Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective November 4, 2026
Mealplum plans meals for your household. To do that it needs to know who eats with you and what they can’t eat. This policy says what we keep, why, and how to get it back or have it erased.
The short version
- We collect what the meal plan needs: your account email, your household’s profiles and food rules, your plans, lists, pantry, receipt data and ratings.
- We don’t sell your data, we don’t show ads, and there are no advertising or analytics trackers in the app or on this site.
- Receipt and kitchen photos are read by an AI service to fill in your list and pantry, then thrown away. We never store photos of people; avatars are drawings.
- Kids get profiles that a parent creates and manages. Children can’t have accounts.
- You can download your data or delete your account in the app, any time.
Who we are
Mealplum is operated by HeavenlyTrade S.R.L.S (“Mealplum”, “we”, “us”), a company registered in Italy at Via Roma 114, 81100 Caserta (CE), Italy, VAT IT04635090618. We are responsible for your personal information under this policy (under EU law, the “controller”).
This policy covers the Mealplum app for iPhone, the services behind it, and this website (mealplum.com). It doesn’t cover other companies’ sites or apps, such as Kroger or Walmart, even when Mealplum opens them for you.
What we collect
Before you create an account, the plan you build lives only on your iPhone. Once you create an account (to save your week, share it with your household or subscribe), we store the following on our servers.
Your account
- Your email address. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email, we get Apple’s relay address instead.
- Your name, if you or your sign-in provider gives it to us.
- How you sign in (Apple, Google or a code sent by email) and the account ID that provider gives us. We never receive your Apple or Google password, and we don’t take your Apple or Google profile photo.
Your household
- A profile for each person you plan for: a first name or nickname, whether they’re an adult, teen or kid, their age, an illustrated avatar (saved as a few settings, never a picture), their allergies, diets, foods they’d rather not eat and, for adults only, a goal such as “More protein” or “Lose weight”.
- Who is in the household, who owns it, and invite links (we keep only a coded version of each link, not the link itself).
- Your plan settings: meals and days, eating style, kitchen equipment, weeknight time, cuisines you like, budget, store, ZIP code and, if you shop at Kroger, the Kroger store you picked.
What you do in the app
- Your weekly plans, who is eating each meal, guests, saved plates, swaps and locked meals.
- Grocery lists, what you checked off, items you added, and your pantry (what you have, where, and when it was bought or opened).
- Ratings for each person (Loved, Good, Not again), optional reasons (for example “too spicy”), whether you followed the recipe, and saved recipes.
- Receipts: the store, date, totals, and each line with its price and discounts, read from your receipt photo. Before saving, we remove card digits, loyalty or member numbers, the cashier’s name and the store’s street address. The photo itself is not kept.
- Prices you type by hand (“Paid a different price?”), with the store, date and package size. They only change your own list. We store them linked to an encrypted version of your account ID.
- Kitchen scans: the items recognized in a photo of your fridge, freezer or pantry. The photo itself is not kept.
Your subscription
- Whether you have an active subscription or trial, which plan, when it started and ends, and whether it will renew. Apple handles the payment; we never see your card or billing details.
Connected stores
- If you connect your Kroger account to fill your Kroger cart, Kroger gives us access tokens for that purpose. We store them encrypted and never see your Kroger password.
Devices and technical data
- A push notification token for your device, its platform (for example iOS), and your notification settings.
- For each signed-in session: the IP address, the app or browser version it came from, and when it expires.
- Short-lived server logs and, if something breaks, error reports with technical details. We use these to keep the service running and secure.
When you contact us
- Your messages and email address when you write to us, by email or with “Write to a person” in the app.
What we don’t collect
- Photos of people, of anyone, ever.
- Your precise location. We only use the ZIP code you type.
- Your contacts, an advertising identifier, or your activity in other apps and websites.
- Payment card numbers.
Where it comes from
- You, when you set up your household and use the app.
- Other people in your household. Mealplum is shared: the owner or another member may create your profile, set your food rules, or change the plan and list.
- Apple or Google, when you sign in with them (your email, your name if shared, and an account ID).
- Apple, through RevenueCat, for the status of your subscription.
- Kroger, if you connect your Kroger account.
- Your device, for the push notification token.
