Privacy Policy

Laughing Dog (a trademark of Fold Hill Foods Ltd) is committed to safeguarding, protecting and respecting your privacy and in compliance with The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This privacy policy explains how we use any personal information we collect about you when you use this website or that you provide to Laughing Dog voluntarily when you contact us directly via email, telephone or via our social media.

For the purpose of the data protection laws the data controller is Fold Hill Foods Limited (registered in England and Wales with company number 01426126) with its registered office at Fold Hill Foods Ltd, Old Leake, Boston, Lincs, PE22 9RJ. Tel: 0800 0988057 Email: bakery@laughingdogfood.com

At Laughing Dog we are dedicated to safeguarding and preserving your privacy when visiting our site or communicating electronically with us. We do update this Privacy Policy from time to time so please do return and review this document regularly. This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction with our Terms and Conditions and Cookie Policy.

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide personal information to our site. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.

1. What information do we collect about you, what is the lawful basis for processing it and how will we use it?

Information you provide to us:

Placing an order with Laughing Dog: 

We collect information about you when you register with us to create an account and/or place an order for products online (we will collect your name, address, telephone number, email and payment card details). Collecting and processing this information allows us to complete your order and therefore our legal obligation (and contract) with you.

Processing your order: when you place an order with us via our website or over the telephone, your order details and personal details are securely uploaded to our website. This enables us to process and fulfill your order. While your personal details (name, address, email, telephone) are securely stored so that you can easily re-order (if you choose to register with us), we don’t store your credit card details. We use Stripe to take your payment – your personal details are processed by Stripe simply to enable us to complete the transaction with you (see below for details). Your name, address, telephone and delivery instructions will be transferred to a third party courier company: DPD so that we can deliver your order to you and update you with estimated delivery slots as part of our service to you (see below for details). If you do not want DPD to use your telephone number, please let us know when you place your order.

If you choose to register with Laughing Dog when purchasing via our website, your personal details will be held in a secure database so that when you log in to our website you can see your previous order details. Card details are not stored. You can choose to delete your account at any time. If you choose to shop as a ‘guest’ your personal details will not be stored. If you choose to register with us online we will send you a welcome email to verify your account when you register with our site and other emails in relation to account management or system maintenance.

Once you have placed an order with us we send you two emails to confirm your order status – the first is to confirm that your order has been placed, the second is to confirm that it has been despatched. We send these emails simply to fulfil our legal obligation to send your order out to you in a timely manner. Under this same legal obligation, we may email you to notify you of any changes to our service or problems with your order.

Laughing Dog does not pass on your personal information to any other brands within the Fold Hill Foods Ltd group. However, as explained above do use third parties (detailed below) in order to allow us to process your order and therefore fulfil our contract with you:

In processing your order, we may send your details to, and also use information from credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies. We will only do this in cases where we are authorised by the law (e.g. for the purposes of fraud prevention).

We also work closely with third parties to ensure for the safe and secure processing of your order:

Stripe: as part of the payment process, your personal details will automatically be transferred to Stripe simply so that we can complete our contract between you by taking payment for your order. We do not store your credit card details; only Stripe receives these details.

DPD: as part of the ordering process, your personal details will be automatically transferred to DPD & Ship Theory so that we can send out your product to you. This is necessary so that we can complete our contract with you by delivering your order.

Please note we will not use any financial or credit card information for any purpose other than to discharge our legal / regulatory duties and to process payments made by you for our products and services or due to you by agreement (e.g. refunds).

Subscriptions: We offer a subscription service to registered customers only. Only customers can create a subscription – we cannot create this for you. To set up a subscription we ask for the same information that you would need to supply if you were making a one off order (see ‘placing an order with Laughing Dog’ above). Depending on how long you create your subscription for, this means payment will be taken from you on a regular basis (your card details will be stored by Stripe for a continuous payment). You can cancel or amend your subscription at any time by going into your subscription account. You will receive emails regarding your subscription service only, unless you have consented to receive our newsletter and general marketing emails.

Signing up to our newsletter and bakery emails:

We collect personal information (your name and email address) when you voluntarily sign up to our newsletter and bakery emails. Collection of this data is simply so that we can send you information about our products, services, bakery news and newsletter. If you have opted in to receive our newsletter and bakery emails, we will process your personal details simply to provide you with information about products, offers, news or services that we think might be of interest to you. We will not send you these emails if you have not opted in to receive them. Our newsletter and bakery emails are sent via a cloud service called Mail Chimp. Please click here to read Mail Chimp’s privacy policy. Details of their GDPR compliancy can be read here.

We do not send marketing text messages, social media direct messages or postal mail. If we did this in the future, we would only do so with your explicit consent.

