Privacy policy

Last updated 16 October 2026

Sprout & About is a private app for families, used to plan meals, keep a record of what a child has eaten and reacted to, and organise the week. This policy explains what we hold, why, and what happens to it.

It is written to be read rather than to protect us. If anything here is unclear, write to info@sprout-and-about.com and we will answer plainly.

Who we are

Sprout & About is run by Sprout and About Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17486104), whose registered office is 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London W1W 5PF. The company is the data controller for everything described here. The way to reach us about anything on this page is info@sprout-and-about.com.

What we hold

Your account. Your name and email address, held by our sign-in provider, Clerk. We use your first name to say who suggested a night or day out, and your email address to identify you and send sign-in codes.

Your household. Everything you enter in the app: your recipes, what is in your kitchen, your shopping list, your calendar, your babysitters’ names and phone numbers, and your settings.

Your child’s record. Their name, date of birth and what they made of each meal.

Your children’s allergies, only if you agree. Which of the fourteen common allergens they have tried, any reaction you record and when, the foods they have tried, and the allergens your household leaves out of every idea. This is health information about a child, and we treat it as the most sensitive thing in the app. We keep it only with your permission (see “Your consent” below), and it is only ever visible to the members of your own household.

Notifications. If you leave them on, we store the token your device needs to receive them, so we can tell the rest of your household you have suggested a night or day out. You can turn them off in the app at any time, and we delete the token when you do. Who delivers them is under “Who else sees it”.

Staying signed in. In the app, your phone keeps a random sign-in key in its own secure storage, and we keep a scrambled copy of it, so the app can sign you back in without your password. It is never shown to anyone. Signing out removes it, and so does changing your password. If you lose a phone, write to info@sprout-and-about.com and we will sign it out.

Why we hold it

Your children’s allergies, reactions and the foods they’ve tried. Your explicit consent (UK GDPR and EU GDPR, article 9(2)(a)). We use them for one thing: to tailor food ideas, so they leave out what a child reacts to and offer first tastes of foods they haven’t had yet. To write each idea, we send what is needed to our AI providers, as “Who else sees it” says.

Everything else you put in the app. To provide the app you signed up for (article 6(1)(b), a contract with you).

The cost record, the usage counts and the copies we keep while testing. Our legitimate interest in keeping the app working, affordable and safe (article 6(1)(f)). Where a testing copy includes your children’s allergies, we hold it under your consent above, and not otherwise.

Your consent

Each grown-up in a household is asked, with a box they tick themselves: when they set up, when they join a household, and again the next time they open the app whenever we change what we ask. We last changed it on 9 October 2026, to say what goes to our AI providers. We keep a record of each answer: who gave it, when, and the wording they saw.

You can say no and still use the app. Allergies, reactions and first tastes are then not kept, and food ideas can’t avoid an allergy we don’t know about.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by turning off Keep allergies and first tastes in Settings, Food. We then delete your children’s allergies, reactions and first tastes straight away, for everyone in your household: from the app, from the earlier versions we keep to recover a household, and from the copies of AI requests we keep while testing. A copy attached to feedback you chose to send us stays with that feedback until testing ends; write to info@sprout-and-about.com and we will delete it sooner. Withdrawing doesn’t affect anything we did with your consent before you withdrew it.

Photographs

There are two kinds, treated very differently, and the difference matters.

Photographs of your kitchen, or of a page in a recipe book. These are sent to be read, and are never stored. They are held only for the length of the one request, are never written to our database, and are never filed under your name. All we keep is a record of what the request cost. The one exception is while we’re testing: a photo you choose to send us with your feedback is kept until testing ends (see “While we’re testing” below).

Photographs you keep with a recipe or a child’s record. These never leave your device at all. They are stored in your phone or browser’s own storage and are not uploaded to us or to anyone else. A consequence worth knowing: they are not backed up by us, so clearing your browser data or losing the device loses them.

What we record about how the app is used

There are no third-party analytics, no advertising pixels, and no tracking scripts of any kind on the website or in the app. Nobody outside this app is watching what you do with it.

We keep two records of our own and, while we are testing, the extra records described under “While we’re testing” below. Nothing else.

What AI features cost. Every time a feature asks a computer to read a photograph or come up with suggestions, we store which account made the request, which feature it came from, when, and what it cost. We use it to cap spending, stop the service being abused, and understand what the app costs to run and which of these features people rely on. It is not used to build a picture of you, and it is not shared.

How often each feature is used. Counts per day with nobody attached: for example, that the calendar was opened 40 times on a Tuesday, or that 6 first tastes were recorded. No account, household, device or content is stored with them. We use them to decide what to improve.

Anything that ties behaviour to a particular person, beyond the cost record above, is something we will ask you for first, and you will be able to say no and carry on using the app exactly as before.

While we’re testing

Until Sprout & About leaves testing, we keep extra records to find and fix bad suggestions.

