Policies

Last Updated on: 6/18/2024.

The Webstaurant Store, LLC, Clark Core Services, LLC, and its associated companies (collectively “Clark Associates,” “Company,” “we,” or “us”) respect your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy. This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you and our practices for collecting, maintaining, protecting, using, and disclosing that information.

This policy applies to information that we collect:

• Through our Websites or our affiliated or related entities’ Websites (collectively “Website”). The Websites include but are not limited to the following websites, in addition to our other affiliates’ websites and brand websites: www.clarkassociatesinc.biz; www.webstaurantstore.com; www.noblechemical.com; www.clarknationalaccounts.com; and www.therestaurantstore.com.
• In email, text, chat, and other electronic messages between you and the Website.
• In person, over the phone, in writing, or through the mail.
• Through mobile and desktop applications you download from the Website.
• When you interact with our advertising and applications on/through third-party websites and services (if those applications or advertising include links to this policy).
• From our related companies, including but not limited to Noble Chemical, LLC, The Restaurant Store, LLC, Clark Pro, LLC, and Clark National Accounts, LLC.
• From any employees, job applicants, and independent contractors who are residents of California.
• From individuals who are residents of California and with whom we have a business-to-business (“B2B”) relationship.

It does not apply to information collected by:

• Any third party, including through any application or content, including advertising, that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website.
• Us pertaining to employees, job applicants, or independent contractors located outside of California.
• Us about entities or individuals with whom we only have a B2B relationship and who are not residents of California.

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies regarding our collection, treatment, and use of your information. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is to not use our Website. By accessing or using the Website, you accept and agree to be bound and abide by this Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. You should periodically review this privacy policy because it may change from time to time. By continuing to use the Website, you agree to be bound by such changes.

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information:

• That personally identifies you in particular, or that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household (“Personal Information”), such as name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, employer, and job title. Personal information also includes sensitive personal information but does not include publicly available information from government records or de-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• That is about you but (individually) does not identify you.
• About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, and usage details (such as the pages of the Website you visit, the time of your visit, and the time spent on those pages).

We collect this information:

• Directly from you (for example, from forms you complete or products and services that you purchase).
• Automatically as you navigate through the Website. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.
• From our affiliated or related entities, including but not limited to Noble Chemical, LLC, The Restaurant Store, LLC, Clark Pro, LLC, and Clark National Accounts, LLC.

The information you provide to us may include:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Website. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Website, subscribing to our service(s), posting material, or requesting further services (including information supplied on lead generation forms found on our Website). We may also ask you for information when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us, when you apply for a scholarship or other similar opportunity, or when you report a problem with our Website.
• Documents that you upload or send to us as part of scholarship or other (non-employment) programs to which you are applying, including biography narratives, personal and professional essays, and photographs.
• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses) if you contact us.
• Your responses to surveys that we may ask you to complete for research purposes.
• Details of transactions you carry out through our Website and of the fulfillment of your orders. You may also be required to provide financial information before placing an order through our Website.
• Your search queries on the Website.

You may also provide information to be published or displayed (“posted”) on public areas of the Website or transmitted to other users of the Website or third parties (“user contributions”). Your user contributions are posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users on the Website with whom you may choose to share your user contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your user contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

As you navigate and interact with our Website, we (and third-party companies we work with) may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

• Details of your visits to our Website, including traffic data (including the site you access the Website from), location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
• Information about your device (including any mobile device), computer, and internet connection, including model, brand, device date, IP address, operating system, mobile network, and browser type.

We may also use technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services (behavioral tracking).

The information we collect automatically includes Personal Information. It helps us improve our Website and deliver a better, more personalized service to you by enabling us to:

• Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
• Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your individual interest.
• Speed up your searches.
• Recognize you when you return to our Website.
• Allow third-parties to provide analytics and advertising services and serve advertisements on our behalf across the Internet and in mobile applications.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

• Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website.
• Flash cookies. Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our Website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies.
• Web beacons. Pages of the Website and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).
• Advertising and marketing pixels. We use advertising and marketing pixels for remarketing and conversion tracking purposes. The specific pixels and/or tags that we may use include but are not necessarily limited to: Meta Ads Pixel, Google Ads Tag, TikTok Pixel, Customer.io Pixel, and Pinterest Tags.
• Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics to optimize our Website based on the traffic we receive and assist with marketing. To learn more about Google Analytics, including options for opting out and/or managing the ads you may see online, please visit: google.com/policies/privacy/partners. Additional information regarding online advertising is available at: https://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/what-are-my-options. To learn more about targeted advertising and the choices available to you, visit Webchoices: Digital Advertising Alliance’s Consumer Choice Tool for Web US.

The tables below show the categories of personal information and sensitive personal information that we have collected in the past 12 months. Please note that while examples are listed for each category, we do not necessarily collect each of those examples listed.

In the course of providing our products, programs, services, or our Website to you, we may collect certain sensitive personal information about you. In the past 12 months, we have collected the categories of sensitive personal information shown in the table below.

We will not retain your personal information or sensitive personal information for longer than is reasonably necessary for each disclosed collection and use purpose.

