Privacy Policy | benssoftpretzels

Ben's Soft Pretzels Privacy and Cookie Policy

THIS PRIVACY POLICY APPLIES TO YOUR ACCESS AND USE OF THE Ben's Soft Pretzels ONLINE SERVICES, INCLUDING USE OF OUR WEBSITES, MOBILE APPLICATIONS, LOYALTY PROGRAM, STORED VALUE CARDS AND OTHER ONLINE PROGRAMS (“BSP ONLINE SERVICES”). BY DOWNLOADING OR USING ANY OF THE BSP ONLINE SERVICES, YOU ARE AGREEING THAT YOU HAVE READ AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY PART OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY, THEN PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY OF THE BSP ONLINE SERVICES.

We want you to enjoy every visit to benspretzels.com and benspretzelsfranchising.com, whether you’re there to look around, download our app, join our loyalty program, or tell us about your last trip to one of our bakeries, as well as every experience with BSP Online Services. We do collect information about you and we may share that information with third parties in certain circumstances, so please read on for more details about how we use personal information we collect about you when you use the BSP Online Services.

Ben's Soft Pretzels controls and operates its business and the BSP Online Services from within the United States of America. Our online privacy practices are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of Indiana, which may differ from privacy laws in your state or home country. By submitting your personal information to us or our agents, through the use of the BSP Online Services, you consent to the transfer of your personal information to any country and its use and disclosure in accordance with applicable U.S. Federal and State laws and with this Privacy Policy.

We may change our Privacy Policy, so please check this page from time to time, as your continued use of the BSP Online Services, after we publish our changes, indicates your acceptance of any changed terms.

1. What Kind Of Information We Collect

Whether accessing the BSP Online Services from your home computer or while on the run from your smart phone or tablet, Ben's Soft Pretzels and its agents may collect some information that identifies you or relates to you as an individual (“Personal Information”), such as your:

name;
mailing address;
telephone number;
e-mail address;
username and password (for account administration);
device ID, including IP address;
geolocation (if using a mobile application and you consent to providing it);
financial account information and other payment information (that you submit to us for order processing);
Additional personal information necessary for the administration of certain promotional events; and
if you are applying for a franchise, date of birth, social security number, contact and employment information.

In addition, we may collect other types of data elements (“Other Information”) that do not reveal your identity or that do not relate directly to you or any other individual, such as:

browser and device information, including operating system;
demographic information and other information provided by you that we may combine with other users of the BSP Online Services or use on its own;
mobile application usage data;
aggregated information such as “click stream” information such as entry and exit points for the BSP Online Services (including referring URLs or domains), certain BSP Online Services traffic statistics, page views, and impressions; and
information collected through cookies, pixel tags and other technologies described in more detail later in this Privacy Policy.

In addition, when users request pages on the BSP Online Services, our servers automatically log the IP address of the particular user. The IP address is a unique number assigned to your computer in order to identify it whenever you are surfing the Web.

2. How We Use The Personal Information We Collect

We may use Personal Information about you for purposes described in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed to you through the BSP Online Services. For example, we may use Personal Information to:

process and manage your purchase and use of our products and services;
respond to your inquiries or requests, and to post your comments or statements on message boards or in our online forums;
create and deliver personalized promotions, including by combining your Personal Information with Other Information, such as the amounts and types of purchases you make and benefits you receive;
communicate with you by mail, telephone, facsimile, e-mail, mobile alerts and SMS text messaging about Ben's Soft Pretzels or our sister company Ben’s Soft Pretzels Franchising Corporation, including about your orders or purchases, your services, accounts, contests you entered into, your requests for information, and to update you about changes to the BSP Online Services;
communicate with you, including by mail, telephone, facsimile, e-mail, mobile alerts and SMS text messaging, in connection with our marketing efforts, such as when we send you offers and promotions that you can take advantage of through the BSP Online Services or at your local Ben's Soft Pretzels shop;
allow you to send communications or benefits (for example gifting through the Ben's Soft Pretzels mobile application) to friends or family through the BSP Online Services. By using this functionality, you acknowledge and agree that you are permitted to use and provide us with your friend’s or family’s name and e-mail address;
further our business purposes, such as to perform data analysis, audits, fraud monitoring and prevention, to enhance, improve or modify the BSP Online Services, to identify usage trends, determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to operate and expand our business activities; and
assist in the assessment of your application for a Ben's Soft Pretzels franchise.