• For every AI request, a copy of what the app sent, kept for 14 days. We don’t keep what came back. For a food idea this can include what’s in your kitchen, your children’s ages and the allergens you’re avoiding, but never your name or a child’s name. A day or night out is not written by AI, so its copy is empty.
• When you rate a suggestion, the rating, anything you write, and the suggestion as you saw it, which can name your child, kept until testing ends. A thumbs down also keeps the copy of that request for as long.
• A photo of your kitchen or a recipe page, only when you tap Send the photo after a thumbs down, kept until testing ends.
• With every rating or note you send, the kind of device and app version it came from, for example iPhone, iOS 18.1, app 1.0. Nothing that tells your device apart from anyone else’s. It’s kept until testing ends.

Only we can read these records. They’re sent to no one else, and we’ll delete them when testing ends.

Who else sees it

Only where the app cannot work otherwise.

• Clerk handles sign-in and holds your name and email address.
• Neon hosts our database, in the United States.
• Cloudflare serves the app. Where Ask a question is on in Get help, Cloudflare’s own AI answers it from our help articles, with your children’s and your household’s grown-ups’ names taken out of the question first.
• Google and Anthropic, our AI providers in the United States, read the photographs you take and write recipe ideas. Google answers first, and Anthropic answers when Google can’t. Neither provider may use what we send to train its AI.
  For a food idea they receive what is in your kitchen and, for each child it is for, their age in months, their allergies and the allergens they haven’t tried yet. Allergies are only sent if you’ve agreed to us keeping them. Your name, your children’s names and your email address are never sent: each child is called “Child 1” or “Child 2” on the way out, wherever their name appears, in a kitchen item too, and we put the name back when the answer reaches us. A grown-up’s name in a kitchen item, such as “Sam’s coffee”, goes as “a grown-up’s coffee”.
  For a day or night out they receive nothing. Those ideas come from listings and maps, not from AI. The app still takes every name out of what it sends us for one: a child in that day’s Plans or in a rating is “Child 1”, a grown-up is “a grown-up”, and who rated an idea is not sent.
• Apple and Google deliver notifications, if you leave them on: Apple’s push service on an iPhone, and Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android. They receive your device’s token and the words of the notification. In a web browser, your browser’s own push service delivers them.
• Ticketmaster and OpenStreetMap are asked what is on near you when you look for a day or night out. They receive a place and a range of dates, not your identity.
• Tavily searches the web for local things to do when you use Go out or Ideas for the week. It receives your area and the dates you asked about, never your full address or anything about your children.

We do not sell your data, share it for marketing, or hand it to anyone for their own purposes, and we do not show you advertising.

Party guests

If you plan a party in the app, you can add the email addresses of the parents you invite. Those addresses belong to your guests, and we hold them for you: only on that party, only to send your invitation and one reminder when you ask, and never for anything of ours. They are deleted with the party, a week after it. Each email says it was sent at your request and has a link to stop emails from us. When someone uses it, we keep a scrambled form of their address, not the address itself, so we never email it about a party again.

If you put your own photo on a party invitation, your phone resizes it and strips its details, such as where it was taken, before it reaches us; anyone with the party’s link can see it, we use it for nothing else, and it is deleted with the party.

If you add guests from your phone’s contacts, we keep each one’s name and email address on the party’s list, the same as if you had typed them, and nothing else from your contacts. They are deleted with the party, a week after it.

Guests’ answers. A parent who answers on a party’s reply page sends us their child’s first name, their own first name, the child’s age, the child’s allergies and dietary preference, how many grown-ups are coming and anything else they write. Nothing else, no email, phone number or surname. Allergies are health information about another family’s child, so we keep them only with that parent’s consent, which they give by ticking the box, and we keep when they ticked it. The answer is used for one thing: planning the food for that party. The grown-ups in the household planning the party see it in the app. It isn’t sent to our AI providers or anyone else. It is deleted a week after the party. To have it deleted sooner, or to withdraw their consent, the parent can write to info@sprout-and-about.com with the party’s link.

Where it is held

Our database is hosted in the United States, and members of your household can reach it from anywhere. Transfers out of the UK are covered by the standard contractual protections our providers offer.

How long we keep it

For as long as your household exists. Your children’s allergies, reactions and first tastes are kept until you withdraw your consent, or until the household goes, whichever comes first. The record of your answers is kept for as long as the household exists. Photographs of your kitchen and of recipe pages are never kept at all, as described above.

You can delete your account in the app, in Settings, Household, at the bottom. If you are the last grown-up in your household, the household goes with it. The export isn’t in the app yet: write to info@sprout-and-about.com and we will send it within one month, which is what the law requires of us. If you can’t sign in, write to us and we will delete your account by hand within one month.

After a deletion, our database provider’s backups hold a copy for up to 7 days, and the record of what AI requests cost stays with no account or household attached. If other grown-ups stay in your household, your answer about keeping the children’s allergies stays with the household as its record of consent. How to delete your account, and what is kept, is on Delete your account.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you and your household, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to info@sprout-and-about.com and we will do it within one month. You can withdraw your consent to keeping your children’s allergies at any time, as described under “Your consent”.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

The app is used by parents, not by children. We do not knowingly let anyone under 18 create an account. A child’s record is created and controlled by the adults in their household.

Changes

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change is significant.