Privacy Policy for TopCook
Last Updated: 20/02/2026
Welcome to TopCook. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This Privacy Policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website or use our app (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
1. Important Information and Who We Are
Data Controller
TopCook Ltd is the controller and is responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "TopCook", "we", "us", or "our" in this privacy policy).
Contact Details
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:
- Full name of legal entity: TopCook Ltd
- Email address: privacy@top-cook.co.uk
2. The Data We Collect About You
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We may collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of personal data about you, depending on whether you are a Buyer, a Seller (Cook):
- Identity Data: First name, last name, username, title, date of birth, and profile picture. For Sellers, this may also include government-issued ID for identity verification.
- Contact Data: Billing address, delivery address, email address, and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data: Bank account details (for Seller payouts) and payment card details (for Buyers). Note: Payment transactions are processed securely by our third-party payment processors (e.g., Stripe/PayPal), and we do not store full credit card numbers.
- Transaction Data: Details about payments to and from you, and other details of meals and services you have purchased or sold through TopCook.
- Profile & Food Data: Your username and password, purchase or sales history, your interests, preferences, feedback, and reviews.
- Health & Dietary Data (Special Category Data): Information you voluntarily provide regarding food allergies, intolerances, or specific dietary requirements.
- Technical Data: Internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, and operating system/platform.
- Location Data: Precise GPS location data (with your permission) to show you nearby cooks, calculate delivery distances, and track meal deliveries.
3. How We Collect Your Data
We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including through:
- Direct interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact, and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or otherwise (e.g., creating an account, placing an order, listing a meal).
- Automated technologies or interactions: As you interact with our platform, we will automatically collect Technical and Location Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns using cookies, server logs, and similar technologies.
- Third parties or publicly available sources: We may receive personal data about you from various third parties, such as payment providers, identity verification services, and analytics providers (like Google).
4. How We Use Your Personal Data
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
| Purpose/Activity | Type of Data | Lawful Basis for Processing |
|---|---|---|
| To register you as a new user (Buyer or Seller) | Identity, Contact | Performance of a contract with you |
| To process and deliver your order (including managing payments, fees, and sharing delivery details between Buyers and Sellers) | Identity, Contact, Financial, Transaction, Location | Performance of a contract with you |
| To manage health/allergy requirements | Health & Dietary | Explicit Consent |
| To verify Seller identity and food safety compliance | Identity, Compliance, Contact | Necessary for our legitimate interests (platform safety) and legal obligations |
| To manage our relationship with you (notifying you about changes to terms, asking for reviews) | Identity, Contact, Profile | Performance of a contract, Legal obligation, Legitimate interests |
| To administer and protect our business and platform (troubleshooting, data analysis, fraud prevention) | Identity, Contact, Technical | Legitimate interests (running our business, network security) |
| To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, and user experiences | Technical, Usage | Legitimate interests (defining types of customers, keeping our platform updated and relevant) |
5. Disclosures of Your Personal Data
To facilitate our marketplace, we may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
- Other Users: If you are a Buyer, we share your name, delivery address, and phone number with the Seller and/or Delivery Driver to fulfill your order. If you are a Seller, we share your profile and location with potential Buyers.
- Service Providers: Third parties acting as processors who provide IT and system administration services, cloud hosting (e.g., AWS), identity verification, and communication services (e.g., Twilio for SMS updates).
- Payment Processors: Companies that facilitate secure transactions and payouts on our behalf.
- Legal & Regulatory Authorities: Local authorities (for food standard checks), HM Revenue & Customs, regulators, and other authorities based in the UK who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.
6. Data Security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know.
7. Data Retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements.
By law, we have to keep basic information about our customers and transactions (including Contact, Identity, Financial, and Transaction Data) for six years for tax purposes.
8. Your Legal Rights
Under the UK GDPR, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request").
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you.
- Request erasure of your personal data ("right to be forgotten").
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest.
- Request restriction of processing of your personal data.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data (e.g., dietary requirements or direct marketing).
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at privacy@top-cook.co.uk. You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).
9. Third-Party Links
Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements.
10. Changes to the Privacy Policy
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.