Terms of Service & Data Policy

By creating an account or using Meal Mate you agree to these terms and to the collection and use of information described below. If you don't agree, don't create an account. Meal Mate is currently in beta: features may change, break or be removed, and data collection is used heavily to improve the app.

Meal Mate helps a household discover recipes, plan meals for the week, build a shopping list, send items to a Kroger cart, track pantry staples, cook step by step with timers and create recipes with AI. Recipes from outside sources (such as TheMealDB) belong to their original authors and are shown with attribution. Meal Mate never places or pays for a grocery order on your behalf — you always check out yourself with the store.

• You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum age in your country) to create an account.
• You're responsible for keeping your password safe and for activity on your account.
• Give accurate information and one account per person.

Information you type in or choose, stored in our database:

• Account details: email address, password (stored only as a secure hash by our sign-in provider), display name, and — if you use Google sign-in — the name, email and profile picture Google shares.
• Preferences: diets, allergies and intolerances, disliked ingredients, cuisines, prep-time and effort preferences, budget, cooking skill, household size, serving sizes, measurement system and any corrections you make to what the app learned about you.
• Meal planning: the recipes you add, move or remove from each week's plan, which day and meal, servings, and who added them.
• Recipes: recipes you like, love, save or pass on; recipes you create, edit or revise; photos generated for them; ingredient substitutions you pick.
• Shopping: shopping lists, items you check off or remove, items you add by hand, pantry staples you mark as already on hand, and Kroger products you pick or swap for an ingredient.
• Cooking: Cook-mode sessions (start and finish time, steps completed and time spent on each step, timers you run), servings cooked, whether you edited steps, star ratings (0–5) and written notes after cooking, and guided feedback about specific steps.
• Reports & feedback: recipe issue reports, including the ingredient, amount you expected, written notes, and the page you were on.
• Invites: email addresses of people you invite to your household. We use them only to send that invite.
• Grocery orders: order history, items and receipts you import or reconcile, and which recipes each order was for.

Most data belongs to your household, not just to you. Everyone in your household can see and change the shared plan, shopping list, saved recipes, pantry, orders, cooking history and household preferences, and can see your display name and when you joined. Your invite code lets anyone who has it join your household — share it only with people you trust. If you leave or are removed, data you created for the household stays with the household.

• Technical data: IP address, browser and device type, operating system, screen size, language and approximate location (city/region, derived from your IP) — collected by our hosting, sign-in and analytics providers.
• Sign-in records: when you sign up, sign in and sign out, and the method used.
• Error reports: when something breaks we record the error type and the screen it happened on.
• Server logs: requests to our servers, including time, page and response, kept for security and troubleshooting.

We track how the app is used in two places:

Google Analytics 4. Every page you open, how long you stay, the order of screens, and the actions below are sent to Google Analytics along with a random identifier for your account and device. Google uses cookies or similar storage to do this. We never send your email, name or anything you type as free text.

Our own activity records. Key choices are also saved in our database, tied to your account and household, so we can see what people pick and improve the app. These include:

• Signing in; creating, joining or inviting to a household
• Viewing, liking, unliking and rating recipes
• Every Discover swipe (pass, like, love) and the recipe it was on
• Searches (the search words), category browsing and filters used
• Adding meals to the plan and marking meal ingredients as bought
• Checking items off the shopping list
• Sending items to Kroger, including how many succeeded or failed, and product swaps
• Generating and saving AI recipes
• Finishing Cook mode, with your rating
• App errors

Each record includes the time, screen and details such as the recipe or category involved.

Star ratings are shared across all users of the app for that recipe and shown as an average. When you like, love or save a recipe, or add it to your plan, we automatically record a 4.8-star rating from you for that recipe in the background. If you later rate it yourself, your own rating replaces the automatic one. Your likes, passes and plan choices also feed a preference model that shapes which recipes Discover and Browse show you; you can see and correct what it learned in Settings.

If you connect Kroger, you sign in on Kroger's own page; we never see your Kroger password. We store the access tokens Kroger gives us (kept on our servers only), your chosen store location, the products you pick, what was sent to your cart and when. We only add items to your cart — we never check out. One household member owns the Kroger connection. Kroger's handling of your data is covered by Kroger's privacy policy.

Recipe Studio, photo generation, step checking, nutrition estimates and ingredient matching send the relevant text (your prompt, recipe, ingredient list, preferences such as diets and allergies) to AI models run by Google and other providers through our AI gateway. We keep your prompts, the generated results, revisions and usage counts (for rate limits). AI output can be wrong — always check ingredients, allergens, amounts and cooking temperatures yourself.

If you turn on timer alerts we store a push notification token for your device and your running timers (name and finish time) so we can alert you after you close the app, then send a backup email about a minute later unless you turn that off. We send account emails (confirmation, password reset), household invites and timer alerts. We don't send marketing email.

We keep your sign-in session, pending invite code, screen settings, drafts and a small amount of cached data in your browser's local storage, plus analytics cookies/identifiers from Google Analytics. Clearing your browser data removes them.

We don't sell your data. We share it only with providers that run the app:

• Lovable Cloud — hosting, database, sign-in, file storage and email sending
• Google — Google sign-in (if used), Google Analytics, Firebase push notifications and AI models
• Kroger — only the items you send to your cart, when you choose to connect
• TheMealDB and other recipe sources — we request recipes from them; we don't send them your personal data

We may also disclose data if required by law or to protect the safety of users.

Members of your household (see section 5). A small number of Meal Mate administrators can view usage insights, households and their members' names and join dates, recipe feedback, issue reports and product swaps, and can remove members or delete households and accounts to run the service and handle abuse.

We keep your data while your account exists. You can delete your account in Settings; this permanently deletes your account and personal data and your Kroger connection. Shared household data remains for the other members; if you're the last member, the household is deleted too. Anonymous or aggregated statistics and star ratings may be kept. Backups and server logs expire on their own schedule. Data already sent to Google Analytics is kept under Google's retention settings.

• View and correct your preferences and learned taste profile in Settings.
• Turn timer alerts and backup emails on or off.
• Disconnect Kroger at any time.
• Block analytics cookies with your browser or an ad blocker.
• Delete your account at any time, or contact us for a copy of your data.

Don't misuse the app: no attempts to access other households' data, abuse AI features, scrape the service, overload it, or use it for anything illegal. We may suspend or delete accounts that do.

Meal Mate is provided "as is" without warranties. Recipes, nutrition estimates, allergen information, prices and product matches may be inaccurate — you're responsible for food safety, allergies and what you buy. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for indirect damages or losses from using the app.

We may update these terms; if the changes are significant we'll ask you to accept them again. Questions, privacy requests, or a copy of your data: email dustin@growthkeys.com.