Privacy Notice
This notice explains what personal data Good Food Hygiene collects, why, and what you can do about it. It is written in plain English on purpose — UK data protection law requires it to be understandable, and a notice nobody reads protects nobody.
1. Who we are
Good Food Hygiene is a trading name of Elearnment Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17458288. Where this notice says "we", that is who it means.
We are the "data controller" for the information described in section 3. For the information described in section 4, your business is the controller and we act on your instructions — see the Processor Terms.
Contact us about anything in this notice at privacy@goodfoodhygiene.co.uk. If you need a postal address — to serve a formal notice, or because your own compliance requires one — ask and we will give you one.
2. The short version
- Your records are stored in the United Kingdom, on servers in London.
- We do not sell your data, and we do not use it to advertise to you.
- Two features send data outside the UK: the Basil assistant, and its voice. Section 6 says exactly what and where, and you can avoid both by not using them.
- You can export everything or delete your account from inside the app, at any time, without asking us.
3. Information we hold about YOU, as our customer
When you create an account we collect your name and title, email address, telephone number, date of birth, business address, business name, and the days your business trades. We record when you accepted our Terms and which version, and whether you opted in to marketing.
We collect this to open and run your account, to identify you if you contact us, and to bill you. Our lawful basis is performance of a contract with you. Date of birth is collected to confirm you are old enough to enter a contract; if you would rather not give it, contact us and we will discuss an alternative.
We also record which devices sign in to your account — a device name, its type, and when it was last used — so that we can enforce the number of devices your plan covers and so you can remove a device you no longer control. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests, namely protecting your account and enforcing the plan you bought.
If you contact us for support we keep that correspondence, on the basis of legitimate interests, so we can answer you and understand recurring problems.
4. Information you put into the app about OTHER people
The app is a record-keeping tool, and some of those records are about people:
- Staff names, on-duty times and rota shifts.
- A staff member's phone number, if you choose to add one.
- An emergency contact for a staff member — a name and a number — if you choose to add one. This is information about somebody who is usually not your employee and has not dealt with us at all: it is collected by you, from your staff member, and you should make sure they are content for it to be held here. We only store it and show it back to you.
- Staff training records — who holds which certificate, when it was taken and when it expires.
- The accident and incident log, which may record who was hurt or unwell, and what was done.
- A staff sickness record: who was reported unwell, whether it was sickness or diarrhoea or another illness, when they went home, the day they were clear to return and the day they came back. Food hygiene law says anyone with sickness or diarrhoea must stay away from work with food until 48 hours after their symptoms have stopped, and an officer asks to see that this was done. The record holds only what that rule needs: no symptoms beyond the kind of illness, no doctor, no diagnosis, and a short note if you choose to write one.
- Names typed against a sign-off, a corrective action or a check.
- Photographs you upload, including profile pictures and attachments on the notice board.
Your business decides what goes in these records and how long to keep them. In data protection terms your business is the controller and we are your processor: we store and process this information on your instructions and for no purpose of our own. The Processor Terms set out what we will and will not do with it.
Some of this is special category data. Records of injury or illness — the incident log and the staff sickness record — say something about a person's health, and UK GDPR gives that extra protection. You will usually rely on Article 9(2)(b) — obligations in the field of employment and health and safety — to hold it, and you should tell your staff that you do. We hold it only to provide the service to you.
5. Where your data is stored
All records, accounts, photographs and documents are stored with Supabase in their London region (eu-west-2). Your data stays in the United Kingdom.
The app itself — the files your browser downloads — is served by Krystal Hosting, in the UK. Like any web server, theirs records the IP addresses that request files. If you installed the app from Google Play or the App Store, that store holds its own record of the download under its own privacy policy, which we do not control.
6. When data leaves the UK
Some features send information to companies outside the UK. Every one of them is optional, and all of them are listed here so you can decide.