Some content or applications, including advertisements, on the Website are served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers, and application providers. These third parties may use cookies (alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies) to collect information about you when you use our Website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. they may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content.

We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you could contact the responsible provider directly.

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

• To present our Website and its contents to you.
• To provide you with information, products, or services that you request from us.
• To process your scholarship application.
• To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.
• To provide you with notices about your account.
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
• To notify you about changes to our Website or any products or services we offer or provide through it.
• To provide you with recommended products or services.
• To connect you with third-party commercial brands and suppliers, with your consent.
• To allow you to participate in interactive features on the Website.
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information.
• For any other purpose with your consent.

We may use the information we have collected from you to enable us to display advertisements to our advertisers’ target audiences. Even though we do not disclose your personal information for these purposes without your consent, if you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement, the advertiser may assume that you meet its target criteria.

We may use your personal information to develop co-branded products and services with our third-party business partners and market those products and services to you.

We use chatbots to help provide customer service and support, including through the use of a virtual assistant. A chatbot is a software application that mimics human conversations in text or voice interactions on our website or through our customer service hotline. It enables the communication between a human and a machine, which can take the form of messages or voice commands. The chatbot is designed to work without the assistance of a human operator. It responds to questions posed to it in natural language as if it were a real person using a combination of pre-programmed scripts and machine learning algorithms. When asked a question, the chatbot will answer using the knowledge database that is currently available to it. If the conversation introduces a concept it isn’t programmed to understand; it will pass it to a human operator. If you use our chatbot service, we will collect any personal information you provide to us. We will also create and store a transcript of your chat interaction with us which will then be shared with and stored by our third-party service provider. We use these transcripts and the information you provide for quality control, customer service, marketing, fraud prevention and security.

We may disclose aggregated information about our users and information that does not identify any individual without restriction. We also may disclose granular, personal information we collect or you provide:

• To our subsidiaries, affiliates, and related companies, including but not limited to Noble Chemical, LLC, The Restaurant Store, LLC, Clark Pro, LLC, and Clark National Accounts, LLC.
• To our contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business, including payment processors, and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them.
• To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Clark Associates’ assets, whether as a going concern or as part of a bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Clark Associates about our Website users is among the assets transferred.
• To our third-party business partners to develop co-branded products and services to and market them to you.
• To third parties to market their products or services to you (or to help us market our product and services to you) if you have not opted out of these disclosures. We contractually require these third parties to keep personal information confidential and use it only for these purposes for which we disclose it to them.
• With third parties, such as your college, university, or other educational institute when necessary to confirm your enrollment status, area of study or major, and scholarship or financial aid requirements (and with your consent, when required).
• Publicly for marketing and advertising materials, if you are the winner or recipient of a scholarship or other award offered by Clark Associates.  The information we may disclose includes name, photograph, and other biographical (including racial and/or ethnic origin), educational, and/or employment information.
• To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
• For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
• With your consent.

We may also disclose your personal information:

• To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
• To enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
• If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Clark Associates, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We may share your personal information or sensitive personal information by disclosing it to a third party for a business purpose. In some circumstances we may “sell” your personal information as that term is defined under certain state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act or the California Privacy Rights Act. In the past 12 months we have disclosed or sold the categories of personal information shown in the table below.

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information:

• Tracking technologies and advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Website may then be inaccessible or not function properly.
• Third-party advertising. We use remarketing services to advertise on third-party websites to you after you have visited our Website. We and our third-party vendors use cookies (either alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies) to collect information about you to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on your past visits to our Website. This collected information may be associated with your personal information and may also be about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services.
• Promotional offers from the Company. If you do not wish to have your information used by the Company to promote our own or third parties’ products or services, you can opt-out by emailing: [email protected]. If we have sent you a promotional email, you may send us a return email, asking to be omitted from future email distributions. This opt-out does not apply to information provided to the Company as a result of a product purchase, warranty registration, product service experience, or other transactions.
• Targeted advertising. We may also disclose your personal information to third parties to market their products and services to you. If you do not want us to use information that we collect or that you provide to us to deliver advertisements according to our advertiser’s target-audiences preferences, you can opt-out by emailing: [email protected]. For this opt-out to function, you must have your browser set to accept all browser cookies.
• Payment processing. We may provide paid products and/or services within the Website. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (“payment processors”). We do not store your payment card details. Payment information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment information.

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, including how to opt-out of receiving targeted advertising from these vendors, you should contact the responsible provider directly.

You may also opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI") on the NAI's website.

We use certain analytics services, such as Google Analytics, to gather information about our site visits. Learn more about Google Analytics, including opting out of Google Analytics.

You can review and change your personal information by logging into the Website and visiting your account profile page. You may also send us an email at [email protected] to request access to, correct, or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. If you have an account connected with the Website, we cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your user contributions from the Website, copies of your user contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or might have been copied or stored by other Website users.

Residents of certain states may have additional personal information rights and choices. For more information, see below.

You may be able to configure your device or browser to automatically communicate your preference to opt out of the sale and transfer of your personal information. We will recognize signals communicated to us that are in a commonly used and recognized format, and we will apply your preferences to your browser or device. If you have an account with us and are logged into your account when we receive your “do not track” signal, we will apply your preference to your account settings.