How we use it
- To plan your meals: keep everyone’s allergies and diets, size each person’s plate, build the grocery list, and estimate what the week costs.
- To sync your plan, list and pantry across your household’s phones in real time.
- To sign you in, keep your account secure, and stop abuse (for example, limits on sign-in attempts and on scans).
- To give your household access while the owner’s subscription or trial is active, and to remind you before any charge.
- To send the notifications you leave on, such as “Next week’s list is ready”.
- To improve price estimates. Prices read from receipts help correct our estimate for a store chain in an area, grouped by the first three digits of the ZIP code. A correction is only made when there are at least 5 receipts from at least 3 different households, and what other people see is the corrected estimate, never anyone’s receipt or price. Prices you type by hand don’t change anyone else’s estimates.
- To improve recipes and the planner, for example fixing a cooking time when many households say a recipe took longer. Ratings are not shown to other users.
- To answer you when you contact us, and to meet our legal obligations.
We don’t use your data for advertising, we don’t build profiles to sell, and we don’t make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
Photos and AI
AI is used in one place: reading the photos you choose to scan. When you scan a receipt or a kitchen shelf, the app sends the photo to our server, and our server sends only the photo to OpenAI to read the text and items. We ask OpenAI not to store the result, and we don’t write the photo to disk or to storage: it is read and thrown away. Under OpenAI’s API terms, data sent through its API isn’t used to train its models.
AI never decides allergies, diets or rules, and never calculates prices, calories or portions. Those are worked out by our own code from your settings and from public data such as USDA nutrition data. Recipes are picked and checked by people.
No selling, no ads, no tracking
We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t share it for cross-context behavioral advertising or use it for targeted advertising. There are no advertising networks, analytics or tracking tools in the app or on this website. We have not sold or shared personal information in the past 12 months. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as an opt-out, though there is nothing to opt out of.
Children
Mealplum is meant for adults who plan meals for their household. It is not directed to children under 13, and children can’t create accounts: only adults can sign in.
A parent or guardian can add a child to the household as a profile so their plates and food rules are right: a first name or nickname, age, allergies, diets, foods they’d rather not eat, and an illustrated avatar. This information is provided by the parent, not collected from the child, and we use it only to plan the household’s meals. We don’t contact children, don’t store photos of them, never set weight goals for anyone under 18, and never use a child’s information for advertising.
A parent can see, change or remove a child’s profile any time in the app (open Home and tap the child’s avatar), or ask us at privacy@mealplum.com. If we learn that we collected personal information directly from a child under 13, we will delete it.
Food rules and consumer health data
Some of what you tell us could count as health information under certain state laws (for example Washington’s My Health My Data Act, Nevada’s consumer health data law, and California’s rules on sensitive personal information): allergies, diets, an adult’s goal such as “Lose weight”, and ages.
- Why we collect it: only to plan safe meals and size each person’s plate. Allergies are enforced as hard rules by our code.
- Consent: you choose to enter it, and you can change or remove it any time in the app.
- Who receives it: people in your household, and the providers that host our servers and backups (OVH, Cloudflare). We don’t send food rules to OpenAI, and we never sell this information.
- Your rights: you can access, download or delete it as described below, and ask us which providers have received it.
We only use this information to provide Mealplum, so we don’t use or disclose it for any purpose that would require us to offer a right to limit its use.
How long we keep it
- Account and household data: as long as your account is open. When you delete your account, it is deleted from our servers (see Delete your account for what happens to a shared household).
- Receipt data: belongs to the household and is kept while the household exists.
- Prices you contributed (from receipts or typed by hand): deleted when you delete your account. Store price corrections already calculated from many households’ receipts don’t identify anyone and may be kept.
- Sign-in codes: expire after 10 minutes. Sessions: up to 60 days, or until you sign out.
- Data export files: deleted after 7 days.
- Backups: encrypted daily database backups are kept for 30 days, then deleted. Deleted data can remain in a backup until it ages out.
- Server logs and error reports: kept for a short time, no longer than 30 days, unless we need them to investigate a security problem.
- Subscription records: kept as long as tax and accounting law requires and to resolve disputes.
