1. What Are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files placed on your device when you visit a website. They help sites remember information about your visit — such as your preferences, whether you have already seen the cookie notice, and which pages you have viewed — so your next visit feels smoother.
2. How PastryGear Atelier Uses Cookies
We use cookies on https://pastrygearshop.com for the following purposes:
- Essential functionality — remembering your cookie-consent choice, preserving filter and sort preferences, and keeping the site secure.
- Analytics — understanding which articles and products visitors find most useful, so we can improve our reviews and navigation.
- Affiliate tracking — when you click an affiliate link to a retailer, that retailer (not us) sets a cookie so they can credit PastryGear Atelier with the referral. This is how the atelier is funded without charging readers.
3. Cookie Categories We Set
3.1 Strictly Necessary
- cookieConsent — records whether you accepted or declined cookies, so we don't show the banner on every visit. Stored locally with a 1-year expiry.
3.2 Analytics & Performance
- _ga, _gid, _gat — Google Analytics. Anonymised visitor counts, pages visited, time on site. We do NOT receive any personally identifiable information from these.
3.3 Affiliate Attribution
- When you click through to a retailer via one of our links, that retailer places its own cookies on your browser solely to attribute the referral. We have no access to the contents of those cookies.
4. Third-Party Cookies
Some cookies on PastryGear Atelier are set by third-party services we use:
- Google Analytics — traffic measurement. See Google's Privacy Policy.
- Retailer affiliate programs — each retailer's privacy policy governs any cookies they set.
We do not sell data to advertisers, and we do not participate in behavioural ad networks that build cross-site profiles.
5. How to Control Cookies
- Via our banner — click Decline on the consent banner the first time you visit. We will only set strictly-necessary cookies, and the site will continue to function.
- Via your browser — all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) let you block or delete cookies under their privacy settings. Note that blocking all cookies may disable preferences like saved filters.
- Via browser add-ons — tools such as Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin can block third-party tracking beyond what our banner offers.
- Opt out of Google Analytics — install the official opt-out browser add-on.
6. Changes to This Cookie Policy
We may update this Cookie Policy to reflect changes in technology or regulations. When we do, we will revise the date at the top of this page. Continued use of PastryGear Atelier after changes indicates acceptance of the revised policy.
7. More Information
For how we handle data outside of cookies (contact-form submissions, analytics aggregates, etc.), see our Privacy Policy. For questions about cookies specifically, please use the contact form on our site.
