Privacy Policy

Cottage Ready is a compliance and order-management tool for Michigan cottage food producers ("bakers"). This page explains what information we collect, why, and how it's used — for both bakers who create an account and the customers who place orders through a baker's public order page.

Information bakers provide

When you create a baker account, we collect your business name, owner name, phone number, email address, business address, and (if applicable) your MSU Product Center registration number. Your business name, and either your address or your phone number and registration number (depending on which labeling option you choose), appear on your product labels and public order page, as Michigan law requires. Your owner name and email address are kept for our own records and aren't shown anywhere else in the app. You can review or update any of this from the Business Profile page in your account at any time. We also store the products, ingredients, orders, and sales records you enter, since that's the core purpose of the tool.

Transactional messages

Account and order emails are transactional only. If a customer separately opts into text updates for one reservation, we retain the exact consent disclosure, phone number, order, time, and later withdrawal evidence. Mobile opt-in data and consent are not shared with third parties for their marketing or promotional purposes. Messaging providers process only the information needed to deliver and monitor the requested message. Cottage Ready does not send marketing messages.

Information customers provide

When someone places an order through a baker's public order page, we collect the name, phone number, and optional email they enter, along with their selected items and pickup window. This information is visible only to the baker whose page it was submitted through — it is never shared with other bakers or used for marketing. We don't collect payment details; payment is arranged directly between the baker and customer using whatever instructions the baker provides.

What we don't do

We don't sell or rent any information to third parties, run advertising trackers, or use analytics tools that build cross-site profiles. Cookies are limited to authentication, security, anti-forgery, and short-lived application state.

Data retention and deletion

Baker account data and associated orders are kept for as long as the account is active, so bakers retain an accurate sales history for their own records and Michigan's cottage food sales-cap tracking. Bakers can download their business data or permanently delete their account and its associated live records from the account menu. An authorized administrator may also permanently delete a bakery when handling an account-closure or privacy request. Live business data, customer orders and receipts, messaging evidence, and uploaded files are removed immediately. A privacy-limited deletion record keeps only technical IDs, the deleting actor, a reason, and the time of deletion; it does not retain business, contact, or customer details. Encrypted infrastructure backups are maintained separately for disaster recovery and expire through our operational backup retention process rather than being rewritten during a live deletion request. If you're a customer with a question about an order, contact the baker you ordered from directly.

This tool is a compliance aid, not legal advice. If you have questions about how a specific baker handles your information, contact that baker directly.