Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Butler Technology Concepts, LLC d/b/a BBQuill ("we", "us", or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, the sources we collect it from, how and why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over your personal information when you use our websites and mobile apps (the "Service").

The table in Section 4 is a summary "notice at collection": it lists the categories of personal information we collect, their sources, the purposes we use them for, the categories of recipients we disclose them to, and how long we keep each category. The sections that follow add detail.

2. Information We Collect

Categories of sources. We collect personal information from you directly; automatically from your device and browser; from payment platforms; and from analytics and infrastructure providers acting on our behalf. We have no third-party integrations to connect today (Section 10), so there is no connected service to collect from.

We collect information you provide directly:

• Account information: email address, name (optional)
• Approximate location, if you choose to share it, for local weather context
• Cook records: dates and times, cooker and probe temperatures, wraps, spritzes, fuel additions, notes, and photos
• Your equipment and pantry: cookers, thermometers, rubs, wood, sauces, and fuel
• Files you upload: cook photos and chat images, which may include vendor, cost, and product details
• Messages, prompts, and photos you submit to the AI assistant
• Payment information: subscriptions are processed by our payment providers (Apple App Store, Google Play, RevenueCat, and Stripe). We receive subscription and transaction status — not full payment card numbers
• Usage and preference data: area unit preference, subscription status, and notification preferences

We also collect information automatically:

• Log data: IP address, browser type, pages visited, timestamps
• Device data: device type and operating system
• Mobile push tokens: if you enable notifications in our mobile apps, a device push token used to deliver reminders and alerts
• Cookies, product analytics, and similar tracking technologies (see Section 12)

Sensitive information. Some information we handle — precise geolocation (approximate location you share, and any GPS coordinates in photo metadata) and your account login credentials — may be treated as "sensitive" under some laws. We use it only to provide and secure the Service (for example, localized guidance, weather, and mapping). We do not sell sensitive information, use it to infer characteristics about you, or use it to profile you in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Provide, operate, and improve the Service
• Personalize your experience and deliver relevant features
• Generate cooking guidance and AI-powered suggestions
• Analyze photos you upload when you ask the assistant about them
• Provide local weather context for a cook
• Deliver notifications, reminders, and weather-based alerts by email and mobile push
• Process payments and manage your subscription
• Send transactional emails (e.g., account confirmation, password reset)
• Maintain security, prevent abuse, and troubleshoot problems
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service
• Analyze aggregate usage patterns to improve the Service

4. Categories of Information We Collect, Use, and Disclose

This table summarizes, by category, what we collect, where it comes from, why we use it, who we disclose it to, and how long we keep it. "Disclose" here means sharing with service providers that process data on our behalf under contract; it does not mean we sell your information (see Section 11).

5. Data Storage and Security

We host your data with cloud service providers — primarily Supabase (database, auth, storage) — and apply reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information. These include Row-Level Security so each user can access only their own data, encryption in transit (TLS), and encryption at rest. Access to personal information is limited to personnel and service providers who need it to operate the Service.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

6. Service Providers and Subprocessors

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with service providers that process it on our behalf under contract, and where required by law. By category of recipient, and the providers we currently use:

• Cloud hosting, database, auth & storage: Supabase
• Web hosting, content delivery, edge security & bot protection: Cloudflare (including Cloudflare Pages, Web Analytics, and Turnstile)
• AI providers: OpenAI and Anthropic (the assistant and document/photo extraction) and Perplexity (AI-powered web, product, and web search)
• Product analytics: PostHog
• Advertising measurement: Google Ads (conversion tracking for our own ad campaigns)
• Payment processors: Apple App Store, Google Play, RevenueCat, and Stripe (web card payments)
• Email & push delivery: Resend and Supabase (email); Expo, Apple (APNs), and Google (FCM) for mobile push
• Customer support: Zoho Desk
• Fonts: self-hosted; no third-party font service is contacted
• Weather data: Open-Meteo and the U.S. National Weather Service (NOAA)
• Connected sign-in providers: Google and GitHub, if you choose to sign in with them

The providers above are current as of the date of this policy and may change as we add or replace vendors; we will update this policy (or a linked subprocessors list) when that happens.

