Privacy Policy

1. Information We Do Not Collect

Gator Tobacco & Cigars is a traditional brick-and-mortar retail establishment and lounge. This website is for informational, educational, and marketing purposes only. We do not offer online e-commerce transactions, online payments, or online ordering. There are only two places where we collect personal information, and you have to choose both of them: our optional in-store rewards program, described in Section 2, and the optional mailing list sign-up on our home page, described in Section 3. If you use neither, we hold no personal information about you at all. Browsing itself is measured only by the anonymous website analytics described in Section 4, which are not tied to your name or to any account.

2. The Gator Circle Rewards Program

Our rewards program is entirely voluntary and opt-in. You join it only by choosing to enter your details on our rewards page while you are physically in the shop, or by asking a member of staff to sign you up at the counter. Browsing this website never enrolls you.

What you give us when you join. Your first name, your email address, and your mobile number. The mobile number is your membership identifier — it is what we match you on when you return. Nothing else is required to join.

What we may add to your record afterwards. So that the program can run and so staff can serve you properly, your record may also hold: the date and time of every check-in and how many points it earned; your current points balance and your lifetime points total; your membership tier, which is calculated from that lifetime total; any manual points adjustment, together with the reason for it and which staff member made it; any reward you redeem, what it cost in points, and who approved it; your birthday as a month and day only, if you give it to us, so we can offer a birthday reward; your ZIP code, if you give it to us, so we understand which areas our customers travel from; a record of whether a member of staff has checked your ID; and short notes or labels that staff may add to help serve you — for example that you prefer maduro wrappers, or that you are a regular.

We deliberately do not store some things. We do not store your date of birth — only a yes-or-no record that your ID was checked, and, if you choose to give it, the month and day of your birthday without the year. We do not store your home address, only an optional ZIP code. We do not store payment details of any kind; the rewards program never touches a card.

Staff notes are part of your record. Notes and labels written by staff are ordinary personal information, and you are entitled to ask what yours say. Ask any member of staff or use our Contact page and we will tell you, and correct or remove anything you disagree with.

We keep a record of who changed what. When a member of staff edits your record — adjusts your points, changes your contact details, approves a reward — we log which field changed, what it changed from and to, who made the change, and when. This exists so that a mistake or a dispute about your points can be traced and put right, and it is visible only to us.

Location data is never stored. Checking in requires your browser to share your location for that single moment, so we can confirm you are actually at 99 7th Ave NE. That reading is used to answer one yes-or-no question — are you at the shop — and is then discarded. We do not keep it, log it, map it, or track your movements at any other time. Your location is never written to our records.

Remembering your device. When you join, we place a cookie on your browser containing a random identifier so you do not have to re-enter your number on future visits. It is not readable by scripts on the page, contains no personal information, and is used solely to recognize your device at check-in. Clearing your cookies simply means entering your number again; your points are unaffected.

Marketing consent is separate, and it is yours to give. Joining the rewards program is not permission to market to you. When you sign up we ask one additional, optional question — whether we may email you about rewards and shop events. The box starts unticked, and we record your answer and the date you gave it. Leaving it unticked has no effect whatsoever on your points or your membership.

We do not ask permission to text you. Our sign-up form has no text-message option at all, because marketing by text is not something we expect to do. If you tell a member of staff in person that you are happy to be texted, we can note that on your record — but we will never assume it, and we do not collect it as a matter of course.

As of the date of this policy, we send no marketing messages at all — no emails, no texts, no automated messages of any kind. We record your email preference now so that we already have your clear answer on file if we ever start. If that changes, any message we send will identify us, will relate to the program or the shop, and will carry a way to opt out; and you may withdraw your permission at any time by telling any member of staff or contacting us, without affecting your membership.

How we use all of it. Only to operate the rewards program and to serve you in the shop — to count your visits, maintain your balance and tier, honor your reward, and know who you are when you walk in. There is one use outside that: if you have also joined the mailing list described in Section 3, our staff screen compares the two email addresses so we can see that a subscriber is someone we already know. Nothing moves between the two records in either direction. We do not sell, rent, or share your phone number, email address, or any other part of your record with anyone. It is not used for advertising, it is not shared with other businesses, and it is not combined with data bought from anywhere else.

Leaving the program. Ask any member of staff, or reach us through our Contact page. You can either leave the program, which closes your membership and stops any further use of your record, or ask us to erase it entirely, which permanently deletes your record along with your check-in history, notes, adjustments and redemptions. Tell us which you want; if you simply ask to be removed, we will erase it. You do not need to give a reason either way.

3. The Website Mailing List

Separate from the rewards program, this website has one form that collects anything: the sign-up on our home page for news about the Aficionado Lounge, new arrivals, and shop events. Like the rewards program it is entirely voluntary. Reading these pages, searching our catalog, and browsing product listings all remain anonymous whether you sign up or not.

What we collect. Your email address, and nothing else about you. There is no name field on the form, we do not ask for your phone number, and we never ask for a home address or payment details of any kind.

What we record alongside it. The exact sentence you agreed to, word for word; the date and time you agreed to it; your confirmation that you are 21 or older; which form on the site you used; and what you signed up to hear about. We store the wording itself rather than a simple yes, so that if we ever reword the sign-up form, your record still shows the promise that was actually made to you rather than a later one.

A shortened network address, for spam protection. When you submit the form we also store a truncated version of your network (IP) address, along with the identification string your browser sends to every website it visits. The address is cut short before it is saved — the final portion is replaced with a zero — so what remains points to roughly the network you were using and not to your household or your device. It exists for one purpose: noticing when an automated script is stuffing the form with junk addresses. It is not used to identify you, it is not linked to your browsing, it is not shown on our staff screens, and it is never shared.

