Privacy Policy

Vanlife Eats is operated by Mark Bonito (“we”, “us”, “our”). Our website is vanlifeeats.com. For any privacy questions, contact us at hello@vanlifeeats.com.

When you use Vanlife Eats, we may collect:

• Account information: name, email address, password (stored as a secure hash — we never see your actual password)
• Profile information: bio, social media handles, van kitchen setup, profile photo (all optional)
• Membership data: membership number, tier (free/premium), join date
• Activity data: saved recipes, cooked recipes, recipe ratings, cooking streaks, meal plans
• Community content: recipes you submit, community posts
• Payment information: processed securely by Stripe — we never see or store your card number, expiry, or CVV
• Event bookings: name, email, phone number for workshop and event bookings
• Technical data: IP address (for rate limiting and security only), browser type, device type

We use your information to:

• Provide and manage your Vanlife Eats account and membership
• Process payments for premium subscriptions and event tickets via Stripe
• Send you emails you've opted into (recipes, newsletters, event announcements)
• Enable community features (recipe sharing, public profiles, leaderboards)
• Track your cooking progress, streaks, and badges
• Manage event and workshop bookings
• Improve our service and fix technical issues
• Prevent abuse, spam, and unauthorised access (rate limiting)

We use the following trusted third-party services to operate Vanlife Eats:

• Stripe — payment processing for subscriptions and event tickets. Stripe's Privacy Policy
• Resend — email delivery for transactional and marketing emails
• Kit (ConvertKit) — email subscriber management
• Sanity — content management (stores recipes, articles, member profiles)
• Vercel — website hosting and image storage
• Anthropic (Claude) — powers our AI sous chef “Basil”
• Google — optional sign-in via Google OAuth, Google Analytics for site traffic understanding

We do not sell your personal data to any third party. Ever.

When you join the Vanlife Eats Cooking Club, you may receive:

• Welcome email with your membership number
• Weekly recipe newsletters
• Event and workshop announcements
• Premium membership updates

Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. You can opt out at any time. Transactional emails (password resets, booking confirmations) will still be sent as needed.

We use the following types of cookies:

• Essential (always on): Session login, theme preference (dark/light mode). These are required for the site to function.
• Analytics (optional): Google Analytics — helps us understand how people use the site (pages visited, time on site). IP addresses are anonymised. You can opt out via the cookie banner.
• Embedded content (optional): YouTube videos may set cookies when played. Amazon affiliate links are used for cookbook promotion (Amazon may track clicks for commission attribution).

On your first visit, a cookie banner lets you accept all, reject non-essential, or choose individually. You can change your preferences at any time by clearing your browser cookies and revisiting the site.

We do not use advertising retargeting, Facebook Pixel, or any cookie that follows you across other websites for ad purposes.

We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. If you delete your account, we remove your personal data within 30 days (some anonymised data may remain for community features like aggregate recipe ratings).

Payment records are retained by Stripe in accordance with their data retention policies and legal requirements.

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the data we hold about you
• Rectification — ask us to correct inaccurate data
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data (“right to be forgotten”)
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format
• Object — opt out of marketing communications
• Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent

To exercise any of these rights, email hello@vanlifeeats.com. We'll respond within 30 days.

Vanlife Eats is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

We take reasonable measures to protect your data, including:

• Passwords stored using bcrypt hashing (irreversible)
• All traffic encrypted via HTTPS/TLS
• Rate limiting on all public endpoints to prevent abuse
• Admin areas protected by authentication and secret keys
• Payment data handled entirely by Stripe (PCI compliant)

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email to registered members. The “last updated” date at the top reflects when changes were last made.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your data:

Email: hello@vanlifeeats.com
Website: vanlifeeats.com