Complaints and reviews:

We also collect personal information when you voluntarily provide feedback via email, social media (for example, if your product was faulty and you wish to raise a complaint or you are requesting a free sample) or telephone. We will only process this information for the purpose of fulfilling our contract with you i.e. to replace a faulty item, to enable our technical team to investigate a problem with the product or to send out a free sample that you have requested. If you are requesting a free sample, we will only use your personal details to check that the sample has arrived. After this time, all information will be removed from our system. If you have contacted us to make a complaint regarding a food product, an investigation is launched by our technical team. By law our technical team have to record the details of the complaint and your name and address as part of their due diligence to appropriate food safety law. This information is stored securely and has to be held by law for 5 years.

We collect information from you when you make a review (name and email address). You can voluntarily submit a review straight to our website. We can delete this at any time if you decide you want to have the review removed. Please contact us directly to do this.

Feefo:

To help us ensure for the best customer service, we give you the option to send a  review via Feefo. Feefo Holdings Ltd is a data processor and is listed with the Information Commissioner’s Office on the Data Protection Public Register. When you make an order from Laughing Dog, we will pass your name and email address to Feefo, who will then contact you separately to ask if you will give your opinion of the service and the products you received. This is done by an independent company so that you, and other customers, know that the feedback you read about Laughing Dog is verified. Feefo will never use your information for any other purpose or share your information with any third-party and you can unsubscribe from the service at any time via the opt-out link on their email. You can read Feefo’s privacy policy here https://en.business.feefo.com/privacy-policy/.

Live Chat:

Laughing Dog provides a Live Chat service for customers who wish to ask questions online. Depending on the nature of your enquiry, you may submit your name, email, telephone or address to us so that we effectively deal with your request. We would never ask for or advise you send card details or passwords. The personal data you submit is used simply to deal with your enquiry. Our Live Chat service is provided by LiveChat. Please click here to read their GDPR compliancy including details of their retention period and how they ensure any personal data submitted to Laughing Dog via Live Chat is securely protected.

Competitions and giveaways:

We collect your name, email and telephone number when you voluntarily participate in competitions. You can enter these via our website, social media pages or via our newsletter. When you enter a competition via the website we will only store your data until the winner(s) have been chosen so we can contact you if you win. Once the competition is over and the winner(s) have been contacted, we destroy all data. All competitions have their own T&Cs which are always detailed with the competition. Our general competition and giveaway T&Cs can be read here.

Contact form via our website, social media, freephone and via email:

We collect your name, email and telephone number when you fill out a contact form on our website as well as information (including sometime details about your pet(s)) that you supply when you contact us by telephone, social media or email to bakery@laughingdogfood.com or kitchen@laughingdogfood.com. We will only use this information to respond to your enquiry. Once this is dealt with, we will delete your details.

Meeting us at a show or event:

If you provide us with personal details at an event or show so that we can send you a sample of our food or for further information we will simply take this information so that we can respond to your request as requested by you. This information will not be stored once your enquiry has been dealt with.

Breeder scheme:

When you join our breeder scheme we store your personal details so that we can send your order out to you and keep you updated with service changes – see above paragraph ‘Placing an order with Laughing Dog’.

Information we collect about you:

Information we collect about you with regard to each of your visits to our site:

  • technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser types and versions, operating system and platform; and
  • information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site; products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

We collect this information so that we can improve and test our website and to help in our efforts to keep it safe and secure.  Please see our Cookie Policy for full details. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Information we collect about you with regards to your orders: 

  • to research and improve our products and services.
  • if you have provided consent we will send you details of products and special offers that we think are of interest to you.
  • to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve.

2. Using your information in accordance with data protection laws

Data protection laws require that we meet certain conditions before we are allowed to use your data in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. We take our responsibilities under data protection laws extremely seriously, including meeting these conditions. To use your personal data, we will rely on the following conditions, depending on the activities we are carrying out:

Compliance with legal obligations: As an entity established under the laws of England and Wales, Laughing Dog (trademark of Fold Hill Foods Ltd) is obliged to comply with UK laws and guidance provided by UK regulatory bodies. In particular, we will need to process your personal information to verify your identity, your source of funds for anti-money laundering and fraud purposes, and to establish whether you have been barred from using our site due to objectionable behaviour. You will not be able to object to processing or ask for the deletion of your personal information insofar as it falls under this category.

Necessary for the entry into / performance of a contract: When you enter into a transaction with us, a contract between you and us will have been entered into. In order for us to fulfil our obligations under that contract (e.g. to allow you to purchase goods from us), we will need to collect and process your personal information. Failure to provide the requisite personal information on sign-up and financial information on entering into the transaction or objecting to this type of processing / exercising your deletion rights will unfortunately mean we cannot provide our goods / services to you.

