Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Sous Chef ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our website and services.

We respect your privacy. We use information about how people use Sous Chef to provide and improve our own service. We do not sell your personal information or use it for third-party behavioral advertising.

This Privacy Policy applies to our website, mobile applications, and related service emails, including invitations received before you have an account. It explains our practices and your choices; it does not replace any consent required by applicable law.

2. Information We Collect

We collect several types of information from and about users of our website and services:

Personal Information

Personal information is data that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with a particular consumer or household. We may collect the following categories of personal information:

• Account and contact information such as your name, email address, username, account identifier, and information you choose to include in your profile or send to support
• Invitation information such as the recipient email address or account associated with a household invitation or friend request, the sender, the household when applicable, and whether an invitation or request has been accepted
• Content you store such as recipes, photos, notes, tags, and pantry items
• Usage and diagnostic information such as pages and screens visited within Sous Chef, features used, interactions, errors, IP address, device or browser information, and approximate location inferred from an IP address
• Invitation activity such as email delivery status, visits to valid invitation pages, visits to the friend-request inbox, acceptance, and event times

Sensitive Personal Information

We may collect the following categories of sensitive personal information:

• Account login credentials (username and password)

Sources of Personal Information

We obtain the personal information listed above from the following sources:

• Directly from you when you provide it to us, such as when you register for an account, save a recipe, add items to your pantry, or import recipes
• Automatically or indirectly from your device or browser when you use our website, such as IP address, browser type, and pages visited
• From third-party websites when you import recipes using our import feature
• From other users and service providers when someone invites you to a household or sends you a friend request, or when our email and analytics providers report activity related to Sous Chef

3. How We Use Your Information

We may use the information we collect about you for various purposes, including to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve our services
• Process and complete transactions, and send related information including confirmations
• Create and maintain your account
• Send you technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages
• Respond to your comments, questions, and requests
• Provide customer service and support
• Understand how people use Sous Chef so we can improve features, reliability, onboarding, and the invitation experience
• Detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities and protect our rights and property
• Personalize your experience by providing content or features that match your profile and interests

4. How We Share Your Information

We may share your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Service Providers: We may share your information with third-party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents who perform services for us or on our behalf. This includes PostHog for application analytics, Mailgun for email delivery, and Better Stack for operational logs and troubleshooting.
• Business Transfers: If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction.
• Legal Requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities.
• Protection of Rights: We may disclose your information to protect the rights, property, or safety of Sous Chef, our users, or others.

We do not sell or share your personal information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We and our third-party service providers may use cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies to understand how people use Sous Chef. We use these signals to improve our own website, applications, features, reliability, and support. We do not use this analytics information to follow you across unrelated websites or to build a profile for third-party advertising.

Application analytics: We use PostHog to measure activity such as pages viewed, features used, and general device or browser information. Analytics may include session replays of interactions within Sous Chef to help us understand problems. Activity may be associated with your account identifier and email address when you are signed in; it is not always anonymous or limited to aggregate statistics. We use this information to understand behavior inside Sous Chef and to find opportunities to improve the Service.

Mobile devices and notifications: When you are signed in, we associate an app-generated installation identifier with your account, app version and build number, device model, operating-system version, last-seen time, and notification, camera, and photo-library permission states. We check existing permission states without requesting additional access for analytics. Each device reports separately. We record push send outcomes, notifications observed while the app is open, and notification taps to understand reliability and engagement within Sous Chef. Acceptance by Apple does not prove delivery or that you read a notification. Background delivery may remain unknown. Selected identifiers and state fields go to PostHog and Better Stack; these events exclude push tokens, notification text, photos, and camera content. Installation identifiers are generated by our app, not advertising or hardware identifiers.

Household and friend invitations: We use Mailgun to deliver invitations and report delivery status. We disable email-open and link-click tracking on household invitations, friend invitations, and friend-request notification emails. Instead, Sous Chef records requests for valid invitation pages, views of the friend-request inbox, and successful acceptance within our own application. These events use internal invitation or request identifiers and, when signed in, the acting account identifier. A signed-out visitor is associated with the invitation, not assumed to be the person whose email address received it. We send selected event fields to PostHog and our operational logs in Better Stack without including invitation tokens, raw URLs, recipient email addresses, or email contents in these invitation events. We use them to understand and improve the invitation experience. A page request is not proof that someone read an email or personally clicked a link: forwarded links, repeat visits, and automated scanners can produce requests. Inbox views also do not prove that a particular email was clicked.

We use the following types of cookies:

• Essential Cookies: These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in, or filling in forms.
• Analytics Cookies: These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site.
• Functionality Cookies: These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our website may become inaccessible or not function properly.

6. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to maintain the security of your personal information, including safeguards designed to protect your personal information from accidental loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access.

However, please be aware that no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to and from us over the Internet.

7. Children's Privacy

Our services are not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers.

8. Your Choices

Delete your Sous Chef account or request data deletion. See the steps, data affected, and retention details on that page.

You have certain choices about how we use your personal information:

• Account Information: You may update, correct, or delete your account information at any time by logging into your account or contacting us.
• Marketing Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional emails from us by following the instructions in those emails. If you opt out, we may still send you non-promotional emails, such as those about your account or our ongoing business relations.
• Cookies: Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually set your browser to remove or reject cookies.
• Invitations: You can ignore an invitation without creating an account. Invitation emails do not use open-tracking pixels or click-tracking redirects. Opening an invitation link can generate an application visit event, including before sign-in. You may contact us with privacy questions or requests even if you do not have an account.

9. California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, California law provides you with specific rights regarding your personal information, including the right to know about personal information collected, disclosed, or sold; the right to request deletion of your personal information; the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information; the right to correct inaccurate personal information; and the right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information.

Right to Know

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection, use, disclosure, and sale of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and verify your request, we will disclose to you:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you
• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you
• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information
• The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you
• If we sold or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing:
  • sales, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient purchased; and
  • disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

Right to Delete

You have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and verify your request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.

Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing

We do not sell or share your personal information as defined by California law. However, if we did sell or share your personal information, you would have the right to direct us to not sell or share your personal information at any time.

Right to Correct

You have the right to request correction of inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of the personal information. Once we receive and verify your request, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to correct the inaccurate personal information.

Right to Limit Use and Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information

You have the right to direct us to limit our use of your sensitive personal information to that use which is necessary to perform the services or provide the goods reasonably expected by an average consumer.

Exercising Your California Privacy Rights

To exercise the rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

• Emailing [email protected] with your privacy request

Only you, or a person that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child.

Response Timing and Format

We will acknowledge receipt of your request within 10 business days and will respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 calendar days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to an additional 45 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your California privacy rights. Unless permitted by law, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

10. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated "Last Updated" date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:

• Email: [email protected]