Golden Corral Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 2024

Your privacy is important to us. Golden Corral Corporation appreciates your concerns regarding how information about you is used and shared.

This Privacy Policy describes what information Golden Corral Corporation (“Golden Corral,” “us,” or “we”), collects about you, how we collect it, how we use it, with whom we may share it, and what choices you have regarding it. This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our website, https://www.goldencorral.com, our mobile website, our mobile app, and any other platforms that link to this Privacy Policy (a “Site” or “Sites”) and any other means by which we may collect information about you, including information you may provide to us onsite at one of our restaurants.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to any websites operated by third parties. We are not responsible for, and this Privacy Policy does not apply to, the privacy practices of other companies or other websites. We encourage you to seek out and read the privacy policy of each website that you visit.

Clicking on the links below will take you directly to the corresponding section of this Policy:

• What Information Do We Collect?
• How Do We Use Your Personal Information?
• How Do We Collect Your Information?
• Do We Share Any Information with Outside Parties?
• What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?
• How Do We Use and Disclose Non-Personal Information?
• What Data May Be Collected Automatically?
• Where We Store Information
• How Long Do We Retain Your Personal Information?
• How Do We Protect Your Information?
• Third-Party Links
• Your Consumer Rights
• Additional Information For California Residents
• Children’s Information
• Changes to Our Privacy Policy
• Contacting Us

What Information Do We Collect? 

How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We use information that we collect from you and information that we collect automatically to provide services to you and to operate our business. For example, we use your personal information to:

Fulfill your requests and provide our services to you. For instance, we may use your information to complete your order or other online and in-store transactions, deliver orders you place online, or respond to your customer service requests or feedback. We may also use your information to personalize your experience with us and support our Golden Corral Rewards program.

Market our services. We may use your information to send you communications about new menu offerings and special offers that we think you might find interesting. If you join our Golden Corral Rewards program, we may use your personal information (including demographic information, birthday, personal preferences, purchase history, restaurant locations you visit, and information about you from third-party sources—including your location information and online browsing across time and third-party sites) to send you real time, geographically relevant, and personalized offers, services, and promotions for Golden Corral. We may also use your information, or your information combined with others’ information, to improve our marketing and advertising campaigns. For more information on your choices about marketing communications, see “What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?” below.

Communicate with you. We may communicate with you about your account activities, such as by providing you transaction confirmations, alerting you when a gift card you sent has been received by the recipient, or updating you about employment opportunities for which you’ve applied for employment. If you register with us, we may send you electronic communications and we may also send you user surveys and promotional communications. We may communicate with you by email, postal mail, telephone, or text message. We may use push notifications on our mobile apps to your mobile device. For more information on how to adjust your communications preferences, see “What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?” below.

Monitor, improve and develop our menu offerings and services. We may use your information to better understand our guests and tailor our menu offerings accordingly. From time to time, we analyze statistics and trends to improve our Sites and to develop new services or features.

Provide you with location-specific services. If you choose to share your location information with us, we may use that information to provide you options or offers related to your location.

Protect the security and integrity of our business, comply with legal requirements and obligations, or as otherwise permitted by law. We may use information to protect our company, our guests, and our Sites. We may also use information to comply with laws, regulations, court orders, or other legal obligations or to assist in an investigation, to protect and defend our rights and property, or the rights or safety of third parties, to enforce our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or agreements with third parties, to detect and prevent fraud or for crime-prevention purposes, or for any other reason permitted by law.

Sometimes we may de-identify information by removing identifiers that can be used to associate the information with you. De-identified information does not include contact information or any other information that would identify any specific individual or household. De-identified information helps us develop reports and studies about how our guests use our Sites. We will not attempt to reidentify the information, except for the purpose of determining whether our deidentification processes satisfy our legal obligations.

How Do We Collect Your Information?

Golden Corral collects personal information in the following ways.

From you. We collect information from you when you become a Golden Corral Rewards member, join the Good as Gold email club, enter a Golden Corral contest or sweepstakes, participate in a promotion, or when you send us an email or text us, speak with us on the telephone, by email, or apply for a job with us.

From our app. If our app is installed on your mobile device, we may collect information from that device or if you provide information to us using our app.

From third-party sources. We may receive information about you from our third-party service providers who help us to provide services to you, including third-party Sites and social media providers.

Automatically as you navigate our website and app. Information collected automatically may include usage details, email address, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies and other tracking technologies.

Do We Share Any Information with Outside Parties?

We may share your personal information with third parties who provide services to you or to us, for joint promotional activities, with social media companies, or to carry out our business or comply with a legal obligation. For further information on your choices regarding your information, see “What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?” below.

