About Lunch
Hi! I’m Jeffrey, the guy behind Lunch. I created Lunch when my coworkers at Lab Zero realized we had fallen into sort of a rut, food-wise. We kept going to the same few places, and our routine was getting stale. So I made Lunch, an easy way to keep a list of our favorite restaurants, and decide where to go!
It’s worked great for us. Every day around 10:30 (we eat early to beat the crowds), we all hop on Lunch and vote for whatever looks good. Eventually, a consensus is reached, and we’re on our way. That, or a whole bunch of places are tied for votes, and so we just, y’know, talk it over like humans.
Either way, I hope you have fun using Lunch! I think it’s helped us grow closer as coworkers, because we’re more invested in trying new places together, and making sure we leave the office for a little bit each day. Hot tip: set up a reminder in Slack to vote where to go every day!
/remind #general "Vote for lunch! https://lunch.pink" at 10:30am every weekday
Privacy
I haven’t talked to a lawyer, but I should probably reassure you about what might happen with your data when you sign up.
Open-source
First of all, Lunch is open-source and available on GitHub. If you’re ever doubtful about what we’re doing with stuff like your email address or your team’s daily decisions, you can have a look yourself.
Storing your data
Public sign-ups for Lunch are currently closed. If you try to log in with your Google account and you don’t already have a Lunch account, I’m not going to store any of your data, or keep a record that you even tried to log in — but you will be prompted to sign up for an invitation.
For those who are already Lunch users, when you link a Google account I only store your email address, your name, and your Google profile ID.
Email use
I only plan on sending email for stuff like password resets and notifications that you’ve been added to a new team. I’m certainly not interested in using your email address for any reason other than to identify you when you log in. On Lunch, the only people who can see your email address are owners of the teams you’re a part of.
Cookies
Like pretty much any website with a login, Lunch will tell your browser to hold onto a cookie that identifies you as being logged in. There’s also a separate “session” cookie that makes sure you’re the same person from page to page, so you can see success or failure messages when doing things like requesting a password reset.
Google Analytics
This site also uses Google Analytics to give me an idea of what sorts of people are using Lunch, and from where. You can read more about their own policies, which are pretty standard (they store a few cookies as well), but it’s worth pointing out that the tracking is anonymous — there’s no way they or I can tell exactly who you are.
Cost
Lunch is currently free. Unlimited users per team, and each user can create or be a part of up to three teams. I don’t plan on putting any limitations on what’s currently offered, but I might consider charging for future features, whatever those might be. Either way, I haven’t even set up a way for you to give me money, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Advertising
That said, I’m not against advertisements, or sponsored list items, or something of the sort. If I do reach out to restaurants to advertise on Lunch, I’d display tasteful advertisements based on their proximity to your team. I wouldn’t give advertisers info like the specific names of teams, or the people on it, or anything “personally identifiable” like that. Again, this is all just potential stuff in the future, so it’s just a heads up for now.
Be excellent to each other
Oh and finally, don’t be mean to your teammates. I don’t think there’s any need for global moderation on a service this limited, but like, don’t tag restaurants as “disgusting” or delete places you don’t like. Just don’t vote for them. Otherwise, your team owner’s totally free to kick you out.
Any other questions or things I forgot to mention? Drop me a line at jeffrey@labzero.com. I’d be happy to hear from you.
I last updated this page on May 1, 2017.