We may send you “transactional or relationship” communications to you, such as notices to facilitate a transaction you have conducted or messages that provide information about your existing account, using various electronic communication, including email and mobile communications. You must opt-in to receive email and mobile communications (other than “transactional or relationship” communications referenced above), including SMS text messages from Ben’s Soft Pretzels. Any opt-in will be subject to this Privacy Policy and we'll only email you, send you mobile alerts or SMS text messages if you opt-in to receive them from us. If, at any time, you decide you would rather not receive these types of communications from Ben’s Soft Pretzels , you can opt-out by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any Ben’s Soft Pretzels email or update the Contact Preferences for your Ben’s Soft Pretzels account.

3. How We May Disclose Personal Information We Collect

Your privacy is very important to us. We generally won’t disclose your Personal Information to anyone outside of Ben's Soft Pretzels or our sister Ben’s Soft Pretzels Franchising Corporation, except in the following circumstances.

Service Providers

We may disclose your Personal Information to third-party service providers to provide us with services such as website hosting, professional services, including information technology services and related infrastructure, customer service, e-mail delivery, auditing and other similar services.

Affiliates

We may disclose personal Information to our affiliates (“Affiliates”) for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including for marketing purposes, and to be consistent with our goal of providing our consumers with the superior product and consumer experience that our customers have come to expect from us around the globe. Affiliates are those companies that are under common control of our parent company Ben’s Soft Pretzels Franchising Corporation, Ben’s Soft Pretzels, LLC and Provident Capitalism.

To Perform Services You Request

We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties in order to perform services you request or functions you initiate, such as when you post information and materials on message boards and forums, including on our Facebook Page. When you post information in a public forum it becomes public information. In addition, we may disclose your Personal Information in order to identify you to anyone to whom you send communications through the BSP Online Services, including through our gifting program.

Corporate Transactions or Events

We may disclose your information to a third party in connection with a corporate reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets or stock, including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings.

Other Legal Reasons

In addition, we may use or disclose your Personal Information as we deem necessary or appropriate: (1) under applicable law, including laws outside your country of residence; (2) to respond to requests from public and government authorities including public and government authorities outside your country of residence; (3) to comply with subpoenas and other legal processes; (4) to pursue available remedies or limit damages we may sustain; (5) to protect our operations or those of any of our Affiliates; (6) to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of Ben's Soft Pretzels, our Affiliates, you and others; and (7) to enforce our terms and conditions.

Franchise Applications

Finally, we may disclose the personal information you submit on a franchise application to our business units, agents, parent company, Affiliates and to third parties as part of our consideration of that application and to help conduct our franchise marketing efforts. We require our agents to respect our privacy practices and not use your personal information for purposes other than to carry out our instructions.

4. How We May Use And Disclose Other Information We Collect

Similarly, we generally use Other Information for any purpose not prohibited by law. In particular, we may collect, compile, store, publish, promote, report, sell, or otherwise disclose or use any and all Other Information, provided that such information does not personally identify you. The Other Information that we collect generally will not personally identify you or be correlated to you individually for external purposes.

Where we combine Other Information with Personal Information in a way that can identify you or be used to identify you personally, we will treat that information as Personal Information, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Policy.

5. How To Manage Your Account Information

You can visit the account section of the BSP Online Services website to manage and correct any factual inaccuracies in the information we have on file about you.

6. How We Protect Your Personal Information

Ben's Soft Pretzels has implemented reasonable safeguards designed to prevent loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure or modification of Personal Information provided or collected through our BSP Online Services.

With respect to payment card information and other Personal Information collected through our BSP Online Services, we use Secure Socket Layer Technology or SSL to encrypt or scramble that information during transmission.

Unfortunately, no system or online transmission of data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure and you should always take appropriate security measures to protect your Personal Information, including ensuring that you have up-to-date antivirus software. If you believe that your Ben's Soft Pretzels account or any information you provided to us is no longer secure, please notify us immediately through the Contact Us information provided below.