Consent: We may send you marketing emails in the form of our newsletter and bakery emails about us and our goods, services, news and events where you have consented to sign up to our emails. You can unsubscribe from our newsletter and bakery emails by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of the email; this will also restrict any processing of this nature.

Legitimate interests: To use your personal data for any other purpose described in this Privacy Policy, we will rely on a condition known as “legitimate interests”. It is in our legitimate interests to collect your personal data as it provides us with the information that we need to provide our services to you more effectively. This requires us to carry out a balancing test of our interests in using your personal data (for example, in order to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us), against the interests you have as a citizen and the rights you have under data protection laws (for example, to not have your data sold to third party marketing companies without your knowledge, or not store your personal data in insecure or unstable countries or regions). The outcome of this balancing test will determine whether we can use your personal data in the ways described in this Privacy Policy (except in relation to certain marketing activities, where we will always rely on your explicit consent). We will always act reasonably and give full and proper consideration to your interests in carrying out this balancing test.

 3. Data storage & transfers:

All information that you provide to use are stored on our secure servers – the Laughing Dog website is hosted in the UK by www.nimbushosting.co.uk The servers are based in the UK. In the case of payment information, these details are held with our secure payment provider, Stripe (click here for their privacy policy).

Where you have chosen a password to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Although we will do our absolute utmost to protect your personal data and are continually working to improve our website, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

4. Disclosure of your information

We will not share your personal details with any other groups within Fold Hill Foods Ltd. We will only share your personal information with third party service providers if it is necessary or reasonably required for any of the purposes listed below.

We will only disclose your information to:

  • suppliers for the performance of any contract we enter into with you (DPD and Stripe as detailed above)
  • third party suppliers and service providers to the extent they assist the group with its legal / regulatory obligations e.g. providers of services in respect of anti-money laundering, fraud, verification etc.;
  • Google Analytics to help us in the improvement and optimisation of our site (please see our cookie policy)
  • law enforcement agencies if we consider your behaviour to be unlawful, offensive, inappropriate or objectionable on our site.

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation;
  • in the event that we consider selling or buying any business or assets or merge or enter into a joint venture with another business entity in which case we will disclose your personal data to any prospective sellers or buyers of such business or assets;
  • in the event of an insolvency situation;
  • to protect our rights, our property, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

5. Data portability:

Under the GDPR you have the right to request your personal data that we hold in a commonly used and machine readable form e.g via CSV files. This information will be sent free of charge.

6. Marketing

We would like to send you information about Laughing Dog products, services and bakery news which may be of interest to you. If you have consented to receive marketing, you may opt out at any time at a later date (our bakery news emails and newsletter all have an opt out button in their footer). You have a right at any time to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please email bakery@laughingdogfood.com

7. Access to your information and correction

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please email or write to us at the following address. There is no charge for this service. Information will be provided without delay and at the latest within one month of receipt. If you make the request electronically we will provide this information in a commonly used electronic format.

Under the GDPR you have the right to obtain:

Confirmation that your data is being processed

Access to your personal data – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate. We will respond within one month.

The right to erasure (known as the ‘right to be forgotten’): subject access requests – under the new GDPR regulations which come into force in May 2018, you can request for us to delete any personal data that we hold about you if there is no reason for its continued processing. We will do this within one month and there will be no charge for this.

We can refuse or charge for requests that are manifestly unfounded or excessive. If we refuse a request we will tell you why. You will have the right to complain to the supervisory authority and to a judicial remedy. You must do this without undue delay and at the latest within one month.

We would provide data electronically and in a commonly used format e.g. csv file.

8. Other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for their policies whatsoever as we have no control over them.

9. Safeguarding of your personal data

Laughing Dog complies with processing legislation to ensure that all data is processed in accordance with data protection laws and in a manner that ensures appropriate security of all personal data, including protection against unorthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. We regularly review our processes to ensure that all the appropriate measures are used.

10. Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page as well as communicating to you via email. This privacy policy was updated 01/08/15, 01/11/16, 26/02/18, 02/03/2018 (version 4.0 March 2018), 13/04/2018 (version 5.0 April 2018), 28/11/18 (version 6.0 November 2018), 13/07/2020 (version 7.0 July 2020), 19/07/2024 (version 8.0 July 2024).

11. How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you: by email to bakery@laughingdogfood.com, by post to Laughing Dog, Fold Hill Foods Ltd, Old Leake, Boston, Lincs, PE22 9RJ or via phone on 0800 098 8057.

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