Privacy policy

Little Plate is a meal-tracking app for parents and carers of young children. Because the app is about your child, we hold ourselves to a simple standard: collect the minimum, keep it only while you want it, and never use it for anything except making the app work for you. We don't show ads, we don't use analytics trackers, and we never sell your data.

This policy explains what we collect, why, who helps us process it, and the rights you have. It applies to the Little Plate iOS app and this website.

Who we are

Little Plate is operated from the United Kingdom. For anything in this policy, contact james@bodkin.studio — a real person reads it.

What we collect

Your account

• Email address — used to sign you in with a one-time code. There is no password to store.
• Display name (optional) and app preferences.

Information about your child, added by you

• First name or nickname, an illustrated avatar you pick, and an age band (12–23 months, 2–3 years, or 4–5 years). We never ask for a date of birth.
• Dietary pattern (for example vegetarian), allergens to avoid, and food preferences.
• Meal logs: what was offered, roughly how much was eaten, the meal slot, and any notes you add — including nursery handover text.
• Supplement logs (for example a daily vitamin).

Conversations with Ask

• If you use the Ask feature, your questions and the answers are stored so you can return to the conversation. You can delete conversations, and account deletion removes them all.

Subscription status

• Whether your account has an active subscription and which product. We never see or store your payment details — payment is handled entirely by Apple.

What we deliberately don't collect

• No advertising or analytics SDKs, and no tracking across other apps or websites.
• No location data, no contacts, no health records.
• No date of birth, surname or photo of your child is required anywhere in the app.

Meal photos — the part parents ask about most

Here is the exact lifecycle of a meal photo:

1. You take a before and/or after photo of the plate. It is resized on your device.
2. If you ask for AI analysis, the photo is sent over an encrypted connection to our server, which passes it to our AI provider (OpenAI) to identify the foods and estimate portions.
3. The result comes back to your device. The photo itself is not written to our database or any server storage — once the analysis completes, it is gone from our systems.
4. A resized copy stays in the app on your device only, so your meal history has pictures. Deleting a meal deletes its photos; deleting the app removes them all.

The same applies to photos of nursery handover sheets: analysed, then discarded. If a handover sheet would show another child's name, crop it out before snapping — the app only needs your child's lines.

How we use your information

• To run the app — sign-in, syncing your logs, showing your dashboard (legal basis: performing our contract with you).
• To power AI features you invoke — photo analysis, nursery sheet reading and Ask, each only when you trigger them (contract).
• To enforce fair limits — a counter of free AI analyses used (legitimate interest in preventing abuse).
• To answer support emails you send us (legitimate interest).

We do not use your data for marketing, profiling or advertising, and we do not train AI models on it.

Children's information

Little Plate is for adults — parents and carers aged 18 or over. Children do not use the app and we never knowingly collect information directly from a child. The information about your child in the app is added and controlled entirely by you: you choose how much to share (a nickname and age band are enough), you can edit it any time, and deleting a child profile or your account permanently removes it.

Who helps us process data

We use three service providers, each bound by their own data-processing terms:

Apple processes your payment when you subscribe, under Apple's privacy policy. Some providers process data in the United States; where data leaves the UK, transfers are protected by recognised safeguards such as the UK Addendum to Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep things

• Your account data and logs: until you delete them or delete your account.
• Meal and nursery-sheet photos: not retained on our servers at all (see above).
• Support emails: as long as needed to resolve your question.

Deleting your data

You can delete your account inside the app: Settings → Account → Delete account. This permanently and immediately removes your account, every child profile, all meal and supplement logs, all conversations and your subscription records from our systems. It cannot be undone, and you don't need to email anyone to do it. Photos cached on your device are removed when you delete the app.

Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law you can:

• ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• ask us to correct or delete it;
• object to or restrict our processing;
• take your data elsewhere (portability).

Email james@bodkin.studio and we'll respond within one month. If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or your local supervisory authority in the EU.

Security

All data is encrypted in transit. Database access is isolated per account using row-level security, so your data is only ever readable by your account. AI features run on our servers — API keys are never embedded in the app. No system is perfectly secure, but we designed Little Plate so that the most sensitive thing — photos of your child's meals — never sits on our servers in the first place.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell you in the app before the change takes effect. The date at the top always shows the latest version.

Contact

Questions about privacy: james@bodkin.studio.