7. Our Policy on Cookies, Interest-Based Advertising and “Do Not Track”

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed in your computer browser directories to store your information about your use of the BSP Online Services and your activities online (collectively, “Cookies”). A Cookie will typically contain the name of the domain (internet location) from which the Cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the Cookie (i.e. when does it expire), and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number. To find out more about Cookies, including how to see what Cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

How We Use Cookies

We use Cookies so that we can improve your online experience – for example, by remembering you when you come back to visit us, and making the content you see more relevant to you. Cookies also enable us to track online purchases made through the BSP Online Services.

Your Control of Cookies

If you do not wish to receive Cookies or wish to manage when you accept Cookies in general, you may set your browser to reject Cookies or to alert you when a Cookie is placed on your computer. Although you are not required to accept our Cookies, if you set your browser to reject Cookies, you may not be able to use all of the features and functionality of the BSP Online Services. The Help feature on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new Cookie, or how to disable Cookies altogether. If you block or otherwise reject our Cookies, you may lose some of the functionality of our site. For example, you may not be able to aBSP items to your Shopping Cart, proceed to Checkout, or use any products and services that require you to sign in.

Online Advertising

The BSP Online Services also use Cookies and other technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons and clear GIF files (collectively, “Data Collection Technologies”) to help manage our online advertising program. These Data Collection Technologies are provided by our ad management partners and other third parties.

In addition, we and our ad management partners may use these Data Collection Technologies to track the actions of users of the BSP Online Services, to measure statistics of our marketing efforts, and to deliver advertisements on the BSP Online Services that may be more relevant to individual consumers and that will improve the consumer experience on the BSP Online Services. For example, if you give us your zip code and we thus know you live in an area where a particular in-store promotion is going on (such as a new snack offering), we may deliver to you an advertisement that is specific to that promotion.

We support the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising of the Digital Advertising Alliance (“Principles”). This means that we allow you to exercise choice regarding the collection of information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites for online interest based advertising purposes. More information about these Principles can be found at www.aboutads.info/.

Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertisements

If you want to “opt out” of receiving online interest-based advertisements, please follow the instructions at www.aboutads.info/choices, or http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/. An “opt-out” Cookie will be placed on your device indicating that you do not want to receive interest-based advertisements. If you delete Cookies on your device generally, you will need to opt-out again.

Please note that when you “opt-out” of receiving interest-based advertisements, this does not mean you will no longer see advertisements from us or on the BSP Online Services. It means that the online ads that you do see will not be based on your particular interests.

In a addition, please note that certain third parties that we do not control may use Data Collection Technologies on the BSP Online Services. When you “opt-out” of receiving interest-based advertisements through one of the links above, these Data Collection Technologies may still collect information about your use of the BSP Online Services, including for analytics and fraud prevention as well as any other purpose permitted under the Principles. When we use the term “Data Collection Technologies” we are referring to any technology that collects information about your use of the BSP Online Services and potentially about your activities when you leave the Services and visit other sites on the Internet.

8. Social Networking And Third Party Sites

When you link to the BSP Online Services through any social networking or third party sites, applications or services, please remember that you are bound by the privacy policy of the social network or third-party site, application or service, and we do not control and are not responsible for the privacy practices of such sites. You should consult the privacy policy of such sites to determine the information practices of those sites.

9. Children’s Online Privacy

Ben's Soft Pretzels recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy of children. We will not knowingly collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen (13). When a user discloses personal information on the BSP Online Services, the user is representing to us that he or she is at least thirteen (13) years of age.

If a child under the age of thirteen (13) has provided us with personally identifiable information through the BSP Online Services, we ask that a parent or guardian e-mail us at feedback@benspretzels.com, and we will delete the child’s information from our records.

10. International

This English-language Privacy Policy is Ben's Soft Pretzels’ official statement of its BSP Online Services privacy practices. In case of any inconsistency between this English-language Privacy Policy and its translation into another language, this English-language document prevails.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions regarding our privacy practices, you can email us at info@benspretzels.com. You can also reach us by phone at 574-970-2188, or you can write to us at Ben's Soft Pretzels Customer Service, 1202 W Pike St., Goshen, IN 46526.