Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

Hello Chef is a trading name of HELLO CHEF LTD, a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 17560331. Registered office: 59 Dominion Road, Bristol, England, BS16 3ES. Email: contact@hello-chef.co.uk.

HELLO CHEF LTD is the controller for personal information used to operate the marketplace. Send privacy requests and complaints to contact@hello-chef.co.uk or the registered office address above.

Independent chefs may be separate controllers for information they use to deliver their own services and meet their own obligations. Payment and sign-in providers may also act as independent controllers for some activities. Their own notices apply to those activities.

2. Account and customer information

We receive account and contact details, including name, email, telephone number, password hash, account role, verification status and sign-in records. Optional Google customer sign-in supplies an identifier, verified email and available name. We do not request your Google password, mailbox or contacts.

Requests and bookings include address, postcode, dates, times, household meal requirements, cuisines, portions, menus, shopping lists, preferences and conversations. Allergies and some dietary choices can reveal sensitive information. Provide only information needed for the service, rather than unrelated medical details.

We receive payment, refund, cancellation, completion, review and support records. Stripe handles card credentials; Hello Chef stores provider references, status and limited card or bank descriptors rather than full card numbers or security codes.

3. Chef applications and public profiles

Chef applications include contact details, home address, biography, experience, cuisines, profile and food photos, rate, service area, calendar availability and application decisions.

Verification information can include a passport or driving licence, insurance evidence, right-to-work documents or a share code and date of birth, and optional training certificates. Private documents and the experience statement used for review are not public customer profile content.

An eligible public profile can show the chef’s name, public introduction, profile and food photos, cuisines, service area, rate and reviews. Hello Chef does not perform facial recognition or biometric identity matching.

4. Other sources and technical information

Information also comes from other booking participants, chefs, payment providers, sign-in providers and people making a support report. We generate booking, moderation, verification and security records. Suppliers may record network, device and service logs when providing their services.

The customer’s service coordinates may be stored. When a chef requests location-assisted arrival, the browser asks for permission and the system compares that reading with the booking location. The arrival record stores the result, distance and accuracy rather than the chef’s raw coordinates. It does not continuously track the chef.

Private food and kitchen photographs can be used as completion or complaint evidence. These are separate from public portfolio photos. Push subscriptions contain an endpoint and subscription keys, with delivery records used for authorised notifications and duplicate prevention.

5. Purposes and lawful bases

Account administration, requested matching, menu discussions, bookings and agreed payment arrangements: taking steps at your request or performing our contract with you. We need certain details, such as the service address and reachable contact number, to provide these functions.

Proportionate security, fraud prevention, support, investigation of misuse and defending legal claims: our legitimate interests in operating a reliable marketplace and protecting people, subject to necessity and your rights. Requesting every chef document is not automatically a legal obligation merely because it appears in an application form.

Accounting, valid legal requests and any applicable tax or platform reporting: the relevant legal obligation. We must establish which obligations actually apply to the operator and collect only the information needed.

Optional analytics and marketing technologies, where enabled, use your separate consent. Account creation is not agreement to marketing. Necessary service emails about verification, applications, bookings, payments and security are distinct from advertising.

6. Allergies and other sensitive information

Allergy information linked to an identifiable diner is health information. Some dietary information can reveal religious beliefs. We limit this information to what is necessary to discuss and provide a safe meal, and to the chef and authorised staff who need it.

When you send a meal request to a named chef and declare allergies, we ask for explicit consent to use and share those allergy details for meal preparation. The details and consent are saved together when that request is sent. No allergy-consent checkbox is required if you declare no allergies. We do not collect allergy details in the chef-search steps or save new allergy details in reusable profile preferences. For another request, review the details and give consent again if allergies are declared. We record the consent wording, version and time. Accepting general terms, reading this notice or creating an account is not that consent.

A booking customer cannot automatically consent for other adults. Other diners must provide their own valid explicit consent, or information must be supplied by a person lawfully authorised to act for them. For children, the appropriate parent or guardian must be involved. Do not name diners unnecessarily or share unrelated medical histories.

You can withdraw consent or request correction at any time by emailing contact@hello-chef.co.uk. Withdrawal does not undo processing that was lawful beforehand. We will stop consent-based use and explain whether the requested meal can still be provided safely. We may have to restrict processing or retain limited relevant evidence where a separate lawful basis and special-category condition apply, for example where necessary for legal claims.

