Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what information Grocerly (the “Application”), built by Daniel Kalo (the “Service Provider”), collects, how it’s used, and who it’s shared with. It’s written to reflect exactly what the app does, not a generic template.

Information We Collect

Account information. You sign in with Google, Apple, or email/password via Firebase Authentication. Your public profile (display name, an optional username, and a profile photo) is stored so friends can find and add you — your email address itself is never stored in that profile.

Content you create. Pantry items, recipes, grocery lists, custom categories, and preferences sync to your account, including any dietary restrictions, allergies, or health goals you optionally set to personalize AI suggestions.

Chat messages. Conversations with Grocerly’s AI chef (“Sous”) are saved to your account and sent to our AI provider to generate responses.

AI features and your permission. Grocerly’s AI features (the AI chef chat, recipe and pantry import, recipe generation, macro estimates, and automatic sorting of items into categories) are powered by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Before any of your data is sent to Anthropic, the app asks for your permission in a dialog that lists what is sent. If you allow it, the following is sent to Anthropic when you use an AI feature:

• Messages you send to the AI chef, including photos and files you attach
• Your pantry, grocery needs, and saved recipes (names and ingredients)
• Your dietary preferences, allergies, restrictions, and health goals
• Recipes, links, text, photos, and documents you choose to import
• Names of pantry and grocery items, to sort them into categories

Your name, email address, and account details are never sent to Anthropic. Anthropic uses this data to generate the result you asked for and to check for misuse of its service, does not use it to train its models, and deletes it within 30 days, keeping it longer only if it is flagged for violating Anthropic’s usage policy (up to 2 years) or where the law requires. Anthropic protects it with safeguards equal to those described in this policy. You can decline and still use Grocerly without AI features, and you can withdraw your permission at any time in the app under Account → AI features; after that, nothing further is sent.

Recipe imports. A URL you submit to import a recipe — including from TikTok or Instagram — is sent to the relevant service to extract the recipe.

Push notifications. If you enable notifications, a device push token is stored privately (never visible to other users) to deliver alerts you’ve opted into, such as friend requests.

Friends and households. If you add a friend, share a recipe, or join a household, the relevant connection and shared content becomes visible to that friend/household as described below.

The Application does not collect precise device location, and does not use any analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDKs — nothing about how you use the app is tracked beyond what’s described here.

How We Use It

• To run the core features: pantry tracking, recipe management, grocery lists, and AI chat suggestions
• To sync your data across your devices
• To power features you opt into: friends, recipe sharing, and households
• To verify and manage your Grocerly Pro subscription
• To send notifications you’ve enabled
• To provide customer support when you contact us

Who We Share It With

The Application uses the following third-party services, and only shares what each one actually needs to function:

• Firebase (Google) — Authentication, cloud data sync (Firestore), photo storage, and push delivery. Firebase hosts your account and synced data.
• Anthropic (maker of the Claude AI model) — only after you give permission in the app, receives the data listed under “AI features and your permission” above to generate a response. It does not use this data to train its models.
• USDA FoodData Central (U.S. Department of Agriculture) — when you calculate a recipe’s macros, receives the ingredient names from that recipe to look up nutrition data. No account information or identity is sent.
• RevenueCat — receives your account identifier to verify your subscription/purchase status.
• Recipe-import services (a TikTok metadata API, TikTok’s own oEmbed endpoint, and direct Instagram page access) — receive only the specific URL you submit for import, never your account identity.
• Apple App Store / Google Play — process subscription payments directly; the Application never receives or stores your payment details.

We do not sell your personal information. We may disclose it if required by law, to protect rights or safety, or to investigate fraud.

What other users can see: your display name, username, and photo are visible to any signed-in user (so friend and recipe-share search works). Recipes you explicitly share are visible only to the recipient. If you join a household, its shared pantry and grocery-list content is visible to all current household members.

Data Retention & Deletion

We retain your data for as long as you keep an account. You can permanently delete your account and its data at any time from Account → Delete Account (typing “DELETE” to confirm). Deleting your account removes:

• your profile, recipes, pantry, grocery lists, preferences, and chat history
• your friendships and any pending friend requests
• recipes you’ve shared with or received from friends
• your stored push-notification token

If you belong to a household, deleting your account removes you from its membership; the household’s own shared content isn’t individually attributed per member, so it remains available to the other current members rather than being retroactively edited.

If you’re unable to access the Application, you can request deletion by emailing grocerlysupport@kalotech.dev.

Children

The Application is not directed at children under 13, and the Service Provider does not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided personal information, contact us at grocerlysupport@kalotech.dev and we’ll remove it.

Security

Data is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored behind access-scoped database rules — your synced content, private tokens, and server-managed records are each only reachable by you or by server-side code, never by other users directly.

Changes

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. We’ll update the effective date above when it changes — continued use of the Application after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your data? Email grocerlysupport@kalotech.dev.