Cocktailian Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 19, 2026

Cocktailian is in early testing. This policy states what the app collects, why, and how it handles that information during this phase.

Information We Collect

• Account information. Your email and password. We store passwords securely, never in plain text. We use this to create your account and keep your bar inventory synced across devices.
• Your bar inventory. The bottles you add by barcode or photo, plus the pantry staples and equipment you mark as on hand. We use this to show you which drinks you can make.
• Shared bars. If you share a bar with other people, everyone in it sees and can change its bottles, pantry, tools, and shopping list, and the list shows who added and who bought each item. Your taste answers, saved drinks, what you've made, and your settings stay private to you. If you leave a bar, or are removed from it, the bottles you added stay in it without your name.
• Your name in a shared bar. You can choose a name for the people in a bar with you to know you by. It's optional. Only people in a bar with you see it, and they never see your email.
• A bar's recent changes. Every bar keeps a list of its changes, such as a bottle added or an item bought, and who made each one. Everyone in the bar can see it, including someone who joins later. Changes older than 30 days are removed the next time anything in that bar changes. If you leave a bar, or are removed from it, your name stays on the changes you made until they're removed.
• Your recipes. Recipes you write in the app are yours, and private. If you share one with a bar you're in, the people in that bar can see it, with your name on it (or "A member" if you haven't chosen one), but they can't change it. You can stop sharing it at any time, and leaving the bar stops it too. A recipe you delete can be brought back for an hour. After that, it's deleted the next time recipes are saved or listed.
• Your drinks and settings. The drinks you save, the drinks you make and how you rated them, and your settings, such as your units and whether you allow swaps. We use them to show you your drinks, in your units. How you rate a drink also helps put the ones you're most likely to enjoy first.
• Your taste answers. What you tell us in the taste questions (drinks you like, spirits, things to avoid, and flavor pairs), and a taste profile we work out from them and from how you rate drinks you've made. We use them only to show you the drinks you're most likely to enjoy first. Deleting your account deletes them.
• Your privacy choices. Whether you said yes to usage analytics and to email, as you last set them. We don't record your age.
• Usage analytics. We use PostHog to count events like adding a bottle, a failed scan, or viewing a drink, but only while Share anonymous usage data is on. You choose when you join, and you can change it any time under Account. When it's off, the app sends no events. These events carry a random ID the app makes on your phone, not your name or email, and a random ID for each visit. PostHog also receives details about your phone and the app: its maker and model, its operating system and version, its language and region setting, its time zone, its screen size, and which version of Cocktailian you have. It sees your IP address when the app connects; we've set it not to store it, and not to work out your location from it. We use this to fix bugs and improve the app.
• Label photos. If a barcode doesn't find your bottle, you can photograph the label. We send that photo to Google Cloud Vision to read the words on it, then send only those words to Anthropic's Claude to turn them into a bottle name. We don't save the text read from it. We keep the bottle's name, brand and barcode we found. We don't keep the photo. Anything else in the frame goes to Google with the photo, so point the camera at the bottle.
• Barcodes. We look up barcode numbers with Go-UPC and UPCitemdb. They get the number, not anything about you. When they find the product, we send its brand and name, as they gave them to us, to Anthropic's Claude to tidy them into a bottle name. That's the product's brand and name only, not anything about you.

Who Handles Your Data

These services work for us, and each gets only what's listed above:

• Render hosts our server and database in the United States (Virginia).
• PostHog, in the United States, receives usage events, only while you have usage data sharing on.
• Google Cloud Vision reads label photos.
• Anthropic reads the words from a label, and the brands and names barcode services give us, and turns them into a bottle name.
• Go-UPC and UPCitemdb look up barcodes.

What We Don't Do

• We do not sell data about you or your bar. If that ever changes, we will tell you first and ask again.
• We don't show ads. If we ever promote a bottle because a brand paid us, it will be clearly labelled as paid.
• Beyond the services listed above, we don't share your data with delivery services, retailers, or any other business at this stage.

Cocktailian's long-term plan includes data products for businesses. Those will use aggregate, anonymized data only, will require a separate opt-in, and will launch after the app scales well past this testing phase. This version does none of that.

How We Store Your Data

We store your information in a private database hosted by Render. Only Cocktailian's developer can sign in to it.

Your Choices

You can delete your account in the app under Account, then Delete account. Your account is deleted right away. Copies in our backups are gone within 30 days. Your recipes go with it, and any recipe you shared leaves the bars you shared it with. In a bar's recent changes, your name is removed, and they say someone who left made those changes. A bar you own passes to whoever joined it first with a saved account, or is deleted if there's no one to pass it to. You can also email us to ask. We only use your data to run and improve the app.

You can turn usage analytics on or off in the app under Account, then Share anonymous usage data. When it's off, the app stops sending usage events. Events already sent stay with PostHog.

Children's Privacy

Cocktailian is for users of legal drinking age in their jurisdiction. We don't direct the app at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 21.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as the app develops. We'll update the date above when we do.

Contact

Send questions about this policy or your data to: support@cocktailian.app

This is an early-stage policy for a limited test group. We'll review and expand it, including a legal review, before any wider or public release.