Privacy Policy
Effective 23 October 2026
Kimchi is a training, knowledge and team-communication platform for hospitality teams, made by Kimchi BV (“Kimchi”, “we”, “us”). This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use the Kimchi web app (app.usekimchi.com), the Kimchi mobile app for iOS and Android, and this website; why we collect it; who we share it with; and what your rights are.
The short version
- Kimchi is a workplace tool. Your employer (or the business that invited you) sets up the workspace and decides what goes into it. For that data your employer is the “controller” under the GDPR and we process it on their behalf.
- We don't sell your data and we don't use it for advertising. There are no third-party analytics or advertising trackers in the Kimchi apps.
- AI features send content to AI model providers. When you use the assistant or an AI-generated feature, the relevant text, files, photos or videos are sent through OpenRouter's European service to AI models running in European data centres, to produce the result. The providers process it under zero-data-retention terms, which rule out storing your content or using it to train models.
- Google data is used only for the features it was connected for. If your employer connects Google Drive or Google Business Profile, we only read what those features need, never change anything in Google, and follow Google's Limited Use rules — see Google user data.
- Where your data is stored and processed. Our servers, databases and uploaded files are in EU data centres, and the AI features Kimchi runs are processed in Europe; voice dictation uses your phone's own speech recognition (Apple or Google). Some service providers are US companies, including our AI router, several AI model hosts, and our email and backup providers; some of them keep data or metadata in the US. We use recognised safeguards for those transfers.
- You're in control. You can ask for access, correction or deletion at any time — see your rights.
1. Who we are
The company responsible for Kimchi is:
Kimchi BV in oprichting (a Belgian company under formation)
Belgium
Email: privacy@usekimchi.com
2. Who is responsible for your data
There are two situations, and it matters which one applies.
Your employer's workspace. When you use Kimchi as a member of an organisation — for example the restaurant group you work for — that organisation decides which data is entered into Kimchi, who can see it and how long it is kept. Under the GDPR it is the data controller, and we are the data processor acting on its instructions under a data processing agreement. This covers your profile, your trainings, your messages, checklists, shift data and everything else inside the workspace.
Our own processing. We are the data controller for the things we do in our own name: creating accounts and keeping logins secure; keeping the service running, safe and reliable (server logs, error reports); answering support and demo requests; communicating with the businesses that buy Kimchi; and the visitors to this website.
If you have a question about how your employer uses Kimchi — for instance why a certain field was filled in, or who in your team can see your training results — please contact them first. We will help them respond.
3. What data we collect
3.1 Data you or your employer provide
| Category | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Account & profile | First and last name, email address, phone number (if you were invited by SMS), password (stored only as a salted hash — we can never see it), profile photo, interface language, job role and groups, the locations and teams you belong to. Your employer may optionally add a date of birth, home address, gender (“male”, “female” or “prefer not to say”) and a short description of your role. |
| Content you create | SOPs, trainings, recipes, checklists (including photos taken as proof of completion), projects and tasks, comments, quiz answers, files you upload, and any text or images you add to posts. |
| Messages | Direct messages, group chats, announcements, posts, polls and your votes, reactions, and photo or video attachments. Messages are encrypted in transit and stored on our own servers in Germany, but are not end-to-end encrypted (see who in your workspace can see what). |
| Training records | Which trainings and onboardings were assigned to you, your progress, completion dates and quiz scores. |
| Notes by managers | Your employer can record an evaluation note about an employee. This is your employer's data; we store it for them. |
| AI conversations | The questions you ask Kimchi, any files, photos or dictated text you attach, and the answers (see AI features). |
| Demo bookings | If you book a demo through this website: your name, email address, anything else you enter in the booking form, and the time you pick. Scheduling runs on Cal.com (see cookies). |
| Blog updates | If you sign up for blog updates on this website: your email address, the page you signed up on, and when. |
| Support | Whatever you send us when you ask for help, including screenshots. |
3.2 Data generated when you use Kimchi
| Category | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Technical data | IP address, browser type, operating system, device model, app version and the time of each request, kept in server logs for security and troubleshooting. |
| Activity data | When you last opened Kimchi, which trainings you completed, when you read a message (read receipts) or viewed a post. |