Learn more about how we share information.

Third-party service providers. We may disclose your personal information to our third-party vendors and service providers, such as credit card processors and website hosts, that help us provide services, support features on our Sites or in our restaurants, or otherwise market Golden Corral. We may also disclose aggregated, de-identified information, and analyses and reports derived from such information to service providers, advertisers, merchants, consumer and market research companies, and other organizations. These service providers are responsible for their own compliance with data protection laws.

Affiliates and Acquisitions. We may share information with our corporate affiliates (e.g., parent company, sister companies, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control). We may also disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a merger, sale of part or all of our company assets, financing, change of control, or acquisition of all or part of our business, or in the event of a bankruptcy or similar proceeding.

The public. When you provide feedback or post user content about our services (for example if you post a review or comment on our Sites), your information (such as your first name, last initial, state of residence, and your comments) may be displayed on our Sites or on our social media pages. When you engage with us on social media, we may tag your social media account or the social media account of others (for instance, to give photo credit to another user).

Promotions. We may share information with other companies when we work with them to promote our services, offers, contests, sweepstakes, or other joint promotional activities to our guests.

Law enforcement, government agencies or others for legal reasons. We may share information about you if necessary or appropriate, in our good faith judgment, to comply with laws or regulations, or in response to a valid subpoena, order, or government request, or to protect the operations, privacy, safety, property or rights of Golden Corral or others.

With your consent or at your direction. We may share information about you with third parties whenever you instruct us or consent to share the information.

Third parties at your request. You may choose to share your personal information about your activities on our service with your friends through email, text or on various social media networks.

What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?

We offer certain choices about how we communicate with you and what personal information we obtain about you and share with others.

Profile and Settings. You may update your account information and adjust your account settings by logging into your account.

E-mail Preferences. You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe link” provided in those communications. We will try to promptly process all unsubscribe requests. You may not opt out of service-related communications such as account verification, transactional communications, changes, or updates to features of the Service, technical and security notices, etc. You may also be able to adjust certain communications preferences by logging into your account. If you no longer wish to receive promotional or informational emails from us, you may opt-out from receiving future emails from us by following the instructions for unsubscribing in the promotional or informational emails we send you or by contacting us at the email address or phone number in the “Contacting Us” section of this Privacy Policy.

Golden Corral Rewards programs and marketing campaigns. Your participation in our Golden Corral Rewards programs and other marketing campaigns is completely up to you. If you no longer wish to be a member or participate in these programs, you may opt-out by contacting us at or at the email address or phone number in the “Contacting Us” section of this Privacy Policy.

Cookies and Similar Technologies. We place cookies on your device to provide you with personalized access to essential services, enhance functionality, and show you offers and services tailored to your interests. Cookies are little bits of computer code that collect data by tagging along with you while you browse. Cookies help to navigate from page to page on a website, provide secure connections, gather statistics about the usage and effectiveness of our Sites, and remember preferences from a previous visit when you return. We use third-party services for analytics and interest-based advertising purposes. These third-party service and ad providers may use cookies alone or in conjunction with other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our Sites, open our emails, or interact with our ads. You can opt-out of certain cookies by clicking on our “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link.

Location Data. You may control our access to your device information through the “Settings” app on your device. For instance, you can withdraw permission for us to access your address book, location, photo stream, and camera. You may also control precise location tracking by adjusting the location services settings on your mobile device. We may continue to approximate your location based on your IP address or through other means when you access our Sites through a computer or other device.

Do Not Track. Do Not Track is a privacy preference that users can set in their web browsers. When a user turns on the Do Not Track signal, the browser sends a message to websites requesting them not to track the user. Currently, we do not respond to Do Not Track browser settings or signals. For information about Do Not Track, please visit: www.allaboutdnt.org.

How Do We Use and Disclose Non-Personal Information?

We may aggregate and de-identify personal information so that it will no longer be considered personal information. We do so to generate other data for our use, which we may use and disclose for any purpose, in compliance with applicable laws. We are the sole and exclusive owner of such de-identified and aggregated information.

What Data May Be Collected Automatically?

Google Analytics

Golden Corral uses Google Analytics to process personal information about your use of our Sites. Google sets cookies on your browser or device, and then your web browser will automatically send information to Google. Google uses this information to provide us with reports that we use to better understand and measure how our guests interact with our Sites.

To learn more about how Google uses data, visit Google’s Privacy Policy and Google’s page on “How Google Uses Data When You Use Our Partners’ Sites or Apps.” You may download the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On for each web browser you use, but this does not prevent the use of other analytics tools. To learn more about Google Analytics cookies, visit Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites.

