Legal
This Privacy Policy explains how Kitchens Matter, a trading name of Wheels Matter Limited ("we", "us", "our"), collects, uses, and protects your personal data when you use kitchensmatter.com and our cooking platform.
We are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. By using our Service you agree to the practices described here.
Data Controller: Wheels Matter Limited, trading as Kitchens Matter
Contact: [email protected]
Kitchens Matter is presently operated as a trading name of Wheels Matter Limited, itself part of the Ingrao-McLarty Holdings Limited group of companies. Should Kitchens Matter Limited be incorporated as a separate legal entity within the group in future, this policy will be updated accordingly and registered users will be notified.
We collect:
We never sell your personal data.
We use your data to generate personalised, persona-voiced recipes tailored to your dietary needs, available ingredients, and appliances. Your dietary needs and any health-related information you provide are used specifically to help avoid recipes containing ingredients you have told us to avoid.
We use anonymised, aggregated patterns across all users, such as commonly requested ingredients, popular dishes, and cooking trends, to improve the platform, its recipe methodology, and future features. This aggregated data is not personal to any individual user.
You can withdraw consent at any time.
We share data only with trusted service providers necessary to operate the platform:
We share data with legal authorities only when required by law. We never sell your data to third parties for marketing.
Kitchens Matter stores photos you upload. This is a deliberate design choice so you can build a personal recipe book with images of dishes you have cooked, and so that, where you consent, your dishes may appear in a future community gallery. This is different to how some similar features work elsewhere, where photos are analysed once and immediately discarded. We want to be fully transparent about it.
When you upload a photo of a finished dish:
By default, your uploaded photos are private to your account. They are not shown publicly or to any other user unless you explicitly opt in via the gallery consent option presented at the point of upload, which is unticked by default. You may change this preference or withdraw consent at any time by contacting us.
You may delete any photo you have uploaded at any time by contacting us, or by requesting full account deletion (see section 8). When a photo is deleted, it is permanently removed from our storage, not merely hidden.
We keep personal data only as long as necessary, for the duration of your relationship with us plus 6 years for legal purposes.
If you request deletion of your account, we will permanently remove your personal account record, your saved recipes, your dietary and preference data, any photos you have uploaded (including deletion from our storage, not just from view), and any associated chef reviews.
Where practical, we may retain anonymised, aggregated cooking pattern data (such as "chickpeas were a commonly requested ingredient in July") with all personal identifiers removed, in accordance with your rights under GDPR Article 17. This anonymised data cannot be used to identify you.
To request deletion, contact [email protected].
Some of our service providers store or process data outside the UK. Anthropic and Airtable may process or store data on servers located in the United States. These transfers are lawful under the UK-US Data Bridge (International Data Transfer Agreement), which provides an approved mechanism for UK-to-US personal data transfers.
Where transfers occur outside the UK or the approved data bridge, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including standard contractual clauses.
You have the right to access, correct, or delete your data, object to processing, withdraw consent, and receive a copy of your data in a portable format. You can exercise any of these rights free of charge by contacting us at [email protected].
We use essential cookies and local storage for the Service to function, including keeping you signed in between visits. We do not currently use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.
We use industry-standard encryption and access controls. No method is 100% secure, but we take every reasonable step to protect your data.
Our Service is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children.
Where you tell us about dietary needs, allergies, or health-related conditions so that we can help you avoid unsuitable ingredients, this is special category data under UK GDPR. We only use this information to inform the recipes generated for you and to reduce the risk of inadvertent dietary harm. We do not use this data for any other purpose, and it is included in full when you request account deletion.
Kitchens Matter is not a medical service. Our chef personas provide general cooking guidance and cannot account for every individual medical circumstance. The Service complements but does not replace advice from a qualified doctor, dietitian, or other healthcare professional. Always seek professional advice for serious dietary or medical conditions.
We will update this policy as the platform grows and notify you of material changes via email or on the Site. This is an early-stage platform and this policy is likely to be revised as new features are introduced.
For any privacy questions:
[email protected]
Kitchens Matter, a trading name of Wheels Matter Limited
Hands-free voice is a paid feature available to Home Cook subscribers. If you choose to enable it, Kitchens Matter will ask permission to access your device's microphone. Here is exactly what happens and what does not happen.
What the microphone is used for
While you are cooking with the hands-free feature turned on, your device's microphone captures your speech so you can advance through a recipe, ask your chef a question, or request a substitution without touching the screen. This is designed for use in the kitchen when your hands are occupied.
Where the processing happens
Your voice is streamed in real time to xAI, our AI intelligence partner, for speech recognition and response generation. Processing does not happen inside your browser. xAI operates under its own privacy and security policies, which you can review at x.ai.
What xAI retains
xAI does not retain raw audio. By default, session metadata and text transcripts generated during a voice session are temporarily retained by xAI for up to 30 days for abuse and safety monitoring purposes only, after which they are automatically and permanently deleted. xAI does not use your voice data to train its models without your explicit consent.
What Kitchens Matter stores
Kitchens Matter does not store your voice audio or the text of your spoken commands. Your voice session content is not written to your profile, your recipe history, or any Kitchens Matter database.
Session security
Your device connects to xAI using a short-lived session token generated by our servers. Your Kitchens Matter API credentials never reach your browser. Voice sessions are capped at 60 minutes and close automatically after 5 minutes of inactivity.
When the microphone is active
The microphone is only active when you have explicitly started a hands-free session. A visible indicator appears on screen whenever the microphone is open. The session ends when you tap the indicator to stop, say "stop listening," complete your recipe, or navigate away from the recipe screen.
Withdrawing consent
You can end a hands-free session at any time by tapping the mic indicator or saying "stop listening." Turning off microphone access entirely can be done through your device's settings at any time. This has no effect on any other part of the platform.
KM Intel is the platform's floating assistant, available to all users free of charge. It answers questions about the platform, the 5-gate method, unit conversions, and mid-cook practical queries. To improve the assistant over time, Kitchens Matter logs a small amount of anonymised information each time it is used.
What is logged
Each KM Intel interaction generates a single anonymised log record containing: a hashed reference to your session (a one-way cryptographic hash that cannot be reversed to identify you), the category of question asked (one of: platform, conversion, technique, safety, or out of scope), whether a cook was in progress at the time, which gate you were on if cooking, and which chef persona was active. No other information is recorded.
What is not logged
The text of your question and the text of Intel's response are never stored. No verbatim content from any KM Intel conversation is written to our database. The log record contains only the category and context signals described above.
Why we log this
The anonymised category and context data tells us which types of question the assistant handles well and which it does not, so we can improve it over time. This mirrors the principle used for anonymised cooking pattern data described in section 8 — it improves the Service without identifying any individual user.
Legal basis
Processing is based on our legitimate interest in improving the platform for all users. The data is anonymised at the point of collection and cannot be used to identify you.
Retention
Intel log records are retained for as long as they are useful for platform improvement. Because they contain no personal identifiers, they fall outside the scope of the right to erasure under GDPR Article 17. If you request account deletion, your session hash is different each session and cannot be linked back to your account records.