A short note on privacy.

Food Chapters is a journal. Journals are private. So is this one. What follows is the long version, covering both this marketing site and the Food Chapters mobile app (currently in waitlist).

Who we are

Food Chapters is operated by Jordon de Hoog, 35 Chateau Crt, London, ON, Canada. That's the data controller under the GDPR and the business under the CCPA. Reach us at privacy@foodchapters.co.

What we collect

On this website

If you join the waitlist, we keep the email you gave us. Nothing else on this site asks for anything about you. We use Cloudflare's built-in traffic analytics, which counts anonymous page views without cookies or personal identifiers. No ad networks, no session recorders, no heat-maps, no cross-site trackers. No cookies at all.

In the app (once it opens)

• Account. An anonymous subscription identifier from RevenueCat, which handles billing and entitlements for us.
• Recipes. Recipes you save live on your device. If you choose to make a recipe public, that recipe and its photo become visible to other Food Chapters readers. You opt in one recipe at a time.
• Chapters. The photos and notes you add to your own chapters stay on your device. They are not sent to our servers unless you turn on cloud sync (a future, premium feature), and even then they are only ever visible to you.
• Diagnostics. Anonymous device and crash information through Firebase Crashlytics, so we can see when the app breaks.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your data. We never will.
• We don't share your data for advertising.
• We don't use your recipes, chapters, or photos to train AI models, ours or anyone else's.
• We don't set tracking cookies or fingerprint your browser.
• We don't read private chapter content. We couldn't, even if we wanted to; it lives on your phone.

Who we share with

We use a short list of service providers. They only receive what they need to do their job, and they're bound by their own data agreements.

• Cloudflare. Hosts the site, the API, and the database. Our whole backend runs on their infrastructure.
• Google (Gemini API). When the app parses a recipe from a URL, the source text is sent to Gemini to extract structured data. We use the paid API with training opted out, so Google does not retain or learn from what we send.
• RevenueCat. Handles subscriptions and issues the anonymous user identifier the app uses to authenticate.
• Firebase (Google). Crash reporting only.
• Google Play. The app store itself.

Email for the waitlist is self-hosted on Cloudflare. There is no third-party mailer in the pipeline.

Where your data lives

Cloudflare operates a global network. Your data may be processed in data centres in Canada, the United States, Europe, or elsewhere. For transfers out of the UK, EU, or EEA, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and Cloudflare's equivalent safeguards.

How long we keep it

• Waitlist email. Until we open the app and send you the launch note. After that, we only keep it if you stay subscribed to our letters; unsubscribing removes it.
• Account data. For as long as your account is active. If you ask us to delete it, we do, within thirty days.
• Cloud-synced chapters (future). Kept for as long as you keep the account, and deleted on request.
• Crash logs. Standard Firebase retention, roughly ninety days.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can write to privacy@foodchapters.co and ask us to:

• Confirm what we have about you.
• Send you a copy of it.
• Correct anything that's wrong.
• Delete it.
• Stop using it, or restrict how we use it.
• Withdraw consent you previously gave.

To help us find your account, open the app, go to the You page, and tap Copy account ID. Paste it into your email. The contact page has a pre-filled template for deletion.

If you're in the UK or EU, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority. If you're in California, the same rights apply under the CCPA, and we confirm again: we do not sell personal information.

Children

Food Chapters is intended for people aged sixteen and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe a child has signed up, write to us and we'll remove the account.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest on Cloudflare's infrastructure. No system is perfectly safe. We ask for as little as we can so there's less to lose if something goes wrong.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll bump the volume at the top and, where we have your email, send a note. Small clarifications just get a new revision date.

Contact

Questions, corrections, and deletion requests go to privacy@foodchapters.co. For anything else, see the contact page.

A policy is a promise written down. Ours: use the little you share to run the app, and nothing else.