Privacy Policy
Last updated 29 August 2026 · Churate Limited, New Zealand
The short version. ChurAte works without an account. It has no advertising and no trackers from any other company. Photos you take of recipes are read on your phone and never uploaded. The app sends us small anonymous usage counts (which stores and recipes are popular), and you can turn that off. If you make an account we hold your email address, and nothing else about you.
ChurAte is made by Churate Limited (NZBN 9429053285522), a New Zealand company ("we", "us"). This policy covers the ChurAte app and churate.com.
What we collect
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Only if you create an account | To sign you in and to keep any paid features attached to you if you change phone |
| Your meal plan, pantry, shopping list and saved recipes | Only if you turn on household sync | So the people in your household see the same list |
| Anonymous usage events | Unless you turn them off (Account → Share anonymous usage stats) | To see which stores, recipes and products are popular, so we can improve the app and give partner stores honest aggregate numbers |
That is the complete list. There is nothing else.
What we do not collect
- No advertising and no ad networks. The app contains no advertising SDK.
- No third-party analytics or trackers. No outside company measures you through ChurAte. The app's own anonymous usage counts are described in the next section, and they are ours alone.
- No location. The app never asks for your location. Supermarket addresses are stored as ordinary data about shops, not about you.
- No contacts, no device identifiers, no advertising ID.
- No selling of personal information. We share it only with the service providers that store it for us, described below.
That describes the app today. If any of it changes, we will update this policy first and tell you in the app before the change takes effect. Two things are constant either way: we will never sell information that identifies you, and any statistics we ever produce from how the app is used will be aggregated and de-identified, so they are about shopping in New Zealand, not about you.
Anonymous usage statistics
The app sends us small usage events: a store was added to someone's picker, a recipe was planned or favourited, a product was marked as shopped. Each event carries a random install code generated on your phone. That code is never linked to your email, your account or anything that identifies you, and events never contain text you typed.
We use these counts in aggregate: to see what is useful or confusing so the app improves, and to give partner stores honest totals like "40 shoppers added your store this month". Partners see totals only, never individual rows. You can turn the stream off any time in Account → Share anonymous usage stats; the app works identically either way.
Photos stay on your phone
ChurAte can read a recipe from a photograph of a cookbook page. The text recognition runs entirely on your device using the operating system's own facilities: Google ML Kit on Android, the Vision framework on iOS. The photograph is never uploaded, and neither is the text read from it. Only the ingredient lines you confirm are saved, and they are saved on your phone.
The app asks for camera or photo-library permission at the moment you use that feature. Declining it leaves the rest of the app fully working.
Feedback and crash reports
The app's feedback and crash-report buttons open an email in your own mail app, pre-filled with the app version, your device model and (for a crash) the technical details of the error. Nothing is sent unless you press send. If you do, we receive that email, including your email address, and we use it only to investigate the problem and reply to you.
Household sync, and what a sync code means
Household sync is optional and off until you turn it on. When you create a household, the app generates a random code and stores your plan, pantry, shopping list and saved recipes in a row identified by that code.
The code is the key. Anyone who has it can read and change that household's data, in the same way anyone holding your house key can open your door. Share it only with the people you live with. If a code gets out, create a new household and stop using the old code.
Household data is not linked to your email address or to any account. Sync works whether you are signed in or not.
Where your data is held
Accounts and household data are stored with Supabase, our database provider, on servers in Sydney, Australia. Passwords are handled by Supabase's authentication service and are stored hashed; we never see them.
This means your account email and, if you use household sync, your meal plan and shopping list are held outside New Zealand. Under the Privacy Act 2020 we remain responsible for that information wherever it is stored.
Everything else, including your meal plan, pantry, recipes, photos and the supermarket price catalog, is stored on your phone.
Deleting your data
You can delete your account from inside the app at any time: Profile → Account → Delete my account. This permanently removes your sign-in and any subscription record. It cannot be undone.
Because a household belongs to everyone holding its code and not to any one account, deleting your account does not delete a shared household by default, because that would destroy other people's shopping lists. The delete screen offers it as a separate, clearly labelled choice.
To remove data held on your phone, uninstall the app or use your device's "clear app data" option.
Children
ChurAte is a grocery shopping tool intended for general audiences. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Your rights
Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and complain if you think we have got it wrong. Since the only personal information we hold is an email address on an optional account, in practice this means: ask us, or delete the account yourself in the app.
Store prices and commercial relationships
Supermarket prices shown in the app are collected from publicly available websites and are indicative only. They may be out of date or wrong. Always check the price in store. Store names appear to say where a price came from and remain the property of their owners.
Where a store or a recipe has a commercial relationship with us, it is labelled in the app: partner stores supply their own prices under an agreement, and sponsored recipes are paid placements. A store that is not labelled has no relationship with us. None of this involves your personal information: no store or sponsor receives any data about you from us.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will update the date at the top and describe the change here.
Contact
Questions about privacy, or a request about your information: info@churate.com.