Ask the Kitchen

Privacy

What we collect, why we collect it, and how to get rid of it.

Last updated 30 July 2026

Who we are

DKT Solutions Ltd, trading as Ask the Kitchen, is the data controller. You can reach us at privacy@askthekitchen.co.uk, or by post at 2 Dalglish Drive, Blackburn, BB2 4FU. Our ICO registration number is ZA484968.

What we collect

Less than you might expect, because the product does not need much.

• Your account. Email address and a hashed password. We never store your password itself.
• Your kitchen. What is in your cupboard, fridge and freezer, the names or nicknames of the people you cook for, and any allergies or dietary preferences you record.
• What you cook. Recipes you keep, cook or skip, so tonight's suggestion gets better.
• Payment. If you subscribe, Stripe handles the transaction. We receive a confirmation and a reference, never your card number.
• Technical. Server logs including IP address, for security and to keep the thing running.

Allergies and dietary information

If you record allergies, that is health data, which the law treats as a special category. We ask for it only because filtering suggestions is the entire point of the feature, we process it on the basis of your explicit consent, and you can remove it at any time. Removing it turns the filtering off rather than degrading it quietly.

It is never used for advertising, never shared with anyone outside the processors listed below, and never sold.

Why we are allowed to

• To provide the service. Performance of our contract with you.
• Allergy and dietary filtering. Your explicit consent.
• Security, fraud prevention and keeping records we must keep. Our legitimate interests and our legal obligations.
• Emails you asked for, like the daily suggestion. Your consent, withdrawable from any of them.

Who else sees it

These are our processors. They act on our instructions and cannot use your data for their own purposes.

• Stripe: payment processing (UK / EU / US)
• DKT Solutions (self-hosted): website and application hosting, on hardware we own and operate (United Kingdom)
• Mailjet (Sinch): delivering the emails we send; the subscriber list stays in our own database (European Union)
• Microsoft 365: our own email, so anything you send us is stored there (UK / EU)
• Google Analytics: counting visits to the website, only if you agree to it (EU / US)

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers. Where a processor is outside the UK, the transfer relies on the UK's approved safeguards.

Two of those are narrower than they look. Mailjet only delivers. It is the postman. Who is subscribed to what lives in our own database, not in a mailing-list product, so there is no marketing list sitting on somebody else's platform. Stripe never gives us your card number; it does not touch our servers at any point.

Recipes are shared, your kitchen is not

When a household searches for something new, the recipe it finds joins a library that every household can use. That library contains recipes and where they came from. Not who searched for them, not what was in anyone's fridge, and nothing that identifies you.

How we keep it safe

We host Ask the Kitchen ourselves, on hardware we own in the United Kingdom. That means nobody else's platform holds your kitchen, and it means the security of it is our responsibility rather than a supplier's, so here is what we actually do.

• Everything travels over an encrypted connection. There is no unencrypted route in.
• Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. We could not tell you your password if you asked us to.
• Card details never reach our servers. Stripe handles them end to end.
• Administrative access is limited to the one person who runs the service, over authenticated connections only.
• Backups are encrypted and kept separately from the live system, so a failure or a mistake is recoverable.
• Allergy and dietary data is treated as the sensitive data it is: used for filtering, never for anything else, and deletable by you at any time.

No system is perfectly secure and we are not going to claim otherwise. If something does go wrong and your data is at risk, we will tell the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours, and tell you directly where the law requires it or where we would want to be told ourselves, which is a lower bar.

Cookies

The application sets one essential cookie to keep you signed in. That one has no alternative, since without it you could not stay logged in, so it does not need your permission.

This website also uses Google Analytics to count visits, which sets its own cookies. That one does need your permission, so it is off until you say yes on the banner. Say no and nothing is set, nothing is sent, and you will not be asked again. There is no advertising tracking on this site at all.

To change your mind, clear this site's data in your browser settings and the banner will appear again.

How long we keep it

Your account data for as long as you have an account, and for 30 days after you close it so an accident is recoverable. Billing records for six years, because tax law requires it. Server logs for 90 days.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to how we use it, or withdraw consent where consent is the basis. Email privacy@askthekitchen.co.uk and we will respond within one month.

If we get it wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first, but it is your right either way.

Children

Ask the Kitchen is for adults running a household. You can add children as people you cook for, with a first name and their dietary needs, but they do not get accounts and we do not collect anything else about them.

Changes

If we change this notice materially, we will email account holders rather than quietly changing the date at the top.