Do not put allergy or other medical information in public reviews.

7. Sharing and access

The chef involved in a request receives the meal requirements and relevant conversation. Full service address information belongs to the confirmed booking. The call-customer feature restricts access to the saved number to the assigned eligible chef for an active confirmed or started booking; it is not a public profile field.

Authorised staff can access relevant private applications, conversations and evidence for verification, support, safety and disputes. Messages are stored by the platform and are not represented as end-to-end encrypted.

We may disclose necessary information to payment, hosting, email and other service suppliers, or to advisers, insurers, courts and authorities where there is an appropriate lawful basis. Any transfer to a successor operator must have safeguards and appropriate notice. We do not sell customer lists.

8. Suppliers and international processing

The service uses Render for hosting and database operations, Resend for transactional email, Stripe and Stripe Connect for payment and payout facilities, Google for optional customer sign-in, api.postcodes.io for postcode lookup, OpenStreetMap for map tiles, and browser or device push services when notifications are enabled.

A postcode lookup sends the supplied postcode to the lookup provider. Map requests can disclose an IP address and requested map area. A third-party website opened through a help link has its own privacy practices.

The hosting region is Frankfurt, Germany. Suppliers and their support or subprocessors may also process information in other countries, including the United States. We do not represent that every copy remains in the UK or in that hosting region.

Restricted transfers outside the UK require an applicable UK adequacy arrangement, appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum with the necessary assessment, or another lawful exception. Which safeguard applies depends on the recipient and service. Ask contact@hello-chef.co.uk for information about the recipients and the safeguards applicable to your data, or a copy where available subject to necessary redactions.

9. Analytics, Meta and cookies

With your separate consent, Google Analytics measures visits to selected public pages. Meta Pixel measures public page views, and the Meta Conversions API measures chef registration progress for advertising attribution. The two services have independent choices. Rejecting them does not prevent use of the site. Google Ads is not enabled.

Optional tags do not load before a valid choice. We exclude signed-in visits, account, booking, payment, document and legal pages. We do not send names, email addresses, phone numbers, meal plans, allergy information or uploaded documents to these tags. The tags can still receive online identifiers, the public page address, IP address and browser or device information; this is not anonymous data.

Google Analytics uses pseudonymous identifiers. Google Signals, advertising personalisation and automatic enhanced measurement are disabled. Our Analytics property retains user-level and event-level data for two months without resetting that period on new activity; aggregated reports are not subject to that same setting.

Meta may associate consented events with a Facebook or Instagram account and use them for measurement and advertising under its own policies. Automatic advanced matching and automatic event collection are disabled; we do not send customer lists. For the chef registration funnel, our server sends fixed milestone names, event times, a canonical signup URL, a pseudonymous browser identifier, browser user-agent information and a Meta browser or advertising-click identifier when available. We do not send names, email addresses, telephone numbers, addresses, profile answers, uploaded documents, verification links, meal plans or allergy information. The server does not send the visitor IP address. Events cover the signup visit, successful account creation, email verification, completed application steps and application submission. This measurement requires marketing consent in the browser used for each action; it does not replay actions performed before consent. We and Meta have joint responsibilities for the collection and transmission of Pixel event data under the Meta controller arrangement; Meta is responsible for its subsequent processing. See https://www.facebook.com/legal/controller_addendum and https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/.

Google and Meta may process data internationally under the applicable provider arrangements and transfer safeguards. See https://policies.google.com/privacy and the Meta privacy policy for their processing and rights controls. You may contact contact@hello-chef.co.uk about Hello Chef processing or exercise applicable rights with the provider.

Use Cookie preferences in the homepage footer to accept, reject or change optional choices at any time. Withdrawal stops future optional tracking by this site and clears accessible first-party tracking cookies; it does not undo earlier lawful processing. Reading a policy, signing up or continuing to browse is not consent. Google customer sign-in is a separate service. The Cookie Policy gives storage lifetimes and controls.

A first-party marketing journey and its event records expire within 30 days. Event delivery payloads are cleared after delivery or a final failure; unsent payloads expire after two days. Withdrawing marketing consent cancels queued events for that browser. Events already delivered to Meta are subject to Meta retention and rights controls. This measurement is not a recording of screens or form contents.

