Your kitchen is yours.

1. What we collect

Account

When you create an account we store your email address, the name and username you choose, an optional profile photo, and your unit and display preferences. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your name, email and a provider account ID from them; we do not receive your password. If you use "Continue as guest," we create a temporary guest account holding only the name you enter. Guest data is merged into your real account when you sign in.

What you add to Chefkist

• Recipes you clip, dictate, photograph or type, including the source link of a clipped recipe, your notes, ratings and edits.
• Pantry and shopping items, including barcodes you scan, quantities, and the store you choose for prices.
• Meal plans and your diary: what you planned, what you cooked, what you ate, and the nutrition estimate we snapshot at the time.
• Photos and videos of dishes, receipts and recipe cards that you upload.
• Household members you add to your family, including people who do not have their own login (for example your kids) and the meals you plan or log for them.
• Social activity: who you follow, comments, "kisses" on dishes, and direct messages.

Device features you choose to turn on

• Camera, to scan barcodes and take photos. Images are processed only for the feature you used.
• Microphone, to dictate recipes. Audio is streamed to our own speech-to-text server, transcribed, and discarded. We keep the transcript, not the recording.
• Contacts, to find friends already on Chefkist. Email addresses are hashed on your device and only the hashes are sent to us for matching. We do not store the hashes, and your address book is never uploaded.
• Approximate location, only when you tap to find nearby stores. It is used for that lookup and is not stored as part of your profile.
• Push notifications: a device token so we can deliver notifications you enable.

Billing

Subscriptions are handled by Stripe. Stripe collects and stores your card details; we never see the full card number. We store your subscription status and a Stripe customer reference. Purchases made through the Apple App Store or Google Play are billed by Apple or Google under their terms.

Technical data

Like every service, our servers log requests: IP address, browser or device type, and the pages or API calls made. We use these logs to run the service, prevent abuse and debug problems. We keep a count of AI-assisted actions per account to run the free trial and subscription limits. We use a session cookie and local storage to keep you signed in and to cache your data on your device. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party analytics.

2. How we use it

• To run Chefkist: show your cookbook, plan your week, keep your pantry, and sync between your devices.
• To turn clipped pages, photos, videos and dictation into structured recipes, and to estimate nutrition and prices.
• To let you share with the people you choose, and to show public recipes and dishes to others when you make them public.
• To send transactional email: sign-in links and codes, family invitations, and account notices. We do not send marketing email unless you opt in.
• To bill subscriptions and to prevent fraud and abuse.
• To improve the app. We look at aggregate usage; we do not read your private content for that purpose.

3. Who else touches your data

We use a small number of providers to run Chefkist. Each one receives only what it needs for the job below, under a contract that limits how it can use the data.

• Cloudflare hosts the service, stores your data and uploads, runs some of the AI models used for receipt reading and matching, and delivers our email.
• AI model providers via OpenRouter (currently Google and DeepSeek models) receive the text, images or captions of a recipe you ask us to extract. We send the content, not your account identity. Providers may process it outside the United States.
• Stripe for payments; Google and Apple for sign-in and for delivering push notifications to your device.
• Store and food data services: Kroger's API for store locations and prices, USDA FoodData Central for nutrition, and Open Food Facts for barcode lookups. Walmart price lookups run on your own device. These receive the product, store or location you are looking up, not your identity.
• Page fetching services that retrieve the public web page, video captions or social post behind a link you paste, so we can extract the recipe.
• Our own servers for speech-to-text and some link fetching, operated by Cellar Door Software LLC on hardware we control.

Beyond that, we share personal data only when you ask us to (for example, joining a family or making a recipe public), when the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of our users or the service. If Cellar Door Software LLC is ever acquired, your data would transfer with the service under this policy.

4. Public and shared content

Everything you create is private by default. Your username and profile are visible to other users so friends can find you. Recipes and dishes you mark public appear on public pages and may be indexed by search engines. Content you share into a family is visible to that family. Recipes we import from public social-media creators are attributed to those creators, who can claim them.

5. How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account exists. When you delete your account, your profile, content, uploads and household data are deleted within 30 days, and removed from backups within 90 days. Guest accounts that are never claimed are removed periodically. Server logs are kept for a short time and then discarded. Dictation audio is not retained after transcription. We may keep records we are legally required to keep, such as billing records, for as long as the law requires.

6. Your choices and rights

• Access and correction: your cookbook, pantry, plan and diary are yours to view and edit in the app at any time.
• Deletion: email us from your account address and we will delete your account and everything in it within 30 days. In-app deletion is coming to Settings.
• A copy of your data: email us and we will provide an export.
• Device permissions: camera, microphone, contacts, location and notifications can be turned off in your device settings at any time; the related feature simply stops working.
• Email: we send only transactional messages. Any marketing email would include an unsubscribe link.

If you live in California, the EU, the UK or another place with privacy laws, you may have additional rights, including to know, access, correct, delete or port your data, to object to or restrict some processing, and to complain to your local regulator. We honor these requests for everyone, wherever you live. For users in the EU and UK, our legal bases are performance of our contract with you, your consent for optional device features, and our legitimate interest in running and securing the service. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context advertising and we do not use it for automated decisions with legal effect.

7. Children

Chefkist accounts are for people 13 and older (16 where local law requires). We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. A parent or guardian may add a child as a household member and log meals for them; that information is provided and controlled by the adult, and is deleted with the adult's account or on request.

8. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest with our hosting provider. Sign-in is by one-time link or code, or through Google or Apple, so we store no passwords. Access to production data is limited to the people who run the service. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your data we will tell you.

9. International users

Chefkist is operated from the United States and your data is stored there. If you use it from elsewhere, you are sending your data to the United States, where privacy laws may differ from your own.

10. Changes

When we change this policy we will update the date above and, for material changes, notify you in the app or by email before they take effect.

11. Contact

Cellar Door Software LLC, Utah, USA.
Privacy questions and requests: legal@cellardoorsoftware.com