Confirming that the address is yours. There is no confirmation email today, which means an address on this list is an address somebody typed into a form — not proof that its owner asked to hear from us. When our email system goes live, the first thing it will send is a one-click confirmation, and an address that is never confirmed stays marked unconfirmed. If you find you have been added by mistake, tell us and we will take you off. We will not ask you to prove anything.

This list is kept separate from your rewards record. The two are stored apart and are not merged. If you are a member and you also sign up here, our staff screen will show that the two addresses match — so that we know we are writing to someone we already know — but the mailing list holds no part of your rewards record, and nothing you do in the shop is ever added to it.

As of the date of this policy, nothing is sent. Exactly as with the rewards program: we have no email system connected, and not one message has ever been sent from this list. We are collecting it now so that we already hold your clear, dated permission before we ever use it. If that changes, every message will identify us, will relate to the shop, and will carry a plain way to unsubscribe.

Coming off the list. Tell any member of staff, or reach us through our Contact page. By default we mark your address as unsubscribed and keep the record — deliberately, because a deleted record looks identical to an address that was never there, so if it ever reached us again we would have no way of knowing you had once asked us to stop. If you would rather we erase it entirely, say so and we will delete it outright. You never have to give a reason, and neither choice has any effect on your rewards membership.

We do not sell, rent, or share this list. The same commitment we make in Section 2. Your address is not sold, not rented, not passed to another business, and not combined with data bought from anywhere else. If we ever engage an email provider to deliver messages for us, they would be able to send on our behalf and to do nothing else with it.

4. Cookies, Local Storage & Analytics

What we keep on your device. Ordinary browser storage (cookies, localStorage and sessionStorage) remembers that you have completed age verification, that you dismissed our cookie notice, your place when you scroll back from a product page, and whether you have opened the full filter panel. None of it is sent to us, and none of it identifies you.

Recommendations are worked out on your device, not on ours. That same local storage remembers which cigars you have opened on this device. Each cigar page uses it to show a Recently Viewed list and to tailor two of its four suggested cigars to the blends you have been reading about. The browse page uses it for a Picked for you row of cigars you have not opened yet, chosen for their resemblance to the ones you have, and a Pick up where you left off row of the cigars themselves — the first appears once you have opened two cigars on this device, the second once you have opened one. That record, together with which quick filters you have tapped and which words you have searched for, kept as individual words rather than as whole searches, also decides the order of the quick-filter chips above the results. It changes only their order: every filter is always shown, and several of those nearest the front are deliberately drawn from outside your history, so the row stays a way of finding something new rather than a mirror of what you have already seen. All of this is created and read entirely on your own device. It is never transmitted to us, never attached to your name, your rewards membership or any account, and never shared, and it is specific to the one browser you are using, so it does not follow you between devices. You can erase it at any moment with the Clear control beside Recently Viewed, or the one beside Pick up where you left off on the browse page — either clears the chip ordering and both browse rows in the same gesture — or by clearing your browser’s site data, and the pages work exactly the same afterwards.

We use Google Analytics. It tells us how many people visit, which pages they read, which links they follow, and which sites or AI assistants they arrive from. It sets cookies holding a randomly generated identifier for your browser, and Google receives your IP address and browser details as part of providing the service. Google’s advertising features are switched off here — we run no ads, no remarketing and no tracking pixels — and we never send Google your name, email address, phone number, or anything from your rewards record.

What our search sends. The search itself runs inside your browser: the catalog is downloaded to your device and matched there, so nothing is sent while you type. Once a search settles, the words you searched for and the filters you applied go to Google Analytics as an anonymous statistic, which is how we learn what customers look for and what the shop does not yet stock. It is not linked to you, and it is the only thing you type on this site that leaves your device.

Others who see your visit. The site is hosted by Vercel, which keeps limited technical logs (IP addresses, browser types) to serve the pages and keep the service secure. Our fonts and icons load from Google Fonts, so Google also receives your IP address and browser details when a page loads. Rewards records and mailing-list addresses are stored with Supabase, our database provider, who hold them on our behalf and may do nothing else with them.

The map on our home and contact pages. Both pages show where we are on an embedded Google Maps map, which your browser loads directly from Google — often as soon as the page opens, before you have scrolled to it. When it loads, Google receives your IP address, your browser details and the fact that the request came from our site, and it may read or set its own cookies, particularly if you are signed in to a Google account. Google handles that under its own privacy policy; we receive nothing back from it. These are the only two pages with an embedded map, and our address and phone number are written out in plain text on the contact page for anyone who would rather not load it.

The one cookie that identifies you personally is the rewards device cookie described in Section 2, and it is set only if you choose to join that program.

5. Children & Age Restrictions

This website contains content related to tobacco products and is intended strictly for individuals aged 21 and older. In compliance with federal and state regulations, we do not knowingly monitor, interact with, or collect information from anyone under the age of 21. If you are under 21, you are not authorized to use this site, and you may not join our rewards program or our mailing list. If we learn that a rewards record or a mailing list entry belongs to anyone under 21, we will delete it.

The mailing list asks you to confirm your age. The sign-up form on our home page cannot be submitted without ticking a box confirming you are 21 or older, and we store your answer with the rest of your sign-up. That box is your own statement about yourself — it is not a check we have performed, and we do not treat it as one.

How age is recorded. Where a member of staff has checked your ID in the shop, we note on your rewards record that this was done, along with the date and which staff member did it. We do not photograph, scan, or store your ID, and we do not store your date of birth. The record is a simple yes-or-no marker kept for our own compliance purposes.

6. Contact Information

If you have any compliance or privacy inquiries, please direct them to our physical store location or contact us via our Contact page. You can also visit us in person at our Ruskin store location.