Our Commitment to Privacy

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this policy to explain our information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used on the www.welchs.com website. To make this policy easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

The Information We Collect

Welch's will not collect any personally-identifiable information about you through our website unless you provide it to us voluntarily. This policy applies to all information collected or submitted on the Welch's website. On some pages, you can make requests, register to receive materials or enter promotions. The types of personal information collected include: name, address, e-mail address, phone number, gender, permission to contact the person completing the registration, number of children in the household, if the registrant is a Welch's consumer or not, and general questions relating to product preferences or areas of interest on our website. We also collect the age of anyone who attempts to register this personally identifiable information on our site. We do this in order to fully comply with the rules and regulations under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to obtain parental consent for our visitors under the age of 13.

The Way We Use Information

In order to participate in any promotional activities (such as a sweepstakes) or request a coupon from Welch's or partake in certain other activities offered only within a members-only section within www.welchs.com, called "My Grapelink", a complete and approved registration record is required. Any area outside of the "My Grapelink" area of welchs.com is open to all visitors of the website.

We will use the information collected on the Welch's website to (a) allow registered users to access the "My Grapelink" section; (b) communicate with those registered users who have authorized Welch's to contact them to provide updates about our products and promotions; (c) develop new marketing and product ideas; and (d) notify sweepstakes winners of what they have won.

Information provided by registration or through a survey may be used internally by us to improve the design of our website, to increase our understanding of our consumers and their product preferences, and for other marketing and promotional purposes. For example, we may study responses relating to the perceptions or flavor preferences of our products by consumers. These learnings may then be used to shape future marketing decisions by us.

Welch's also collects aggregate, non-personally-identifiable information on users by recording the IP address from the computers of visitors to welchs.com. An IP address is a number that is assigned to your computer when you surf the Web. Web servers, or the computers that provide the web pages to your computer for you to view, automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When you use your computer to request to view a page from a server, your IP address is logged by that server. Welch's does not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. Your visit to welchs.com will be logged; however, you will remain anonymous to us. We track the number of people that view each page of our website to better understand which features are most popular and best meet the needs of our visitors.

Welch's will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone. Welch's will send personally identifiable information about you to other companies or people when:

  • We have your consent to do so.
  • We need to share the information in order to provide the product or service you have requested.
  • We need to send the information to companies who work on behalf of Welch's to provide a product or service for you on our behalf. Examples include hosting and helping to run this Web site, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mail, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, and providing customer service. Unless we tell you differently, these companies do not have any right to use the personally identifiable information we provide to them beyond what is necessary to assist us, unless they have your consent to do so.
  • We need to respond to valid legal process. This includes a search warrant, subpoena, or court order, and any other instance when we believe we are required to do so by law. We may also make disclosures to protect your safety during emergencies if your physical safety is believed to be at risk, to protect the security or integrity of the Welch's Web site, or to take precautions against liability. We will take reasonable steps to limit the scope of these disclosures.

Other than as set out above, you will receive notice when information about you might go to third parties, and you will have an opportunity to choose not to share the information (opt-out).

Welch's may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information about our users with other companies for marketing and promotional purposes.

If you do not register with welchs.com, but only provide us with your e-mail address in connection with contacting Welch's by e-mail, we will use your e-mail addresses to answer your e-mail. If you authorize Welch's to contact you, we may use your e-mail address to send you notice of values and promotions, such as coupon offerings and sweepstakes.

Use of Cookies

Welch's website uses cookies to customize the visits of consumers to the "My Grapelink" section within the welchs.com website. Cookies are messages given to a Web browser (a software program that resides on your computer and allows you to surf the Web) by a Web server when the Web browser requests to "see" pages on a Web site. The browser stores the message from the server and sends it back to the server each time the browser requests to see a page from that server.

The use of cookies is an industry standard and you will find them at most websites. Most browsers are set to accept cookies. You always have the option to set the browser on your computer to refuse cookies. The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and prepare customized web pages for them to view. For example, you may receive a welcome message that includes your name instead of a generic welcome message. A cookie will also retrieve the information that was voluntarily provided by you to help improve your user experience or speed up your navigation on a website. You will need to enable the use of cookies to register on and navigate through the "My Grapelink" pages of welchs.com. You will not need to enable cookies to use any other part of welchs.com that does not require a personal registration record.

Our Commitment to Data Security

In an endeavor to prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical and electronic procedures to safeguard and secure personal information we collect. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you disclose online, and you do so at your own risk.

Welch's incorporates security measures to protect our data from unauthorized use. Firewalls are utilized to protect our servers and network from unauthorized users accessing and tampering with files and other information that we store.

Although we take the utmost care to protect your information, we cannot ensure the security of any information that you disclose online and transmit to us.

Our Commitment to Children's Privacy

Welch's is committed to doing its part to protect the privacy of young children. Accordingly, and consistent with the Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), Welch's will never knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without first obtaining verifiable consent from the child's parent or legal guardian.

The following sections of our Privacy Policy explain how Welch's collects and protects children's personal information, by describing:

  • The personal information we collect from children under the age of 13 when they register on Welch's website and why we collect this information;
  • How we may use the information we collect from children under the age of 13;
  • How a parent may give us permission to obtain registration information from a child who is under the age of 13;
  • How a parent may edit or delete the information submitted to us from a child who is under the age of 13;
  • Who we may share this information with;
  • Whether or not the information we request is necessary to register or participate in an activity on the Welch's website.

How to Contact Us

Welch Foods, Inc. A Cooperative, ATTN: Consumer Affairs, 300 Baker Avenue, Suite 101, Concord, MA 01742, Phone: (800) 340-6870, email: askwelchs@welchs.com