- Support messages: kept up to 2 years after the conversation ends, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
- When an account is deleted, we keep a minimal record that the deletion happened, with a one-way coded ID and no personal details, so we can show we honored the request.
Where your data lives
Mealplum’s servers and database are in the United States (OVH), and backups and files are stored with Cloudflare. HeavenlyTrade S.R.L.S is based in Italy, so our team accesses the data from Italy and the European Union to run and support the service. Some providers may process data in other countries. Wherever it is handled, we protect it as this policy describes and, where the law requires, with contracts such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Your choices in the app
- Download your data: Home → Account → Download my data. You get one file with your account, household, plans, ratings and receipt data.
- Delete your account: Home → Account → Delete account. More about deletion.
- Change or remove a profile: open Home and tap the person’s avatar.
- Notifications: Home → Notifications. Trial and billing reminders stay on, so you’re never charged by surprise.
- Leave a household or sign out: Home → Account.
- Kroger: you can disconnect your Kroger account at any time.
Your US state privacy rights
Depending on where you live (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and other states with privacy laws), you may have the right to:
- know what personal information we have about you and how we use and disclose it, and get a copy in a portable format;
- correct information that is wrong;
- delete your information;
- opt out of the sale or sharing of your information, targeted advertising and certain profiling (we don’t do any of these);
- not be treated differently for using these rights. We will never charge you more or give you a worse service for it.
How to use them: most of these are in the app (download, correct, delete). You can also email privacy@mealplum.com from the email address on your account. We may ask you to confirm the request in the app or from that address, so we know it’s you. You can use an authorized agent; we’ll ask for proof of their authority and may ask you to confirm your identity. We answer within 45 days and tell you if we need more time, as the law allows.
Appeals: if we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our answer or writing to privacy@mealplum.com with “Appeal” in the subject. We’ll respond within the time your state’s law sets. If you’re not satisfied, you can contact your state’s attorney general.
Notice for California residents
This section is our notice at collection and our disclosure under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended. In the past 12 months we have collected these categories of personal information, from the sources and for the purposes described above, and disclosed them to the service providers listed above for those business purposes.
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Identifiers | Email address, name, account ID, sign-in provider ID, IP address, push token |
| Commercial information | Subscription status and history, receipt data, prices you paid |
| Internet or other electronic activity | Session details (app or browser version), and your plans, lists and ratings in the app |
| Approximate location | ZIP code and chosen store (never precise location) |
| Characteristics | Ages of household members; adult, teen or kid |
| Inferences | Food preferences learned from ratings, to plan future weeks |
| Sensitive personal information | Allergies, diets and adult goals (health-related), and information about children entered by a parent |
We use sensitive personal information only to provide Mealplum as you’d expect, not to infer characteristics about you. We don’t sell or share personal information, including that of consumers under 16. Retention periods are listed in How long we keep it.
If you are in the EEA, UK or Switzerland
Mealplum is built for the United States, but because we are based in Italy, the EU General Data Protection Regulation applies to how we handle data. We rely on these legal bases: performing our contract with you (running the app and your subscription); our legitimate interests (keeping the service secure, improving recipes and price estimates, which we balance against your rights); your consent where we ask for it (such as notifications, which you can withdraw any time); and our legal obligations.
You have the right to access, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to data portability. Write to privacy@mealplum.com. You can also complain to the Italian data protection authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, garanteprivacy.it) or to the authority where you live.
Security
Connections to Mealplum are encrypted. Kroger access tokens and the account link on stored prices are encrypted at rest, backups are encrypted, our file storage is private, invite links are stored only in coded form, and only a few people at Mealplum can reach production data. When you delete an account that used Sign in with Apple, we also revoke Mealplum’s access with Apple. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and will notify you and the authorities of a breach as the law requires.
This website
mealplum.com sets no cookies and loads no analytics, advertising or tracking tools. Fonts and images are served from our own domain. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes IP addresses and basic request data to deliver the site and protect it from attacks. There’s no form on this site, so we don’t collect anything through it unless you email us.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll update the effective date above. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
Contact
Privacy questions and requests: privacy@mealplum.com
Everything else: support@mealplum.com
By mail: HeavenlyTrade S.R.L.S, Via Roma 114, 81100 Caserta (CE), Italy