Privacy Policy

Last updated: 13 May 2026

About

makemeacocktail.com (the "Site"), the Make Me a Cocktail mobile applications and our public API (together, the "Service") are operated by Nick Wilkins Limited ("we", "us", "our"). We are committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about how we handle the information you share with us. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with and the rights you have over it. By using the Service you consent to the practices described below.

Information We Collect

Account information. When you create an account we collect your name, email address and a password (or, if you use social sign-in, a unique identifier from the provider). You may optionally provide a date of birth, locale, profession and a short bio. We store the date and time you created your account, the route you registered through (e.g. web, app, Google, Apple) and your most recent login.

Social sign-in. If you choose to sign in with Google or Apple we receive your email address, name and profile picture from the provider, together with an access token and a refresh token so that we can keep your session active. These tokens are stored in our database and are used only to verify your identity with the provider. You can disconnect a social provider at any time from your profile settings, subject to having another way to sign in.

Payment information. Premium memberships purchased on the website are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card details — Stripe sends us a customer ID, the plan you are on and the dates of your current billing period. Premium memberships purchased inside the mobile apps are processed by the Apple App Store or Google Play and reconciled to your account by RevenueCat; we receive the store, currency, amount, purchase date and expiry date of the purchase. We do not receive your store account or card details from either source.

User-generated content. The Service is built around content you choose to create. Depending on how you use it this may include:

• cocktail recipes you submit via the "Add a Recipe" tool — including name, description, ingredients, method, garnish and an optional photo;
• the contents of your virtual bar ("My Bar"), including any bar names, the bottles or ingredients you record and any photos you upload of those bottles;
• tasting notes and reviews you write on cocktails (which may be marked public or kept private);
• ratings, "tried" and "want to try" flags, favourites and custom lists;
• comments you post under recipes, blog posts and other content;
• cocktail menus you build and any text you write inside them.

Bar photo scanning. Our photo-scan feature lets you take a picture of your bottles so that we can suggest matching ingredients to add to your bar. Each photo is uploaded to our storage and sent to an artificial-intelligence service that identifies the bottles in the image. We retain the image, the AI's detections, your decisions about what to add and a session record so that you can review your scan history in your account, and so that we can debug problems, prevent abuse, count scans against your remaining allowance and improve the feature. AI detection is not perfect; you remain in control of what is actually added to your bar.

Community Maker profile. If you choose to become a Community Maker you opt in by accepting the community terms in your profile settings. We then publish a profile page for you at /makers/<your-slug> using a slug derived from your name. Your Maker profile may include your bio, a hero image, a longer "journey" story, your tips, your favourite bars, your top cocktails, links to your social-media accounts, the recipes you have submitted and the public tasting notes you have written. This information is intentionally public and indexable by search engines. You can switch your profile back to private at any time from your profile settings, which removes the public maker page; previously approved recipes and other public contributions remain on the Site under a generic attribution.

Profile and bar images. Avatars, Community Maker hero images, bottle photos and recipe photos are stored on Amazon Web Services (S3) and may be served via a content-delivery network. We generate resized and optimised versions (thumbnails and previews) automatically.

AI search and assistants. When you use the AI cocktail search or any other AI feature we log the request, the response and your IP address. Where you are signed in we link the request to your account so that we can show your history, enforce rate limits, debug issues and investigate misuse. We may also use these searches, in anonymised form, to help suggest popular queries to other users; we do not display anything that identifies you in those suggestions.

Automatic information. Like most websites we automatically collect technical information when you use the Service. This includes your IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device type, language preferences, referring URL, the pages you visit on the Site, and timestamps. We use this information to operate the Service, secure it against abuse and to maintain quality of service.

Analytics. We use Fathom Analytics to understand how visitors use the Site at an aggregate level. Fathom is a privacy-first analytics service: it does not set cross-site cookies, does not collect any personal data and does not build advertising profiles. Fathom anonymises IP addresses and stores data on EU-hosted servers.

Performance monitoring. To keep the Site fast and reliable we collect anonymous performance metrics from visitors' browsers using the open-source web-vitals library. Each page view reports a small set of timing measurements — Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, Interaction to Next Paint, First Contentful Paint, and Time to First Byte — together with the page URL, device type (mobile, desktop, or tablet), language preference, browser-reported network connection type, and an anonymous per-session identifier stored only in your browser's session storage (cleared when you close the tab). This data does not identify you personally, sets no cookies, is not shared with any third party, and is used solely to detect and fix slow or broken pages. Aggregated daily summaries are retained indefinitely; raw events are deleted automatically after 30 days.