| Notifications | A push-notification token for your device, the device model name (e.g. “iPhone 15 (ios)”) and a record of the notifications sent to you. |
| Error reports | If the app crashes or hits an error, a report (stack trace, device and OS, app version, a pseudonymous user ID) is sent to our own error-monitoring server — not to a third party. It is configured not to include your name or email. |
| AI usage records | For each AI request we record the model used, token counts and cost, linked to your user and organisation ID, so we can monitor quality and costs. |
3.3 Data from integrations your employer connects (optional)
Your employer decides whether to connect any of these. If they do, we receive:
| Integration | Data we receive | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Strobbo (staff planning) | Employee name, email, mobile number, role, employment statute, language, and shift schedules (date, start/end, location, remarks). | Creating your account and invitation, and showing the right checklists and reminders to the people who are on shift. |
| Google Drive | The files in the folders your employer connects, read-only (see Google user data). | Using those documents as knowledge sources for SOPs, trainings and the AI assistant. |
| Google Business Profile / online reviews | Public Google reviews of your employer's locations — reviewer name, text, rating and date — collected via Google and a review-collection service (see Google user data). | Spotting recurring issues and suggesting trainings or SOP updates. |
3.4 Device permissions (mobile app)
The Kimchi app asks for these permissions, each only when you first use the related feature:
- Camera and photo library — to take or attach photos and videos to messages, checklists and your profile.
- Microphone and speech recognition — to dictate questions to the AI assistant.
- Notifications — to send you push notifications.
You can decline or revoke any of them in your device settings; the rest of the app keeps working. The app does not ask for your location, contacts or calendar.
4. Google user data
An admin of your employer's workspace can connect two Google services to Kimchi: Google Drive and Google Business Profile. Nothing is connected until an admin signs in with Google and approves the access. This section explains what we do with the data we receive from Google that way (“Google user data”).
4.1 What we access, and why
| Service | What we access | What we don't |
|---|---|---|
| Google Drive (read-only) | The email address of the Google account the admin connects, to show which account is linked. The names of the shared drives and folders, so the admin can choose which folders to sync. The files in the folders the admin selects, including their subfolders and the files that shortcuts in them point to: their content, name, file type, place in the folder and when they last changed. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are copied as PDF, Excel and PowerPoint files; other files larger than 100 MB are skipped. To keep the copies up to date, Kimchi reads Drive's list of recent changes and ignores every entry outside the selected folders, except for files and folders it holds a copy of. When one of those moves, Kimchi checks whether it can still be reached from the selected folders, directly or through a shortcut inside them; for that it reads only the location of the folders above it and of the shortcuts pointing to it, never their names or content. | Kimchi never downloads files from folders the admin did not select, and never creates, edits, moves, shares or deletes anything in Google Drive. |
| Google Business Profile | The Business Profile accounts and locations the admin manages, so they can link each listing to a Kimchi location. The reviews of the linked listings: reviewer name, rating, review text and date. | Kimchi never replies to reviews, never edits a listing and never changes anything else in Business Profile. |
We use Drive files as knowledge sources: to make them searchable in Kimchi, to draft SOPs and trainings from them, and to let the AI assistant answer questions from them. We use reviews to spot recurring issues at a location and suggest trainings or SOP updates.
4.2 How we use it
- Only for the features it was connected for, in the workspace that connected it, and to keep those features secure and working.
- Never for advertising, never sold, and never used to build profiles of people or to decide on credit or lending.
- Never to train AI. We do not use Google user data to develop, improve or train generalised AI or machine-learning models, and our AI providers may not use it to train theirs.
- AI processing. To read, summarise and search Drive files and to analyse reviews, their content is sent to the AI models described in AI features, only to produce that result.
4.3 How we store and protect it, and how long we keep it
- Where. Copies of synced Drive files are kept in our file storage; their extracted text, search index and summaries, and the reviews, are kept in our database. Both are in EU data centres.
- Access tokens. The keys Google gives us to reach the connected account are stored encrypted in our database and used only by Kimchi's servers to talk to Google. They are never shown in the app or sent anywhere else.
- Protection. The same measures as all your workspace data — see how we protect your data: encryption in transit, storage on our own servers in Germany, organisation scoping and limited engineer access.
