Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective October 23, 2026
Hometown Club is software that local businesses use to sell and run paid memberships. This policy explains what we collect from the businesses that use it and from their members, why, who helps us process it, and the choices you have. We have written it in plain language.
1. Who we are
Hometown Club LLC (“Hometown Club”, “we”, “us”) is a Pennsylvania limited liability company. We run hometown.club, the member pages businesses publish on it (such as yourbusiness.hometown.club, or the business’s own web address), the owner dashboard and the check-in app.
Hometown Club LLC
502 W 7th St, Ste 100
Erie, PA 16502
privacy@hometown.club
2. Businesses and their members
Two kinds of people use Hometown Club, and we handle their information differently.
- Businesses (owners and their staff) sign up with us directly. For their accounts and their plan with us, we decide how information is used and are its controller.
- Members join a business’s membership, mug club, pass or event through that business’s member page. The member list belongs to the business: it decides what to collect, what its memberships include and how it contacts its members. We store and process members’ information on the business’s behalf, as its service provider (a “processor” under European law), and only to run the service for it.
So if you are a member, the business you joined is the first place to go with questions about your membership and your information. You can also write to us and we will help, or pass your request to the business.
Each business can see the information about its own members described below. It cannot see your password, your card details, or anything about memberships you hold with other businesses. One email address can be a member of several businesses, and each one sees only its own membership.
3. What we collect from businesses
- Your name, email address and password. Passwords are stored only as a salted hash; we cannot read them.
- Your business’s details: its name, member page address, type of business, time zone, logo, colors and settings, and the memberships, events, perks and prices you set up. Also the ways members can reach you, if you add them: contact email, phone, address, opening hours, website and Instagram and Facebook links. These are shown to your members.
- Staff you invite: their name and email address, and their account once they accept.
- Your plan with us: which plan, its billing dates and status, and Stripe’s references to your customer record and subscription.
- If you connect Stripe to take members’ payments: your Stripe account’s identifier and name, and whether it can take payments and send payouts.
- The support requests you open and the messages in them.
- Check-in devices you pair: a name you give each device and when it was last used.
- Sign-in records: when you sign in, and the IP address and browser that signed in. We use these to keep accounts secure and to show our own support team when a business last used the dashboard.
- Notifications: if you turn them on, the push subscription your browser gives us, and which kinds of notification you have switched off.
- Which parts of the dashboard you use, such as opening Reports, printing a poster or downloading a spreadsheet, so we can see which features help businesses and which need work.
4. What we collect from members
What you or the business give us
- Your name, email address and phone number.
- A password, if you create a login. Stored only as a salted hash.
- Your birthday’s month and day, if you or the business add it. We never ask for the year.
- A photo, if you or the business add one, so staff can recognize you at the counter.
- Notes the business keeps about you. These are private to the business and are never shown on your card or your account page.
- Others on a household membership, and add-ons you choose.
- Your place on a waitlist, if you join one.
What the service records as you use it
- Your membership: your member number, what you joined, when it started, when it renews or ends, and whether it is paused, canceled or ended.
- Payments for it: the amount, the date, and whether it was paid by card or recorded by the business as paid at the counter. Card details are never part of this (see Payments).
- Visits: when you checked in, and how (scanned card, a search by staff, or a self check-in device).
- Perks: each perk used, when, and whether staff or you used it; points and rewards earned from visits.
- Numbered items such as a mug or locker number and where it is kept, if the business uses them.
- Your member card’s link. It works like a key, and the business can replace it if it is ever shared.
- Sign-in records, as for businesses above.
- Notifications: if you turn them on, the push subscription your browser gives us, and which kinds you have switched off.
5. Payments
Members’ payments go to the business, not to us. When you pay for a membership online, you pay the business through its own Stripe account, and Stripe’s checkout page takes your card details directly. We never see or store card numbers. We keep Stripe’s references to the payment, your customer record and any subscription, and Stripe tells us the brand and last four digits of a saved card so we can show them in your account. We take no share of what members pay.
Businesses’ plans are paid to us through Stripe, which may sell the plan on our behalf as the merchant of record and work out sales tax. Card details go to Stripe, not to us.
