Privacy Policy

Last updated: 16 September 2026

This page explains what information the Flat White Index website (flatwhiteindex.ie) collects, why, and what you can do about it. It covers the site itself and the waitlist for Flatter, a future companion app this site is collecting early-access signups for.

Who operates this site

The Flat White Index is operated by a flat white enthusiast trading as the Flat White Index, Ireland. You can contact the operator at admin@flatwhiteindex.ie. The legal owner's identity and full postal contact details are available on request.

What information is collected

Depending on how you use the site, this can include:

• Your email address, if you sign up for early access to Flatter.
• Your email address, optionally, if you submit a price correction and choose to leave one.
• A display name, optionally, if you leave one with a rating or review — you can leave this blank and it will show as "Anonymous".
• The text of any review or note you submit.
• Basic campaign information — such as which link or site brought you here (e.g. a utm_source parameter, or the referring page) — captured only at the moment you join the Flatter waitlist, so we can tell which channels are actually working.
• Standard website analytics (pages viewed, general location by country/region, device type) via Google Analytics, but only once you've allowed analytics cookies through the cookie banner.

We do not ask for your address, phone number, date of birth, or any other identifying details, and we do not collect your location via your device's GPS. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

Why this information is collected, and the legal basis for it

• Flatter waitlist emails — collected and used only to tell you about Flatter and Flat White Index updates, and only once you've explicitly ticked the box saying you want them. The legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time (see "Unsubscribing" below).
• An email left on a price correction — used only if we need to follow up about that specific submission (for example, to check a price that looks unusual). The legal basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the data on the site accurate.
• A display name or review text — published on the site because you chose to submit it as a public contribution. The legal basis is your consent, given by submitting it.
• Analytics data — used to understand how the site is used and improve it, only once you've consented via the cookie banner. The legal basis is your consent.

Marketing emails

We only send emails about Flatter or Flat White Index updates to people who have actively ticked the consent box on the signup form. Submitting your email address alone, without ticking that box, does not sign you up for anything — as things stand today, there is nowhere else on the site to submit an email that results in marketing messages.

At the moment there is a single consent option covering "Flatter and Flat White Index updates" as one purpose. If that ever splits into separate categories (for example, product updates versus a newsletter versus offers), you'll be asked separately for each.

Unsubscribing / withdrawing consent

You can ask to stop receiving emails at any time, free of charge, by using the unsubscribe page or by contacting us directly (see "Contact" below). Withdrawing consent doesn't affect anything sent before you withdrew it, and doesn't affect other, unrelated information you may have given us (like a review you'd like to stay published).

This site does not yet use a dedicated email marketing platform with automatic unsubscribe handling. Unsubscribe requests are actioned manually by the operator for now.

Your rights

Under GDPR, you have the right to ask for:

• a copy of the personal data we hold about you (access);
• a correction of anything inaccurate (rectification);
• deletion of your data, in most circumstances (erasure);
• a restriction on how we use it, or to object to certain uses;
• a portable copy of data you gave us, in a common format.

To exercise any of these, contact admin@flatwhiteindex.ie. We'll respond within one month, as required by law.

How long information is kept

We keep personal data only for as long as it's actually needed for the purpose it was collected for:

• Flatter waitlist signups are kept until Flatter has launched and the waitlist is no longer needed, or for a maximum of 24 months from your signup (or your last interaction with an email from us, if later) if that happens sooner — whichever comes first. We'll delete or anonymise your entry at that point, or earlier if you unsubscribe or ask us to.
• An email left on a price correction is kept only as long as needed to check that specific submission, then deleted.
• Reviews and display names are kept for as long as they remain published on the site.

Twenty-four months is our own ceiling for how long an unused waitlist signup sits on file — Irish and EU data protection law doesn't set a fixed number of days or months for this kind of data. It instead requires that we don't keep it for longer than the purpose actually needs (the "storage limitation" principle), which is what the paragraph above is describing.

Who else processes this information

We use a small number of other companies to run the site. We don't sell or rent your information to anyone, for any purpose.

• Formspree, Inc. (formspree.io) — receives and stores waitlist signups, price corrections and reviews submitted through the site's forms. This is the only place waitlist emails are currently stored; there is no separate marketing-email database.
• Google LLC — provides Google Analytics (site usage statistics) and Google Fonts (the typefaces used on this site), and hosts the Google Consent Mode script that respects your cookie choices.
• Usercentrics A/S (Cookiebot) — provides the cookie consent banner itself and remembers your cookie choice.
• Map tiles, coffee-shop boundary data, and currency exchange rates come from Esri, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the Frankfurter exchange-rate API — none of these receive any personal information from you; they only serve map imagery, boundary shapes, and exchange rates.

We do not currently use a dedicated email marketing/newsletter platform (like Mailchimp or similar) — Formspree only collects and forwards submissions, it does not send bulk marketing email on our behalf.

Cookies and analytics

This site uses Google Analytics to understand how it's used, and a cookie consent banner (Cookiebot) to ask your permission first. Analytics cookies are not set until you consent through that banner. Ticking the Flatter waitlist consent box is a separate choice from cookie consent — one does not imply the other.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about your data, can be sent to admin@flatwhiteindex.ie.

Complaints

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, we'd like the chance to put it right first — but you also have the right to complain directly to the Data Protection Commission, Ireland's supervisory authority for data protection.

This policy describes what this website actually does, to the best of our knowledge, as of the date above. It is not a substitute for legal advice, and its existence is not itself a claim that every aspect of the site has been independently verified as GDPR-compliant.