- How long. A Drive copy is kept while the file can be reached from a connected folder, directly or through a shortcut inside one, and is replaced when Kimchi's list of changes reports a new version. A copy moved within the connected folders moves in Kimchi too. When a file is deleted in Drive, or can no longer be reached from the connected folders (it was moved out, or its last shortcut there was deleted or moved out), Kimchi removes its copy at the next sync, or at the first one after that for which Google Drive can confirm it. Removing a folder from the sync removes its files from the workspace, except those a shortcut in another connected folder still reaches, which move there; disconnecting Google Drive removes them all. Whenever a copy is removed, its text, search index, previews and the stored file itself are deleted too; they then only remain in backups, as described in how long we keep your data. Reviews are kept for as long as the workspace exists. Content your team made from these sources, such as an SOP or a training, is the team's own and stays. Everything else follows how long we keep your data.
4.4 Who we share it with
- People in your employer's workspace, according to the permissions its admins set.
- Our sub-processors, only to run these features: the hosting, database and file-storage providers that store it, and the AI routing and model providers that process it (see who we share data with). Each is bound by a contract that limits what it may do with the data.
- Authorities, when the law requires it.
We do not transfer Google user data to anyone else. If Kimchi BV is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, Google user data only moves to the new owner after the organisation that connected it has explicitly agreed.
4.5 Who at Kimchi can read it
Nobody at Kimchi reads your Google user data, except when the workspace has given us explicit permission to do so for a specific support request, when it is necessary for security purposes such as investigating abuse, or when the law requires it.
4.6 How to stop access and have it deleted
- Google Drive. An admin can remove a single folder from the sync, or click Disconnect in the Google Drive panel on the Integrations page of the Kimchi web app. Kimchi then stops syncing and removes the synced files as described above. Disconnecting also deletes the stored access tokens and asks Google to revoke Kimchi's access to the account, unless that Google sign-in may still be in use for Google Business Profile in the same workspace, or for Google Drive in another workspace; revoking would cut those off too.
- Google Business Profile. An admin can click Disconnect next to a listing on the Integrations page. Kimchi then deletes the stored access tokens for that listing, stops fetching its reviews and asks Google to revoke Kimchi's access, unless other listings or Google Drive in the same workspace may still rely on that Google sign-in.
- At Google. The person whose Google account was connected can remove Kimchi's access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Kimchi can then no longer reach that account.
- Deletion. To have Google user data that Kimchi still holds deleted, write to us (see contact). We delete it within 30 days.
4.7 Limited Use
Kimchi's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
5. AI features
Kimchi includes an AI assistant and several AI-generated features: training generation from documents, summaries, translations, checklist-photo evaluation, video transcription, project planning and Opportunities (operational insights). Here is how your data is handled:
- What is sent. When you use an AI feature, the content the feature needs — your question, the SOPs, files or messages it uses as context, and any attached documents, photos or videos — is sent to a large language model to produce the result. If your employer uses Opportunities, a nightly analysis also sends work data to AI models, such as names and roles, shifts and absences, training results, checklist completions and guest reviews, to find recurring operational problems.
- Who processes it. Requests go to OpenRouter, Inc., a US company, through its European service: it processes them only in Europe, and refuses a request rather than send it elsewhere. OpenRouter passes each request to the provider we chose for that model, in its European data centres: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure (US companies, using their EU regions), or Inceptron (Sweden). They process your content only to generate the response, under zero-data-retention terms: they may not store it or use it to train models. OpenRouter keeps account and billing records about Kimchi, which may be stored in the United States.
- Web pages. If your employer enables “Let Kimchi read web pages” (off by default), the assistant can read a public web page that you link in a chat, or that your organisation's SOPs and files link to, and cite it. Kimchi's own servers fetch the page directly from the website; no search service is involved. The assistant does not search the web: live web search was removed while we move it to a European search provider, and we will name that provider here before it returns.
- Dictation. If you dictate a question in the mobile app, the audio is transcribed by your phone's own speech-recognition service (Apple on iOS, Google on Android), which may process it on that company's servers, under its privacy terms. Only the resulting text is sent to Kimchi.
- Stock images. Images suggested for trainings come from Unsplash. Only the search keywords are sent, never your personal data.
- What we keep. Your questions and the AI's answers are stored in your workspace so you can come back to them and your employer can review how the assistant is used.
- A note on accuracy. AI output can be wrong or incomplete. Treat it as a draft to be checked — especially for food-safety matters.