How We Use Your Information

• To operate the Service — including creating and authenticating your account, sending transactional emails (password resets, verification, receipts), processing your subscription and providing the features you use.
• To moderate content — content you submit may be reviewed manually or by automated systems before being made public, and flagged content may be reviewed by our administrators.
• To improve the Service — including debugging, performance monitoring, and analysing aggregate usage patterns.
• To prevent abuse — for example by enforcing rate limits, detecting suspicious behaviour and investigating fraud.
• To communicate with you — service messages we have to send, and (only if you have opted in) newsletters and promotional emails. You can opt out at any time using the unsubscribe link in any marketing email or from your profile settings.
• To comply with our legal obligations and to enforce our Terms and Conditions.

What We Make Public

Some information is published as part of how the Service works. This includes:

• your display name and avatar wherever you participate publicly (comments, public tasting notes, approved recipes, lists you mark public, menus you share);
• any cocktail recipe you submit, once it has been approved by our moderation team, attributed to your display name and (if you are a Community Maker) linking to your maker profile;
• your Community Maker profile and everything you add to it, while public mode is enabled;
• a unique link to a "My Bar" you choose to share — anyone with that link can see the ingredient list of that bar.

Your email address, payment information, social provider tokens, private tasting notes, draft recipes that have not been approved, and private lists are not published.

Who We Share Information With

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information. We do share certain information with trusted service providers ("sub-processors") who help us run the Service. The main ones are:

• Amazon Web Services — hosting and image storage (S3 / CloudFront).
• Stripe — payment processing for web subscriptions.
• Apple App Store / Google Play / RevenueCat — payment processing and entitlement reconciliation for mobile subscriptions.
• Google and Apple — only if you choose to sign in with one of them.
• Algolia — powering the search on the Site (we do not push user profile data to Algolia; only cocktail and ingredient content is indexed).
• Fathom Analytics — privacy-first aggregate analytics.
• Email / transactional providers — to deliver account emails and newsletters you have signed up for.
• AI providers — to power the photo-scan, AI search and AI assistant features. Submitted prompts, images and the AI's responses are sent to these providers and are handled in accordance with the provider's own terms and privacy policy. We do not deliberately upload your content for the purpose of training third-party models, but we cannot guarantee how a given provider uses data submitted to its API.

We will also disclose information without notice if required to do so by law, to comply with legal process, to protect and defend our rights or property, or in good-faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public.

International Transfers

The Service is operated from the United Kingdom but some of the sub-processors listed above (notably AWS, Stripe and our AI providers) operate globally. When your data is transferred outside the UK or EEA we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the data importer's adequacy certification.

Cookies and Local Storage

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies, mostly for things you would not want the Site to forget between page loads:

• a session cookie to keep you logged in as you navigate the Site;
• a CSRF cookie to protect form submissions;
• browser localStorage entries for preferences such as light/dark mode and the language you have chosen;
• a per-session identifier in session storage used by our performance monitoring.

We do not use third-party advertising cookies. You can block or delete cookies at any time using your browser's settings; some features of the Site will not work without the session cookie.

Embedded Content

Our website may include embedded content (for example, videos from YouTube). When you play these videos the third party may set cookies and track your activity. We try to load embeds in a privacy-friendly mode where the provider supports it.

Widget Data Collection

We offer a cocktail recipe widget that can be embedded on other websites. When the widget loads on a third-party site we record the page URL on which the widget is embedded and aggregate usage statistics. We do this to monitor and improve the widget, to make sure it is being used as intended and to detect abuse. We do not link this data to any identified user. If you embed the widget on your own website it is your responsibility to inform your visitors about the widget and to ensure your use of it complies with the laws that apply to you.

Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, alteration or destruction. Passwords are stored using industry-standard one-way hashing. Card details and store receipts are handled by Stripe, RevenueCat and the relevant app store and are never stored on our servers. Connections to the Site are protected by TLS.

Data Retention

We keep personal information for as long as your account is open, plus as long as we need it to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements. If you delete your account we delete or anonymise the personal information associated with it. Public contributions — for example, approved recipes and public comments — may remain on the Site under a generic attribution after your account is deleted, because other users have relied on them. You can ask us to remove a specific contribution at any time and we will consider the request reasonably.

Children

The Service is intended for adults of legal drinking age in their jurisdiction. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we can remove it.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live you may have rights over the personal information we hold about you, including the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to certain processing, and to receive a copy of your data in a portable format. You can:

• view, change or remove most of your personal information directly from your profile and account settings;
• download a structured copy of the data we hold on you from your account dashboard;
• delete your account from your account settings, which will delete or anonymise the personal information associated with it;
• email [email protected] to request access, correction or deletion, or to raise any other privacy concern.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or your local data protection regulator if you believe we have not handled your data correctly.

Changes to this Policy

We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in the Service or in the law. We will post any changes on this page and update the "Last updated" date at the top. If the changes are material we will also notify registered users by email or by an in-app notice before they take effect.

Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or about how we handle your information, please contact us at [email protected].