Terms of use

Last updated October 29, 2026.

These are the rules for using Honest Dinner, in plain words. Honest Dinner is run by Patrick Durkin in New York ("we", "us"). By using the app or the website you agree to them. Questions: patrick@honestdinner.com.

What Honest Dinner does

Your store's weekly deals come in on their own, or you snap the paper flyer. Honest Dinner suggests dinners built on what's on sale, writes the recipes for the ones you pick, makes one shopping list, and helps you cook. Prices, savings, nutrition numbers and cooking times are estimates to help you plan, not promises. The price at the register is the real price. We aren't connected with any grocery store, and a store's deals are its own.

Allergies and food safety: please read

Always read labels. The app checks every recipe against the allergies, eating styles and foods you told us about, but it can't see your packages. Ingredients and factories change, and brands differ. Read the label every time, especially for allergies.
We don't certify anything as allergen-free, gluten-free, kosher or halal. Eating styles are filters you choose, checked by ingredient.
It isn't medical advice. If a doctor or care team gave you limits, follow them. Numbers in the app are estimates, and the app counts only the meals it planned, not everything you eat.
We check. You still use a thermometer. Every recipe gives USDA's safe temperature for the food, and color alone doesn't tell you food is safe. If you choose a dish raw or less cooked (in Settings, or by asking for it by name), it comes with the FDA's warning, and that choice is yours. The same goes for home-canned food: the app shows the warning and the steps, and using it is your call.
Your recipes are yours. The recipes and lists we write for your family are yours to keep, print, post and share anywhere, in whole or in part, in our words or your own, with or without our name on them.
You're the cook. Use your own judgment in your kitchen: about freshness, about what your family can eat, and about anything that doesn't look or smell right.
Recipes are written with the help of AI (from Anthropic) and checked by our own rules before you see them. The cooking helper is AI too, and says so. In an emergency, call 911; for a possible poisoning, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222.

Your account

Honest Dinner is for adults planning family meals. You must be 18 or older to make an account or start a plan. Nobody under 13 may use an account. Your family can use the app with you on your account.
Your family lives on the phone that set it up. You can save it to an email or use Sign in with Apple to use it on other phones. Keep sign-in codes to yourself; anyone with a code can open your family. If you lose a phone, use Sign out of other phones in Settings.
Give us honest information about allergies and needs; the app can only check what it knows.

The free days and your plan

The free days. New families get 14 days free, and a card is needed to start them. Your 14 days start when you add a card (on an iPhone, when you start the free days with Apple), and nothing is charged that day. You see your first week's dinners before you add a card; your 14 free days start when the card goes in. We remind you 2 days before the free days end, with the price, by email if we have yours and on Tonight in the app. Cancel before they end and you pay nothing.
The plans. Monthly or yearly, at the price shown before you agree. A plan renews on its own, each month or each year, until you cancel. Before a yearly plan bought on the web renews, we email you about 30 days ahead with the date, the price and how to cancel.
Your price is your price. The price you join at never goes up while you stay, even if the price for new families changes later. If you leave and come back, you join again at the price shown then.
The founding price. Founding families, the first 1,000, pay $8 a month or $80 a year, and keep that price for as long as their plan stays on. A family that joins with the code on one of our founder cards gets the founding price too, whenever it joins. After the first 1,000, new families pay $12 a month or $99 a year. If a plan ends and the family comes back later, the price is the one offered that day.
On an iPhone, plans are monthly at launch; a yearly plan comes to the iPhone app later.
Sales tax may be added to web prices where it applies.
Skip a few weeks (web plans): stop the charges for 1 to 4 weeks from Your plan. Nothing is charged while it's paused, and it picks up again on its own.
Friend links. You can send a friend your link, or share a page of your week, and a friend can join from either. We note which link a family joined through (the privacy policy says what we keep).

Cancelling and refunds

Plans bought on the web cancel in two taps in the app: Your family, then Cancel plan. Nothing more is charged.
— In the first 30 days after your first charge, ask for a full refund (Your family, Cancel plan, then Ask for a full refund, or email us) and you get all of it back.
— After that, a monthly plan keeps working to the end of the month you paid for, and that month isn't refunded.
— A yearly plan cancelled partway through gets the unused months back. The months you've started are charged at the monthly price instead of the yearly rate, and the rest of the year is refunded. For example, a $80 founding year cancelled in its third month: three months at $8, and $56 back. It keeps working to the end of the month you're in.
In the iPhone app, Apple handles payment. Apple bills you, renews the plan until you cancel, and handles refunds under its own rules (reportaproblem.apple.com). Cancel any time in your iPhone's Settings: tap your name, then Subscriptions, at least a day before the next charge.
Deleting the app doesn't cancel a plan. Deleting your family's data ends a web plan; an iPhone plan must be cancelled with Apple.

Flyers, recipe cards and anything else you add stay yours. You let us use them to run Honest Dinner for you: to read them, keep what we need and show it back to you. Prices and items read from a store's flyer are facts, not personal information, and may help other families at the same store. Your own family recipes stay private to your family.
"Share my week" makes a public page anyone with the link can open. It shows the dinners, about what you saved, your store and the first three digits of your ZIP code, never a name.
"OK to show this in our ads (never your name)." If you tick this when you share something, you let us show it in Honest Dinner's own ads and posts, without your name, at no charge. It starts unticked. Untick it, or email us, and we won't use it in any new ad.

Using it fairly

Please don't misuse Honest Dinner: no breaking in or trying to, no copying the app or our recipes in bulk, no automated sign-ups or scraping, no uploading anything unlawful or anyone else's private information, and no using it to harm anyone. We may pause or close an account that does.

Our part

The app, its design and Bowlby are ours, and so are the recipes in our library, except that the recipes and lists we write for your family are yours to keep and share, as "Your recipes are yours" says above. You may use the rest for your family's own cooking. We work hard to keep Honest Dinner running and right, but it may sometimes be unavailable or make mistakes, and we may change or stop features. We'll tell you in the app before any big change to these terms.

Limits on our responsibility

Honest Dinner helps you plan and cook; the cooking and the eating are in your hands. As far as the law allows:

Honest Dinner is provided "as is", without promises beyond the ones on this page.
We aren't responsible for indirect losses, or for what happens from relying on an estimate or a recipe without reading labels and using your own judgment.
Our total responsibility for any claim is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before it.

Some places don't allow these limits, so they may not all apply to you. Nothing here takes away rights the law gives you that can't be taken away.

If you leave, or if we close

You can stop using Honest Dinner and delete your family's data at any time from the app. If Honest Dinner ever closes, we'll tell every family first and offer each one a download of its data, before anything is deleted.

If you got the app from the App Store

These terms are between you and us, not Apple. Apple isn't responsible for the app, its content or its support, and Apple's standard licence for App Store apps also applies. Apple and its subsidiaries may enforce these terms as they relate to the app.

The law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York. If something goes wrong, please email us first; most things are fixed faster that way.

Contact

patrick@honestdinner.com · Honest Dinner, New York