Terms of use.

Food Chapters is a small independent app. Use it to write your own food story, not to harvest someone else's. These terms cover the marketing site you're on now and the Food Chapters mobile app (currently in waitlist). By joining the waitlist, using the site, or using the app once it opens, you agree to them.

Who we are

Food Chapters is operated by Jordon de Hoog, 35 Chateau Crt, London, ON, Canada. When we say "we" or "us" here, that's who we mean. "You" is the person using the site or the app.

Your account

You need to be at least sixteen years old to use Food Chapters. You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your sign-in credentials to yourself. Tell us if you think someone else is using it.

Your content

Your private chapters (photos, notes, and anything you write for your own kitchen) belong to you. They stay on your device. We don't claim rights over them, don't read them, and don't republish them. If you turn on cloud sync (a future, premium feature), the same rule applies: it's yours, stored for you, only visible to you.

Public recipes

You can choose to make a recipe public. When you do, you grant Food Chapters a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host and display that recipe within the app and on the site, and you allow other Food Chapters readers to save a copy of it into their own books. That licence lasts as long as the recipe is public; if you unpublish or delete it, we stop showing it to new readers. Any copies others already saved remain in their private books.

Imported recipes and your warranty to us

When you save a recipe from a website, video, social post, or book, you are making a copy for your own cooking. We preserve the source URL and parse the recipe into structured ingredients and steps; the descriptive prose is rewritten in our own words so that the copy in your library is not a verbatim copy of the original. You may later choose to share that imported recipe publicly; the original source attribution stays attached.

When you submit a URL, photo, or other source to Food Chapters, you represent and warrant that you have the right to do so under copyright, contract, and any platform terms that apply to the source. You agree not to submit content that you know infringes someone else's rights, and you'll indemnify us against claims arising from a submission you weren't entitled to make.

If you're a copyright holder and you believe content in Food Chapters infringes your rights, please use our DMCA process: submit a notice at /dmca or email dmca@foodchapters.co with the information that §512(c)(3) requires. We act on valid notices.

Designated copyright agent

Notices of claimed copyright infringement should be sent to our designated agent:

Jordon de Hoog
Food Chapters · DMCA Agent
35 Chateau Crt
London, ON N6E 1A1, Canada
Email: dmca@foodchapters.co
Online form: /dmca

Repeat infringers

We terminate the accounts of users who, in our judgment, are repeat infringers. A user becomes a repeat infringer when their submissions trigger multiple valid DMCA takedown notices over time, or when they continue to submit content after a previous infringing submission has been removed at a rights holder's request.

Subscriptions

Food Chapters has a free tier and a premium tier. Premium unlocks cloud sync, social-media and video recipe importing, and other features we'll list in the app. Pricing will appear in-app at launch. All billing is handled by the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store through RevenueCat; we never see your card details. New subscribers get a seven-day trial. Cancellations and refunds go through the store you paid through, under that store's policy. We don't process refunds directly.

How the app parses recipes

The app uses AI (Google Gemini) to read a recipe from a link or a video and turn it into structured text. AI gets things wrong. Check the parsed ingredients, steps, and measurements before you cook, especially if something matters for safety. We don't guarantee the accuracy of parsed output and we aren't responsible for kitchen mishaps caused by an AI transcription error.

Food safety and allergies

Food Chapters is a journal, not a nutritionist, dietitian, or doctor. Nothing in the app is medical advice. Always confirm allergens, cross-contamination, doneness temperatures, and storage times yourself. If an ingredient or technique would put you or someone you're cooking for at risk, don't rely on a recipe in our app to catch it.

Acceptable use

Don't:

• Scrape the service, automate bulk writes, or run tools that degrade it for others.
• Post abusive, illegal, hateful, or sexually explicit content in public recipes, usernames, or anywhere else we display to other users.
• Impersonate someone else or spam the feed.
• Resell access to your account or share it with people who haven't paid.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or work around security measures beyond what the law expressly permits.
• Try to access other people's private chapters, accounts, or data.

We may remove content that breaks these rules and suspend or close accounts that keep breaking them. For serious abuse we may act without notice.

Ending the relationship

You can close your account any time. Data is deleted per our privacy policy, typically within thirty days. We can suspend or terminate your account if you violate these terms; we'll give notice where it's reasonable to do so, or immediately for serious abuse. If we terminate you, any refund questions go through the app store you paid through. We don't issue refunds directly.

As-is, no warranties

Food Chapters is provided "as is" and "as available." We don't warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose, and we disclaim all implied warranties to the fullest extent the law allows.

Limits of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Food Chapters and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost data, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim and one hundred Canadian dollars. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited under applicable consumer law. If you live somewhere that gives you stronger rights (for example the EU, the UK, or under Canadian consumer protection law), those rights apply.

Governing law and dispute resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.

Informal resolution first

Before filing anything formal, please write to hello@foodchapters.co with a description of the problem and what you'd like us to do. We ask that you give us thirty days to try to resolve it informally before starting a legal proceeding. We'll do the same before we start one with you.

Binding arbitration

If a dispute can't be resolved informally, you and Food Chapters agree to resolve it through final and binding individual arbitration administered under the rules of the ADR Institute of Canada (or, if you live in the United States, the rules of the American Arbitration Association), conducted in English. The arbitration will be held in Ontario, Canada, or by video conference at the arbitrator's discretion. The arbitrator has the same authority a court would to grant individual relief.

Class-action waiver

You and Food Chapters each agree to bring claims only on an individual basis, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate or combine more than one person's claims and may not preside over any form of class proceeding.

Small-claims carve-out and statutory rights

Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court (or the equivalent in your jurisdiction) instead of arbitration, as long as the matter qualifies under that court's rules. If you live somewhere that gives you stronger consumer-protection rights (for example the EU, the UK, or under Canadian consumer-protection law), those rights still apply and nothing in this section limits them.

Changes to these terms

If we change these terms in a way that materially affects your rights, we'll give at least thirty days' notice: by email where we have your address, and with a banner in the app or on the site. Minor clarifications get a new revision date at the top. If you keep using Food Chapters after a change takes effect, that's your agreement to the new version. If you don't agree, close the account before the effective date.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to hello@foodchapters.co. Privacy questions go to privacy@foodchapters.co. Copyright takedowns go to dmca@foodchapters.co.

Short rules, one page, no fine print behind the fine print.