InStock Kitchen Privacy Policy

InStock Kitchen ("we", "the app") is designed with privacy as a first principle. This policy describes what data the app handles, where it goes, and why.

Summary

• No accounts. The app does not require sign-up or login.
• No tracking. The app does not track you across other apps or websites.
• No analytics. The app does not include third-party analytics SDKs.
• On-device AI. All image recognition runs locally on your iPhone. Photos you take while scanning never leave your device.

What the app does NOT collect

The app does not collect:

• Your name, email, phone number, or any personal identifier
• Your contacts, calendars, photos library, or files outside the app
• Your location
• Photos from your scanning sessions (these stay in the app's local storage)
• Custom recipes you create or photos you attach to them
• Any behavioral or analytics data

What is transmitted off-device

The app makes network requests only in specific, narrow cases.

1. One-time AI model download (first launch)

The first time you open InStock Kitchen, the app downloads its on-device AI model (approximately 1.7 GB) from Hugging Face, a public model-hosting platform. This is a one-time download per device - the model is then stored locally on your iPhone and used for all future grocery scans without further network activity.

• The app requests the model files directly from Hugging Face's servers
• No identifier of you or your device is attached to the request
• Hugging Face may log the IP address of the request server-side as part of their normal operations
• Once downloaded, the model never communicates with any server - all grocery recognition happens fully on-device

2. Barcode product lookup

When you scan a barcode (UPC/EAN), the app sends the barcode number only - never any identifier of you or your device - to one or both of the following public product databases, in this order:

1. Open Food Facts - a free, community-maintained, open-source food product database (governed by the Open Database License). The app sends the barcode and receives product details (name, brand, category) in return.
2. USDA FoodData Central - a free database operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. If Open Food Facts does not have the product, the app sends the same barcode to USDA as a fallback. Returns product details (name, brand, ingredients).

Both providers may log the IP address of the request server-side as part of their normal operations, per their respective terms of service. InStock Kitchen does not control or have access to those server-side logs.

Custom recipes

The app lets you create your own recipes (name, description, ingredients, method, optional hero photo). Custom recipes you create are stored only on your device. They are not sent to any server, are not synced to anyone else's device, and are not visible to InStock Kitchen.

Uninstalling the app deletes all custom recipes from your device.

Recipe sharing

The recipe detail view for a custom recipe offers two share options. Both are always user-initiated - the app never shares a recipe automatically.

"Share with us"

You can choose to send a custom recipe to the InStock Kitchen team for possible inclusion in a future app update. When you tap this button:

• The app opens your default mail app with a pre-addressed email to novotimesoft@gmail.com
• The recipe content (text + optional hero photo) is attached
• You review and send the email yourself - the app cannot send the email for you
• You can cancel at any point before tapping Send in your mail app

What InStock Kitchen receives via this email is limited to the recipe content you chose to share. We do not receive your inventory, scan history, or any other recipes. Your mail app may include your email address as the sender - that is normal mail behavior and is governed by your mail app, not by InStock Kitchen.

"Share with a friend"

You can choose to share a custom recipe with another person via iOS's standard Share Sheet (Messages, Mail, AirDrop, WhatsApp, etc.). When you tap this button:

• The app prepares a packet containing the recipe content and the hero photo (if any)
• iOS's Share Sheet opens with your standard list of sharing destinations
• You choose where to send it - the app never selects a destination for you
• The recipient receives the recipe via whichever app you pick

Future versions of the app may also include a shareable link to view the recipe at our website. The recipe data travels inside the link itself; no server-side storage of your recipe is involved on InStock Kitchen's side.

Whichever sharing destination you pick (Messages, Mail, etc.) may include your account identity at the transport layer as part of how that app delivers the content. That is normal behavior of those apps and is not something InStock Kitchen controls.

Apple-provided diagnostics

If you opt into sharing diagnostics with Apple in iOS Settings, Apple may receive anonymized crash logs from the app via its standard developer crash reporting framework. We use these logs only to identify and fix bugs. We do not link them to you, and we have no ability to identify individual users from this data.

Permissions the app requests

• Camera. Required for the grocery scanning feature, and optionally for taking a photo when you create a custom recipe. Frames are processed on-device only.
• Photos (read-only, when you import). Optional. Used only if you choose to import an image from your library - either to analyze a grocery scene or to use as the hero photo on a custom recipe. Imported images are not transmitted.

InStock Kitchen's website

The app's companion website, instockkitchen.com, exists primarily to support the "Share with a friend" feature so that recipients who do not have the app installed can still view a shared recipe in their browser. The website is a static page; it does not require sign-in, does not run analytics, and does not collect or store any data about visitors beyond what your browser and the hosting provider (Cloudflare) record as part of normal web traffic (such as IP address). Cloudflare's data practices are governed by their own privacy policy.

Data retention

All your data - inventory, custom recipes, scan history, custom recipe photos - is stored only on your device. Uninstalling the app deletes this data.

Children

The app is rated 4+. We do not knowingly collect data from children or anyone else.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the next app update will include a note in the release notes. The most recent version of this policy is always available at instockkitchen.com.

Contact

Questions about this privacy policy or about how the app handles your data: novotimesoft@gmail.com