Stripe uses payment information under its own privacy policy, including to prevent fraud. Some businesses also let members pay at the counter instead; then the business simply records that you paid.
6. Why we use it
| What for | Legal basis (EEA and UK) |
|---|---|
| Running accounts, member pages, cards, check-in, perks and memberships | Performance of a contract |
| Taking payments for memberships and plans, through Stripe | Performance of a contract |
| Notifications about your membership or business (perks earned, renewals, new members) | Consent, given when you turn notifications on |
| News and offers a business sends its members | Consent, given when you turn notifications on; the business decides what it sends |
| Answering support requests | Performance of a contract |
| Keeping the service secure and preventing abuse | Legitimate interests |
| Understanding how businesses use Hometown Club, in totals across the platform, so we can improve it | Legitimate interests |
| Meeting tax, accounting and other legal duties | Legal obligation |
For members, the business is responsible for having a lawful reason to collect what it collects about you; we process it on its instructions.
9. What we never do
- We do not sell personal information, and never have.
- We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we show no ads.
- We do not use one business’s members to market another business, or to market anything ourselves.
- We do not combine members’ visits across businesses into a profile.
- We do not sell or rent email addresses or phone numbers to anyone.
10. How long we keep it
We keep a business’s information, including its members’ records, for as long as its account exists. A business can export its members, payments and visits at any time from its dashboard. When a business asks us to close its account, we delete its business and member records within 30 days, except records we must keep for tax and accounting.
A business can end a membership, and its records stay so the business keeps a true history of payments and visits. If you are a member and want your information deleted, ask the business, or email us and we will work with the business to delete it unless it has to keep a record by law.
Payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires. Devices that stop accepting notifications are forgotten automatically.
11. Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Each business’s records are kept apart from every other business’s by the database itself, not only by our code, and access to production systems is limited to the people who need it. No service can promise perfect security, but we take it seriously and will tell you without undue delay if a breach affects your information.
12. Your choices
- Members can change their name, phone number and birthday in their account, and their photo unless the business manages photos itself.
- Owners can change their business’s details, and export or update their members’ records.
- Notifications are off until you turn them on. You can switch off all of them, or each kind on its own, in your account or the dashboard’s settings, or in your browser.
- Members who pay by card can turn off auto-renew in their account at any time.
- You can ask us for a copy of your information, or to correct or delete it, by emailing privacy@hometown.club.
13. If you are in the EEA or the UK
You have the right to:
- Ask what personal information we hold about you and get a copy.
- Have inaccurate information corrected.
- Have your information erased.
- Ask us to restrict how we use it.
- Receive it in a portable format.
- Object to processing based on legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it.
Email privacy@hometown.club. We will respond within one month. Where we hold your information for a business you are a member of, we will pass your request to that business and help it respond. You can also complain to your local data protection authority, or in the UK to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
14. If you are in California or another US state with a privacy law
In the past twelve months we have collected these categories of personal information: identifiers (such as name, email address and phone number), commercial information (such as memberships and payments), internet activity (such as sign-in records), and, if added, a photo. The sources, purposes and recipients are in sections 3 to 8.
We have not sold personal information, or shared it for cross-context behavioral advertising, in the past twelve months or at any other time. We do not use sensitive personal information for anything that requires an opt-out, and we do not profile anyone in a way that has legal or similarly significant effects.
You have the right to know, correct and delete your personal information, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. Email privacy@hometown.club. You may use an authorized agent; we will verify the request before acting on it. If we decline a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision, and we will answer in writing within the time your state’s law allows.
15. International transfers
Hometown Club is run from the United States, and our providers store and process information there. If you use it from elsewhere, your information is transferred to the United States. Where we transfer personal information out of the EEA or the UK, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, and the UK Addendum where it applies.
16. Children
Hometown Club is not directed to children. Members must be at least 13 (16 in the EEA and UK), and businesses must not knowingly sign up anyone younger. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.
17. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell businesses in the dashboard or by email before it takes effect. See also our Terms of Service.
18. Contact us
For anything in this policy, or to make a request about your information, email privacy@hometown.club. Business owners can also open a request from Help in their dashboard.
Hometown Club LLC
502 W 7th St, Ste 100
Erie, PA 16502
privacy@hometown.club