transmission over the Internet or electronic storage layout is 100% impenetrable. While we execute commercially reasonable physical, technical, and managerial safeguards to secure your private data, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We retain information for as long as reasonably needed to provide FTGC services, maintain directory accuracy, manage owner account approvals and listing claims, operate newsletters and unsubscribe records, review advertising inquiries, maintain security logs, resolve disputes, comply with legal obligations, and support legitimate business operations.

9. Contact Information & Exercising Your Rights

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy, wish to file a request to exercise your consumer privacy rights (Access, Correction, or Deletion), or if you are a food truck owner looking to update or remove an aggregated listing, please reach us through our contact form.

To expedite requests to change, claim, or delete a food truck business profile, please submit your request using the email address or official business domain linked directly to your commercial operations so we can verify ownership.