Basil, the in-app assistant. When you ask Basil a question, the text of your question, the name of your business and the names of your fridges and freezers are sent to Groq, Inc. in the United States, so that it can answer. Do not type personal information about staff or customers into Basil; it is not needed to answer a food safety question, and it would leave the UK if you did.
Basil's voice. If you speak to Basil rather than typing, the audio recording of your voice is sent to Groq, Inc. to be transcribed. When Basil speaks back, the text of its reply is sent to ElevenLabs, Inc. in the United States to be turned into speech.
Check reminders. If you turn reminders on, your device registers a notification address with Expo, in the United States, which hands each reminder to Google or to Apple to put it on the screen. Those three companies see the address and the wording of the reminder, which is a general sentence such as "closing checks have not been signed off". They do not see your records, your staff or your temperatures. Turning reminders off in the app deletes the address.
The weather forecast. The home screen can show a local forecast. It asks for your location only at the moment you tap it — not when the app starts — and then sends those coordinates to OpenMeteo GmbH in Switzerland to look the forecast up. Nothing identifying you or your business goes with the request. Open-Meteo keeps request logs, including the IP address, for ninety days. Decline the permission and nothing else in the app is affected.
Barcode and food lookups in the calorie counter go to the Open Food Facts database, which is operated in France. Those requests carry only the barcode or the words you typed.
The United States transfers rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or on the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, depending on the provider. Switzerland and France are covered by UK adequacy regulations, so no additional safeguard is required for those.
Nothing else leaves the UK. If you want nothing at all to leave it: do not use Basil, leave reminders off, and do not tap the weather. Every other part of the app works exactly as it does now.
7. The Inspector Portal
The app can generate a read-only link that shows your records to an officer without them needing an account. That link is public: anyone who has it can open it, and search engines could in principle find it if you published it somewhere public.
The link shows the records you chose to include, which may contain staff names and training records. Only turn it on when you need it, share it directly with the officer, and switch it off afterwards. You can do both from the Inspector Portal screen at any time.
8. Payments
When we begin charging for the service, payments will be handled by Stripe. Stripe will collect your card details directly and we will never see or store them. We will hold a record of what you paid for and when, because we are required to keep business records for tax purposes.
9. Errors and crashes
If the app fails, it sends us a report describing what went wrong: the error message and the technical detail beneath it, which screen you were on, and which version, platform and language you were running. It also carries an identifier for your premises and for the device, so that we can tell whether a fault is hitting one kitchen or every kitchen — which is usually the difference between a local problem and an outage.
The report does not contain your records. We keep these for six months and use them to fix faults. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests, namely keeping the app working.
10. What is stored on your device
The app keeps a copy of your records on the device so it works without a signal, and stores a token that keeps you signed in. This is stored by your browser, or by the app if you installed it from a store, and stays on that device. It is not advertising, and we do not use tracking or analytics cookies.
Signing out removes it, as does clearing your browser data or uninstalling the app.
11. How long we keep things
Your records stay in your account until you delete them or close your account. We do not delete a business's compliance records on a timer, because you may be required to produce them later and it is not our place to decide when that stops mattering.
When you close your account we delete your data within thirty days. We keep a minimal record of the transaction — who bought what, and when — for six years, because HMRC requires it.
Crash reports are deleted after six months.
12. Your rights
You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict what we do with it, or send it to another provider. You can object to processing we do on the basis of legitimate interests. You can withdraw consent to marketing at any time.
You do not need to ask us for two of these. From My Account you can export everything you hold, in a machine-readable form, and you can close your account and delete your data. Both work immediately.
For anything else, email privacy@goodfoodhygiene.co.uk. We will respond within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first, but you do not have to.
13. Staff of our customers
If your employer uses Good Food Hygiene and you want to know what it holds about you, or want it corrected or removed, ask your employer — the records are theirs and they decide. If they ask us to act, we will. We cannot change their records on your instruction alone, but we will always help them do it.
14. Changes
If we change this notice we will update the date at the top and, where the change matters, tell you in the app before it takes effect.