Lunch Line — Privacy Policy

Last updated 21 September 2026

Lunch Line shows Chicago Public Schools lunch menus. It has no accounts, no sign-in, and no way to tell one person from another. This policy describes everything it does with data, including the parts most apps leave out. It covers both the app and this website.

What stays on your phone

The schools you save, which one is selected, your grade band and meal choices, and the last menu the app downloaded are stored on your device only. They are never uploaded, and deleting the app deletes them.

What leaves your phone

• Menu requests. To show a menu the app asks for it, either from our own server or — when a menu has not been published to it yet — directly from MealViewer, the food-service vendor Chicago Public Schools uses. Those requests include the school being looked up and, as with any internet request, your device's IP address.
• A count of menu views. When a menu is shown, the app tells our server which school it was, so we know which schools the app is useful for. Nothing identifying is sent with it. What is stored is a number per school. There is no record anywhere linking a school to a device or a person, because none is created.
• Anonymous usage events. Firebase Analytics records that an action happened — a menu was shown, a meal or grade band was changed, the menu service could not be reached. The school is never included. The app is built so it cannot be: the only values these events can carry are a grade band, a meal period, a status word, a count of saved schools, and a number of days ahead.
• Crash reports. If the app crashes, Firebase Crashlytics receives the error, where in the code it happened, and the device model and iOS version.

Identifiers

Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics use a randomly generated app instance identifier so that repeated events from one installation can be counted once. It is not your name, your Apple ID, or your advertising identifier.

The app does not use the Advertising Identifier (IDFA), and collection of the Vendor Identifier (IDFV) is switched off. Ad personalisation signals are disabled. There is no advertising SDK in the app, which is why it never shows the App Tracking Transparency prompt — there is nothing to ask you about.

What we do not do

• No tracking across other apps or websites.
• No advertising, and no data shared with advertisers or data brokers.
• No selling of data. Ever, and there is nothing to sell.
• No accounts, no email address, no phone number, no location, no contacts, no photos. The feedback form on this site does not ask for any of them either.

Allergen and nutrition information

Lunch Line deliberately does not show allergen or nutrition data, even though the vendor publishes some. It is not consistent enough to rely on for a child with an allergy, and a partial answer would be worse than none. For anything about allergies, speak to your school directly.

This website

There is no analytics product on this site, no advertising tag, and no cookie. Two numbers are counted on our own server, both of them totals with nothing attached: how many times a page was opened, and how many times the download link was used. Alongside each we record the website that sent you — the host only, such as cps.edu, never the full address, which can carry a search you typed or a path naming whoever shared the link. Nothing identifies a visitor and nothing follows you off this page. The counts are deleted automatically after 90 days.

The feedback form

If you use the feedback form, we receive what you wrote and — only if you picked one from the list — which school. Nothing else: no email address, no name, no IP address stored alongside it. We cannot reply, which is why the form does not ask for a way to contact you.

Please do not type personal details. The form asks about a menu, not about a person. What you write is read by a human, and a report that describes a real bug may be copied into this project's public issue tracker on GitHub so it can be fixed in the open. Nothing is published automatically and nothing is published unread — but anything you write could be quoted there, so leave out names, contact details and anything about a specific child or member of staff.

Submissions we have not acted on are deleted after 90 days.

Who processes data on our behalf

Google (Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Functions, App Check) hosts the service and processes the events described above. MealViewer receives menu requests when the app asks it directly. Neither is given anything that identifies you, because the app does not have it.

Children

The app is intended for parents and carers. It does not knowingly collect information from children, and it collects nothing that identifies anyone of any age.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy: hicks.myronj@gmail.com

Not affiliated

Lunch Line is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Chicago Public Schools or MealViewer.