Acceptable use policy

1. Food and items that may not be sold

• Anything you are not legally allowed to sell where you cook, including alcohol without the required licence.
• Food prepared in conditions you would not be comfortable showing a customer.
• Food containing cannabis, unapproved supplements, medicines or any controlled substance.
• Raw milk, home-canned low-acid preserves, wild mushrooms you cannot identify with certainty, and other high-risk items your local food authority restricts.
• Re-sold shop-bought meals presented as home cooked. Shop-bought drinks and condiments sold as extras are fine and should be described as such.
• Anything that is not food, drink or a food-related extra.

2. Honest listings and photos

• Photos must show the dish you actually cook. AI enhancement may improve lighting, background or framing; it may never add ingredients, change portion size or invent a dish you do not make.
• Descriptions, portion counts, prices and collection or delivery times must be accurate and kept up to date.
• Allergens must be declared honestly. If you are unsure whether an ingredient contains an allergen, say so rather than guessing.
• Do not claim certifications, awards, inspections or dietary guarantees you do not hold.

3. Reviews and ratings

• Only review orders you actually placed and received.
• No reviews written by the cook, their family or friends, and no reviews traded, bought or rewarded with discounts.
• No pressuring a customer to remove or change a review, and no retaliation for an honest one.
• Reviews may describe your experience frankly, but not contain abuse, personal data about another person, or accusations you know to be untrue.

4. Behaviour in chat and in person

• No harassment, threats, sexual advances, discrimination or abusive language, in chat or at the door.
• No contacting someone for anything other than the order, and no using order details to reach them later.
• No sharing another person's address, phone number, photo or message thread outside HomeChefs.
• Cooks: never enter a customer's home. Customers: a cook may decline a delivery that feels unsafe.

5. Accounts and identity

• One person, one account. Give your real name and a working email.
• Do not create a new account to avoid a suspension, a bad rating or an unpaid fee.
• Do not let someone else cook or sell under your kitchen, and do not sell or transfer your account.

6. Payments outside HomeChefs

Orders arranged through HomeChefs must be paid through HomeChefs, or as cash on handover where the kitchen offers it and the platform fee is still settled. Asking a customer to pay by bank transfer, app transfer or cash "to avoid the fee" removes their protection — no handover code, no refund route, no dispute review — and is grounds for immediate suspension.

7. Rewards, leaderboards and badges

• No placing or arranging orders that are not real meals in order to earn points, climb a leaderboard or unlock a badge.
• No self-reviews, family reviews, review swaps or rewards offered in exchange for a review.
• No extra or shared accounts to collect points, follow bonuses or welcome rewards more than once.
• No automated ordering or scripted activity of any kind outside an approved connected app.
• Points, badges and rankings earned this way are removed, and the account or kitchen may be suspended.

8. Technical misuse

• No scraping, bulk downloading, automated ordering or reverse engineering. Connect an approved assistant instead, and only to your own account.
• No attempts to reach data that is not yours, to bypass access controls or to test our systems without written permission.
• No uploading malware, and no using HomeChefs messaging to send spam or links to unrelated services.

If you believe you have found a security problem, email support@home-chefs.app before doing anything else. We will not pursue anyone who reports a genuine issue responsibly and does not access other people's data.

9. How we enforce this

Depending on what happened and whether it has happened before, we may:

• ask you to correct a listing or a message;
• hide a review, a photo or a dish;
• pause payouts while we look into an order;
• suspend a kitchen or an account, temporarily or permanently;
• refund affected customers; or
• report the matter to a food safety authority or the police where the law requires it.

We aim to tell you what happened and why, unless doing so would break the law or make an investigation harder. You can reply to any enforcement decision by email and ask a person to look at it again.

10. Reporting a problem

Use the report button on an order, a listing or a review, or email support@home-chefs.app. Anything involving illness, injury or someone's safety is looked at first.