6. Why we use your data, and the legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Providing Kimchi to your employer's workspace — accounts, content, messages, trainings, checklists, notifications, integrations, AI features | We act on your employer's instructions as processor (Art. 28 GDPR). Your employer's own basis is usually its contract with you and its legitimate interest in training and coordinating its team (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f)). |
| Creating and securing your account; preventing abuse; keeping logs and error reports; fixing bugs | Our legitimate interest in running a secure, reliable service (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Sending service emails and SMS — invitations, password-reset codes, reminders, mentions, task updates and digests | Performance of the service (Art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in keeping you informed about your workspace (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Answering your support requests | Our legitimate interest in helping you (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Answering demo requests and talking to prospective customers | Steps you ask us to take before entering a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in selling our service (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Sending you new blog posts and product news, if you signed up for them | Your consent, given when you sign up (Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time by unsubscribing or writing to us. |
| Counting visits to this website (page analytics), if you accept them in the cookie notice | Your consent, given in the cookie notice (Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser; the notice then asks again. |
| Using your camera, microphone, photo library or push notifications | Your consent, given through the device permission (Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it in your device settings at any time. |
| Monitoring AI usage and cost per organisation | Our legitimate interest in operating the AI features reliably and billing correctly (Art. 6(1)(f)). |
| Keeping contract and billing records with business customers | Legal obligation under Belgian commercial and tax law (Art. 6(1)(c)). |
We do not use your data for automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
7. Who we share data with
We never sell personal data. We share it only with:
People in your workspace. Colleagues can see your name, photo and role and what you post or send them; managers and admins can see more — see who in your workspace can see what.
Service providers (sub-processors) that help us run Kimchi. Each is bound by a contract that limits what they may do with the data. They fall into these categories:
- hosting and infrastructure providers that run our servers, databases and this website, in EU data centres;
- storage of uploaded files, photos and videos, in EU data centres;
- the AI routing and model providers described in AI features;
- delivery providers for our emails, SMS messages and push notifications;
- a scheduling service for demo calls booked through this website;
- a service that collects the public reviews of connected locations;
- map-tile and embedded-video services in the web app — your browser talks to those directly, which reveals your IP address to them;
- and the third-party tools your employer chooses to connect (see integrations).
The full, current list of our sub-processors — who they are, what each one does and where it processes data — is part of the data processing agreement we conclude with each business customer, and customers can request it at any time via privacy@usekimchi.com.
Authorities and others when the law requires it, for example to comply with a legal obligation, a court order, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our users or others.
A buyer or successor if Kimchi BV is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. We will tell you before your data becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
8. Where your data is stored and international transfers
Kimchi's servers, database and uploaded files are in EU data centres, and the AI features Kimchi runs are processed in Europe; voice dictation uses your phone's own speech recognition (Apple or Google). Some of our service providers, including our AI router and several AI model hosts, are US companies; some of them store data in the United States or may access it from there. For those transfers we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses with additional safeguards. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
9. Who in your workspace can see what
- Colleagues can see your name, profile photo, role and locations; the messages you send them; your posts, comments and reactions; your votes in polls (polls are not anonymous); and, in group chats, whether you have read a message.
- Managers and admins of your organisation can additionally see your full profile (including any optional fields your employer filled in), your training progress and scores, your checklist submissions, when you were last active, shift data from a connected planner, and any evaluation notes they have written.
- Direct messages can only be opened by the people in the conversation. Admins cannot read your direct messages through Kimchi.
- Our team. A small number of our engineers can access stored data — including messages — when it is strictly necessary for support, security or legal reasons. We do not read your messages for any other purpose.
Messages and files are encrypted on the way to and from Kimchi and stored on our own servers in Germany, but they are not end-to-end encrypted.