We use third parties to provide interest-based advertising services. These services may send customized advertisements to you on our behalf based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits to different websites (including our Sites). The data collected may be associated with your personal information. These advertisements may appear on our Sites and on other websites and may be sent to you via email.

Google Ads

We use Google Ads to serve ads across various websites. Google uses cookies to collect data about your visits to our Sites in order to generate targeted advertisements to you on other websites that you visit. To opt out of this type of advertising by Google, customize your ad preferences, or limit Google’s collection or use of such data, visit Google’s Safety Center and Google’s Ad Settings and follow Google’s Personalized Ad Opt-Out Instructions. Opting out will not affect your use of our Sites.

To change your preferences regarding certain online ads or to obtain more information about ad networks and online behavioral advertising, visit National Advertising Initiative Consumer Opt-Out Page or the Digital Advertising Alliance Self-Regulatory Program. Changing your settings with individual browsers or ad networks will not necessarily carry over to other browsers or ad networks. As a result, depending on the opt-outs you request, you may still see our ads. Opting out of targeted advertising does not opt you out of all ads, just those targeted to you.

Google Maps

Our Sites contain maps provided by third parties for your convenience. Golden Corral and these other parties may collect data about how you interact with the maps. For example, Google may collect usage data on maps embedded on the Sites. Even if you do not interact with the maps, Google may still collect certain information about your interactions with our Sites if you are signed into your Google account when accessing our Sites. Please see Google’s Privacy Policy for more information.

Social Media

When you interact with us through various social media networks, such as when you “Like” us on Facebook or when you follow us or share our content on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Snapchat, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or other social networks, we may receive some information about you that you permit the social network to share with third parties. We use this information to complete your profile, to better understand the demographics of our guests and to provide data for our advertising and marketing activities. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third party websites and social media networks and services before linking or connecting them to our Sites.

Anything you post on social media is public information and is not treated confidentially. We may post or re-post on the Sites and our social media pages any comments or content that you post on our social media pages.

Where We Store Information

Your information collected through our Sites may be stored and processed in the United States or any other countries. If you are located in regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, note that we may transfer information, including personal information, to a country and jurisdiction that have data protection laws that may be more or less restrictive than those required under U.S. law.

How Long Do We Retain Your Personal Information?

We will retain your personal information for as long as needed to provide services to you; for example, for as long as you have an online account with us. We will also retain your personal information to fulfill our own obligations, such as preventing fraud, meeting regulatory requirements, resolving disputes, improving our services, or maintaining security, but always consistent with applicable law. We may retain aggregated, non-personal information for a longer period.

How Do We Protect Your Information?

Security of your information is very important to us, and we have put in place reasonable safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of the information we collect and share with our service providers. However, no security system is perfect, and we cannot guarantee the security of our systems at all times. If any personal information under our control is compromised because of a data security breach, we will take steps to investigate the situation and, if appropriate, notify those individuals whose information may have been compromised, and take additional steps in accordance with any applicable laws and regulations.

Third-Party Links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party products or services on our app. These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. We urge you to read the privacy policies of other websites before submitting any information to those websites.

Your Consumer Rights

In some jurisdictions, you may be able to exercise the following rights in relation to the Personal Information about you that we have collected (subject to certain limitations at law).

The Right to Access

You have the right to request any or all of the following information relating to your personal information that we have collected and disclosed in the last 12 months, upon verification of your identity:

• The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you;
• The categories of personal information we have collected about you;
• The categories of sources of the personal information;
• The categories of personal information that we have disclosed to third parties for a business purpose, and the categories of recipients to whom this information was disclosed;
• The categories of personal information we have sold and the categories of third parties to whom the information was sold; and
• The business or commercial purposes for collecting or selling the personal information.

You also have the right to confirm the processing of your information.

The Right to Request Deletion

You have the right to request the deletion of personal information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions.

The Right to Data Portability

In certain limited circumstances, you may also request to receive access to your data in a portable, machine-readable format.

The Right to Modify Your Personal Information

We rely on you to update and correct your personal information. Most of our websites allow you to modify or delete your account profile. If our website does not permit you to update or correct certain information, you can contact us at the address described below in order to request that your information by modified. You may ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete. Note that we may keep historical information in our backup files as permitted by law.

The Right to Object to Certain Processing

You may object to our use or disclosure of your personal information by contacting us at the address described below.

The Right to Opt-Out of Targeted Advertising

You may opt-out of online tracking based targeted advertising (e.g., cookies) by clicking the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link on our homepage. Please note that if you change browsers or computers, or if you clear your browser’s cache, you may need to click the link again to apply your preference.