We may also disclose information:

• For legal requirements: when required by law or to protect our rights
• In business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, with notice to you

7. AI Features and Data Use

Butler Technology Concepts, LLC d/b/a BBQuill uses AI models (including third-party AI APIs) to generate cooking recommendations and to analyze photos you upload (such as an image of a cook in progress). Our current AI subprocessors are OpenAI and Anthropic (the assistant and photo analysis) and Perplexity (web and product lookups). When you use AI features, relevant portions of your cook data (e.g., your cookers and pantry, recent cooks, and any location you have shared) and the photos you submit are sent to these providers to generate a response.

We access these providers through their API/business tiers, under which your inputs and outputs are not used to train their models. Providers may retain content briefly to operate the service and to monitor for abuse or safety, as described in their own terms, and the personal information they receive remains governed by those terms. We do not use your content to train or fine-tune our own models. Before any of your data is sent to an AI provider, we ask you to agree to a disclosure naming the providers and the data shared.

8. Photos and Media

Photos you upload are stored with our cloud storage provider and protected by the safeguards described in Section 5. They are used to help you track your cooks' visual history and, when you request it, for AI-assisted analysis. As with other content, photos may be processed by our storage and AI service providers acting on our behalf (see Sections 6 and 7); we do not otherwise share your photos with third parties.

Photo metadata (EXIF). BBQuill does not read, extract, or store the metadata your camera embeds in a photo — dates, camera settings, or GPS coordinates. A cook photo is stored as the image itself plus the record we create for it: which cook it belongs to, an optional caption, its file type and size, and when it was added. Nothing about a photo is used to determine where you were.

Note that the image file you upload may still contain the metadata your camera wrote into it, and photos large enough to be resized before upload are re-encoded, which typically discards it. Either way we do not read it.

9. Geolocation Data

If you provide location data (address, coordinates) or use geolocation features, we use this information to provide local weather context for a cook. Precise location is treated as sensitive information (see Section 2); it is protected by the safeguards described in Section 5 and is not sold or shared for advertising.

10. Connected Services & Integrations

BBQuill currently offers no optional third-party integrations to connect. If we add any — for example a thermometer that reports readings automatically — this section will describe exactly what is exchanged with the provider, and connecting will always be your choice.

Any third-party service you connect in future is governed by its own privacy policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of services you choose to connect.

11. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights — for example under the EU/UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the CPRA (CCPA/CPRA), and similar U.S. state privacy laws (such as those in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, and Utah):

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Object to or restrict certain processing
• Data portability (receive your data in a machine-readable format)
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
• Opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information (see Section 12)
• Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights

Some of these rights may not be available in every jurisdiction or may be limited where an exception applies — for example, where we must keep information to comply with a legal obligation, ensure security, or detect and fix errors.

How to exercise your rights. You can delete your account and data at any time in the app (see our deletion instructions), or contact us at groundskeeper@bbquill.com.

Verification. To protect your information, we verify requests using the email address associated with your account and, where needed, by asking you to confirm information we already hold. We will not use information you provide for verification for any other purpose.

Authorized agents. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf. We may require the agent to provide proof of your written permission and may still ask you to verify your own identity directly.

Timing and appeals. We will respond within the time required by applicable law (generally 30–45 days), and we may extend that period where the law permits, with notice to you. If we decline your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision or emailing groundskeeper@bbquill.com with the subject "Privacy Appeal"; where applicable law provides, you may also contact your local data protection authority or attorney general.