10. How long we keep your data
| Data | Retained |
|---|---|
| Your account, profile and workspace content | For as long as your employer's workspace exists and you are a member of it. When your employer removes you, your profile is deleted. Some content you created for the team (for example SOPs, or messages in shared conversations) may remain in the workspace, no longer linked to your name, because the team still needs it. |
| A whole workspace | When a business customer's contract ends, we delete the workspace and all its data within 90 days, unless the customer asks us to delete it sooner or we must keep specific records by law. |
| Server logs and error reports | Up to 90 days. |
| SMS and email delivery records | As long as the related account exists, for troubleshooting and cost reconciliation. |
| Support conversations | Up to 2 years after the request is closed. |
| Blog update sign-ups | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you. |
| Website page analytics | Kept as page-view statistics for as long as the website exists. They contain no IP address and no cookie, and the visitor code changes every day, so a page view cannot be traced back to you. |
| Contract and billing records with business customers | As long as Belgian commercial and tax law requires (generally 7 to 10 years). |
| Backups | Deleted data may persist in our backups for up to 30 days before it is overwritten. The backups are kept in the EU, in the Amsterdam region of our backup provider. |
11. How we protect your data
- All traffic is encrypted with TLS (HTTPS/WSS). Your data is stored on servers we operate ourselves at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany, and our backups are kept in the EU, in the Amsterdam region of Backblaze (a US company).
- Passwords are hashed with Argon2. We never store or see your password in clear text.
- On mobile, your login token is kept in the operating system's secure storage (iOS Keychain / Android Keystore).
- Every record is scoped to an organisation; role-based permissions control who can see and change what.
- Access to production systems is limited to a small number of engineers and protected by strong authentication.
- We don't run third-party analytics or advertising scripts in the apps, so no tracking data leaves Kimchi.
No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach affecting your data, we will notify your employer and, where required, you and the supervisory authority.
12. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you and receive a copy;
- correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- delete your data (“right to be forgotten”);
- restrict how we process your data;
- receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format;
- object to processing based on our legitimate interests;
- withdraw consent at any time (for example a device permission), without affecting processing that happened before;
- complain to a supervisory authority.
How to exercise them. For data inside your employer's workspace, your employer is the controller — please ask your workspace admin, who can update your profile or remove your account directly in Kimchi. For anything else, or if you'd rather come to us, email privacy@usekimchi.com. We'll respond within one month (this may be extended by two further months for complex requests, and we'll tell you if so). We may ask you to verify your identity first.
Deleting your account. Ask your workspace admin to remove you, or email us at privacy@usekimchi.com from the address linked to your account. We delete your account and personal data within 30 days, except where your employer is legally required to keep specific records.
Supervisory authority. Our supervisory authority is the Belgian Data Protection Authority: Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit / Autorité de protection des données, Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, Belgium — www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be. You may also complain to the data protection authority in the EU country where you live or work.
13. Cookies and local storage
This website. These pages are served as static files and set one cookie only: kimchi_lang, a strictly necessary cookie that remembers the language you picked, so the site opens in it on your next visit. It holds only a language code (for example “fr”) and is never used for tracking. The cookie notice you may have answered stores your choice in your browser's local storage, on your device only. If you accept, the site also loads our page analytics: Plausible, open-source software that we run on our own servers in the EU, so nothing is sent to a third party. Plausible sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. For each page you view it records the page's address, the site that sent you there, your browser, operating system and type of device, and your country. Your IP address is used only to work out the country and, together with your browser, a visitor code that changes every day; the address itself is never stored. If you decline, the analytics never load. To change your answer, clear this site's data in your browser and the notice will ask again. One exception you opt into by using it: booking a demo loads the Cal.com scheduling widget, which sets its own cookies under Cal.com's privacy policy. It is not loaded until you open the booking.
Web app (app.usekimchi.com). We only use strictly necessary first-party cookies, which is why you don't see a cookie banner there:
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
sessionid | Keeps you logged in | Session / up to 2 weeks |
csrftoken | Protects forms against cross-site request forgery | 1 year |
kimchi_sidebar_minimized | Remembers whether you collapsed the sidebar | 1 year |
There are no analytics, advertising or social-media cookies. Trainings that embed a YouTube video load that video from YouTube, which may set its own cookies when you play it.
Mobile app. The app stores your login token and your preferences on your device; it does not use cookies or advertising identifiers.
14. Children
Kimchi is a workplace tool intended for people who are old enough to work. It is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has been given a Kimchi account, tell us and we will remove it.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Kimchi evolves. We will post the new version here with a new effective date, and for material changes we will notify you in the app or by email before they take effect.
16. Contact
Questions, requests or concerns about privacy: privacy@usekimchi.com, or by post to Kimchi BV, Belgium.