The Right to Opt-Out of Personal Information Sales

You have the right to direct us not to sell personal information we have collected about you to third parties now or in the future. The right to opt out of personal information sales is separate from our direct communications with you for marketing purposes. You may opt-out here.

The Right to Non-Discrimination

You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising these rights.

However, please note that if the exercise of these rights limits our ability to process personal information (such as in the case of a deletion or Do Not Sell My Information request), we may no longer be able to provide you our products and services or engage with you in the same manner.

Shine the Light

California’s “Shine the Light” Law (Civil Code Section 1798.83) permits customers of Golden Corral who are California residents to request certain information about or to opt out of our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please complete the Do Not Sell My Information form located here.

Exercising Your Rights

You may exercise your rights by completing the “Data Subject Request” form located here. If you disagree with how we handled a request, you may appeal our decision by contacting us with the subject line “Appeal.”

You may only make a request to exercise your rights on behalf of yourself. We will need to verify your identity before processing your request, which may require us to request additional personal information from you. We will only this personal information to review and comply with your request to exercise your rights. In certain circumstances, we may decline your request to exercise these rights, particularly where we are unable to verify your identity or locate your information in our systems. If we are unable to comply with all or a portion of your request, we will explain the reasons why we are declining to comply with your request.

You also have a right to submit requests to exercise your rights through an authorized agent. If you choose to use an authorized agent, you must (a) provide signed permission to that authorized agent to submit requests on your behalf, (b) verify your identity directly with Golden Corral, and (c) directly confirm with Golden Corral that you granted permission to the authorized agent to submit the request on your behalf. You are required to verify the identity of both yourself and the authorized agent.

Please keep in mind that these opt-out tools are limited to the device and web browser you are using because they work off your device ID or browser ID. If you use another device or browser, you will need to opt-out on each device and browser. If you block or clear cookies from your browser, it may remove the opt-out settings, requiring you to opt-out again. Learn more in the section above, What Choices Do You Have About Your Personal Information?

Additional Information For California Residents

California Sensitive Information Disclosure

We collect the following categories of sensitive personal information (as defined under California law): account log in, financial information in combination with a required security access code, and precise geolocation. This information is collected in order to process transactions, comply with laws, manage our business, or provide you with services. Note that we do not use such information for any purposes that are not identified within the California Privacy Rights Act Section 1798.121.

Notice of Financial Incentive

If you sign up for our Golden Corral Rewards program, you will earn points for each purchase, which can be used to discount the price of future purchases. When you sign up, we will ask you to submit the following personal information:

1. First and last name
2. E-mail address
3. Month, day, and year of birth
4. Password
5. Preferred Golden Corral location

We estimate the value of the personal information we request from our Golden Corral Rewards customers based on our reasonable, good-faith determination of the estimated value of this information to our business. We take into consideration the value of the offer itself and the anticipated revenue that we may generate by rewarding brand loyalty and repeat purchases. We calculate the value of the offer and financial incentive by using the expense related to the offer and the resulting increase in revenue, if any, compared to non-rewards customers.

You may withdraw from the Golden Corral Rewards program at any time by contacting us at the email address in the “Contacting Us” section of this Privacy Policy.

Notice of Collection

The table below describes the categories of personal information we collect, disclose for a business purpose, “sell” and/or “share” (as those terms are defined by California law). Please note, in addition to the recipients identified below, we may disclose any of the categories of personal information we collect with government entities, as may be needed to comply with law or prevent illegal activity. We do not knowingly sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age. As discussed elsewhere in the Privacy Policy, we use cookies and similar tracking technologies for purposes of targeted advertising. For more information, please see the Cookie Preference Center. For details regarding how we use personal information, please see the Information We Collect section of the Privacy Policy. For information regarding how long we retain personal information, please refer to the How We Protect and Retain Information section of the Privacy Policy.

Children’s Information

Our Sites are not intended for children under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If you are under 18, do not use or provide any information on the Sites, including your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, or any username you may use. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 18, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 18, please contact us at the email address or phone number in the “Contacting Us” section of this Privacy Policy.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our Privacy Policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify you by e-mail to the primary e-mail address specified in your account or possibly through a notice on our Sites’ home pages. The date the Privacy Policy was last revised is identified at the top of this Privacy Policy. You are responsible for making sure that we have an up-to-date active and deliverable e-mail address for you and for periodically visiting our Sites and this Privacy Policy to check for any changes.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy or wish to contact us about your personal information, please contact us at [email protected].