12. Cookies, Analytics & "Do Not Sell or Share"

We use cookies and similar technologies in the following ways:

• Strictly necessary / essential: session and security cookies needed for the Service to function (for example, to keep you signed in). These cannot be turned off through the Service.
• Analytics: we use product-analytics tools (PostHog, and Cloudflare Web Analytics) to understand how the Service is used — which features are used and where users hit errors — so we can improve it.
• Advertising measurement: we run a small Google Search ad campaign and measure which ads lead to signups. To do this we use Google Ads conversion tracking — the Google tag (gtag.js). When you arrive from one of our ads, Google sets first-party cookies on your device (for example, _gcl_*) to remember the ad click (such as a gclid), and if you later create an account we report that signup to Google Ads as a conversion. We also read the click identifier and any utm_* campaign tags from the URL for the same measurement in our product analytics. We use all of this solely to measure which of our own ads led to signups. For visitors who have not opted out, loading the tag sends Google a measurement signal — the page load and the ad-click cookie — in addition to the later signup conversion; we instruct Google to treat it as non-personalized, and we do not build advertising profiles or audiences, retarget you, or serve personalized ads across other sites.

We do not use cookies or analytics for cross-context behavioral advertising, we do not serve targeted or personalized ads, and we do not sell your personal information, as those terms are defined under California and other U.S. state privacy laws. The limited conversion-measurement reporting described above is used only to gauge the effectiveness of our own ads — not to advertise to you — but depending on your state it may be considered “sharing.” The Your Privacy Choices control below — and the Global Privacy Control browser signal — stop the Google tag from loading on your device, so no measurement or conversion data is sent. You can also email groundskeeper@bbquill.com and we will exclude you from ad-conversion reporting. You can manage personalized Google advertising in Google’s Ad Settings.

You can control cookies through your browser settings; for general information about cookies and how to manage or disable them, visit allaboutcookies.org. You can opt out of non-essential analytics and ad-conversion sharing on this device using the Your Privacy Choices control below, or by emailing groundskeeper@bbquill.com. We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal: when your browser sends a GPC signal, we automatically treat you as opted out of non-essential analytics and ad-conversion sharing. Disabling certain cookies may prevent parts of the Service from working.

13. Data Retention

We keep personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service, then delete it as described below. Retention by category is also summarized in the table in Section 4.

• Account and content data (profile, cookers, cook history, AI chats): kept for the life of your account. We do not automatically purge this data; when you delete your account it is deleted immediately and permanently from our live systems.
• Uploaded images (cook photos, chat images): the records that point at them are deleted with your account immediately, which makes the images unreachable from the Service straight away. The stored files themselves are erased by a separate scheduled job rather than in the same request — usually within the hour, and by design no image outlives that job's next successful run.
• Backups: residual copies in routine, encrypted backups are purged on our normal backup-rotation schedule, no later than 90 days after deletion.
• Operational and security logs (including IP address and rate-limit records): retained for a limited period for security and troubleshooting, then deleted or aggregated.
• Product analytics: analytics events are linked to an identifier for your account while your account is active. When you delete your account, we also ask our analytics provider to delete your analytics profile on a best-effort basis; aggregate, de-identified metrics that are not linked to you may remain. You can also ask us to delete your analytics data by emailing groundskeeper@bbquill.com.
• Billing and subscription records: if you purchased a subscription, our payment processors retain transaction records as required for tax, accounting, and fraud-prevention purposes.
• Support communications: if you contacted support, the related tickets and messages held by our support tool are retained for our records and are not removed by account deletion; you can request their deletion by emailing groundskeeper@bbquill.com.
• Legal holds: we may retain limited information where required to comply with a legal obligation or to resolve a dispute.

For step-by-step deletion instructions, see our account & data deletion page.

14. International Data Transfers

We are based in the United States, and our service providers may process and store your information in the United States and in other countries where they operate. These countries may have data-protection laws that differ from those in your jurisdiction. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as standard contractual clauses) for transfers of personal information out of your region.

15. Children's Privacy

The Service is intended for adults and you must be at least 18 years old to create an account. The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, including children under 13 as defined by the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you believe a minor has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will update the effective date and last-updated date above. If you have an account, material changes will be communicated by requiring re-acceptance upon your next login.

17. Complaints

If you have a complaint about how we use your personal information, please contact us first at groundskeeper@bbquill.com so we can try to resolve the issue. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection regulator (for example, the UK Information Commissioner's Office). California residents may contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210 or (916) 445-1254.

18. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, contact us at: groundskeeper@bbquill.com.