With Analytics consent, Hello Chef also measures traffic and journey milestones in its own database. We use a random browser identifier to count visits, recognise available sources from external referrer hostnames or utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign labels, and link chef signup, account creation, onboarding, application submission and approval. For customers we distinguish the booking-page visit, form start, request sent to a chef, booking confirmation and verified successful payment. The source linked to an application or request is its first consented attribution and is available to authorised administrators. We retain only safe page categories or public editorial slugs, event names and times, source labels and an approximate device category. No raw referrer URL, IP address, raw user-agent, form answers, allergy data, documents, conversation contents, payment amounts or payment credentials enter these analytics records. This first-party reporting does not send these records to Google or Meta. The lawful basis is consent.

hc_analytics is a signed, HttpOnly first-party analytics cookie created only after Analytics consent. It lasts 30 days without extending its expiry on each visit and uses Secure and SameSite=Lax. A visit restarts after 30 minutes of inactivity. Attribution remains valid for delayed milestones for up to 30 days and while this consent version remains valid. Analytics records and their links to applications or requests are deleted after 90 days. Withdrawing Analytics consent deletes this browser's first-party analytics records and attribution and stops linked future measurement. Business records required to operate the service are separate. Clearing cookies, using another device, refusing consent or a missing referrer can make attribution unavailable. Unknown sources are not guessed; unique browsers do not equal unique people.

10. Retention and account closure

Closure and erasure requests are handled manually by the operator at contact@hello-chef.co.uk. Ordinary account and profile information that is no longer needed will be deleted or anonymised within one calendar month after account closure is completed. This is a retention policy, not a claim that the website currently runs an automatic deletion tool.

You can request erasure before or without closing your account. We assess it without undue delay and normally respond within one month of receiving the request, subject only to adjustments permitted by law and explained to you. Waiting for account closure does not reset or postpone the statutory response deadline.

Outstanding bookings, payments, refunds or complaints may require limited records to be retained. They do not justify keeping every profile field, photograph or message indefinitely. We will explain what is retained, why, and the relevant period or review criteria.

Financial and tax records are normally kept for at least five years after the 31 January tax-return submission deadline for the relevant tax year. A longer period applies only where another requirement or an unresolved matter justifies it. The tax-record period does not automatically apply to identity photographs or allergy details.

Complaint, dispute, safety and legal-claim evidence is kept only while necessary to resolve the matter and establish, exercise or defend legal rights, taking account of the relevant claim period. We review the need when the matter is resolved and restrict access to relevant information.

Identity and verification documents are used for application review and any necessary continuing verification. Meal-safety information is used for the request or service and any separately justified follow-up. We review these categories when the application, booking or relevant purpose ends and remove unnecessary information, subject to justified exceptions.

Deletion from active records may precede expiry of restricted backup copies. Backups are not used for ordinary account operations; any restored records must be checked against completed erasure requests before ordinary use. Provider backup cycles and legally required provider records are separate from the one-month ordinary-profile rule. Contact us for the period and criteria applicable to a particular copy.

We will take appropriate steps to tell recipients about an applicable erasure or restriction. A chef or provider may need to retain information under their own legal duties and should explain that separately. We do not promise that deleting a Hello Chef profile erases every independent provider record.

11. Security and automated processes

The application uses password hashing, account permissions, private-file access controls, upload validation and scanning checks, HTTPS and audit records. These measures reduce risk but do not guarantee absolute security. Keep your account secure and report suspected misuse.

Matching and booking processes use eligibility, location, timing and availability rules. Staff review chef applications. Automated collection, cancellation and eligibility rules can affect a booking; contact support to challenge an incorrect result. Any decision with legal or similarly significant effects needs the applicable assessment and safeguards.

12. Your rights and complaints

Depending on the circumstances, you can ask for access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdraw consent. Some rights have legal exceptions. Any identity check must be proportionate.

Send requests to contact@hello-chef.co.uk. Rights requests normally receive a response within one month, with extensions or other adjustments only where permitted by law and explained to you.

For a privacy complaint, use the same email or postal address and explain your concern. We will acknowledge it within 30 days, investigate without undue delay and keep you informed of progress and the outcome. This complaint procedure does not replace or extend the response deadline for a rights request.

You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ and seek any court remedy available to you. We will explain material changes to this notice; rewriting it does not create consent for a new purpose.