Cook terms

1. Your status

You sell in your own name, as an independent trader. You are not an employee, agent, partner or franchisee of HomeChefs. You decide what to cook, what to charge, when to open and how far to deliver. HomeChefs provides the marketplace and handles payment on your behalf; the sales contract is between you and your customer.

2. Eligibility and verification

• You must be 18 or over and legally able to sell food where you live.
• You must complete identity and bank verification with our payment provider before any payout is released.
• Your kitchen details, address and contact information must be accurate and kept up to date.
• We may ask for evidence of a registration, licence or hygiene training where local law requires it, and may pause a kitchen until it is provided.

3. Food safety and legal duties

You are the food business operator. That means you, not HomeChefs, are responsible for compliance. You must:

• follow the food hygiene and safety law that applies where you cook, including registration with your local authority where required;
• declare all fourteen regulated allergens accurately on every dish, and re-check whenever a recipe, brand or supplier changes;
• keep raw and cooked food separate, cook thoroughly, chill promptly and transport hot food hot and cold food cold;
• not cook for customers while you or anyone in the household has a stomach illness or an infected wound;
• store, label and date your ingredients properly and discard anything past its date;
• tell customers who ask what is in a dish, honestly, and refuse an order you cannot cook safely.

The food safety and allergens page is part of these terms.

4. Honest listings and photos

• Photos must show the dish you actually sell, cooked by you. No stock photography, no other cook's pictures, no images you do not have the right to use.
• Enhancement of lighting, colour and framing is fine. Changing what the food is — adding ingredients, garnishes or portions that will not be on the plate — is not.
• Descriptions, portion sizes, prices and preparation times must be accurate.
• Do not claim certifications, awards, organic status or dietary properties you cannot support.

5. Using the AI helpers

HomeChefs offers AI help for photos and for writing descriptions, allergen notes, menu announcements and review replies. Every suggestion is a draft. You are responsible for what you publish, and you must never let an AI suggestion invent an ingredient, an allergen statement or a dish. Check every allergen line yourself before you publish it.

6. Hours, days and closures

• Set your opening days, collection and delivery times, and order deadlines honestly, and keep them current.
• Block days you cannot cook — holidays, illness, family commitments — rather than cancelling orders after they arrive.
• Use "sold out for today" as soon as your portions are gone. It resets automatically at the start of your next local day.
• Portion counts must reflect what you can genuinely cook in the slot.
• Choose the weekdays each dish is available and set one cut-off time for your menu. Customers can only order for slots that are still open, so keep both accurate — it is what they rely on when pre-ordering days ahead.
• If you close a day or withdraw a dish for which orders are already paid, those orders are cancelled and refunded in full automatically and an apology is sent to the customer in your kitchen's name. You carry the lost sale; do it rarely and only when you genuinely cannot cook.
• All times are your kitchen's local times, including across daylight-saving changes.

7. Confirming orders

HomeChefs sets the confirmation time limit. You choose automatic or manual confirmation in your kitchen settings. With manual confirmation, you must accept before the deadline shown on the order; the deadline cannot extend beyond its collection or delivery slot. A later change to the default time limit does not change a deadline already recorded on an order.

If an order is not confirmed in time, it is cancelled automatically and a full refund or payment release is initiated. HomeChefs does not charge a cancellation penalty, but any actual payment-provider costs remain your responsibility as explained below. Missed confirmations are recorded in your kitchen's quality history and repeated failures can lead to suspension. Automatic confirmation is also a commitment to fulfil the order: cancel afterwards only when you genuinely cannot cook it.

8. Collection, delivery and radius

A customer can switch between collection and delivery only if the kitchen allows it, a same-day slot is available, and all order and kitchen deadlines still permit the change. The app shows any price difference before confirmation. A cash total changes with the order; a lower card price is refunded, and a higher card price requires an additional card payment. A card switch takes effect only after that payment or refund is confirmed. Otherwise the original order stays in place.

• Set a delivery radius you can actually serve while the food is still hot. Distance is calculated from the area you publish.
• Your exact address is only revealed to customers with a confirmed collection order.
• Use a delivery address only to deliver that order. Do not keep it, reuse it or pass it on.
• Any delivery fee and minimum order value you set must be shown before checkout, and no charge may be added at the door.

9. Handover codes and delivery responsibility

You remain responsible for your assigned courier. Record accurate arrival and contact evidence, follow access instructions, and never treat GPS or a code obtained in advance as proof of receipt. Return-to-collection requires the customer's booking agreement, safe transport, actual kitchen receipt, safe storage and an open collection location for the full promised period. Confirm only reasonable unrecoverable costs, account for resale and exceptions, and never collect a new return or redelivery charge without separate agreement.

Enter the customer's code at handover, and only at handover. Never ask for it in advance, never enter a code you were not given in person, and never mark an order handed over that was not. Doing so is fraud, and results in withheld payouts and closure of your kitchen.

10. Service fee and payouts

• HomeChefs charges a service fee of —% of the applicable order value on completed orders. Your share is —%, plus any delivery fee you set. Your share is calculated before the payment provider's banking, card-processing and payout charges. Those charges are deducted separately and are not included in the percentage split.
• The administrator may change the service-fee percentage at any time. The figure shown in the app and on this page is the current figure for new orders. An order already placed keeps the fee recorded when it was created.
• No HomeChefs service fee is charged on cancelled, unconfirmed or fully refunded orders. On a partial refund, the service fee is recalculated on the remaining amount. A provider's banking charges may still apply.
• You bear all actual payment-provider costs attributable to your kitchen: processing payments, payouts, currency conversion, refunds, disputes and fee recovery. These costs are separate from the HomeChefs service fee. A cost already taken from your provider balance is recorded as paid, not charged to you again.
• We reconcile banking costs to provider records. A cost that is not yet confirmed is shown as pending, not zero. Provider credits and any excess amount collected reduce your balance. Your statement identifies the original order or recovery payment where a cost can be allocated to it.
• Recovering cash-order fees by card or a separate online payment can itself incur processing costs, which you also bear. An amount collected towards those costs is reconciled against the actual provider charge, with any difference recorded as a debit or credit. Remaining costs may be offset against future earnings or included in a payment you choose to make; we do not start a chain of automatic charges solely to collect the cost of a previous recovery charge. See Cash orders.
• Payouts are released after handover is confirmed, or after we resolve a dispute in your favour, and are subject to your payment provider's payout schedule.
• You choose when your money leaves your payment account for your bank: as soon as possible, once a balance you set is reached, weekly, or monthly. You can change this at any time and can request a payout on demand. Each bank transfer may carry a charge from the payment provider, so fewer, larger payouts usually cost you less.
• We may hold a payout while an order is disputed, a safety report is open, or a chargeback is pending.
• Your earnings, fees and payouts are shown in the finance section of your dashboard; that record is the reference for what you are owed.

Missed collections are reviewed under our collection and refund policy. Time passing does not establish fault. A verified customer no-show requires timely recorded readiness, kitchen availability and contact evidence, reasonable unrecoverable costs and an opportunity to respond. Eligible undisputed cases may close automatically; unresolved exceptions go to support. A prepaid no-show may be allocated using the existing fee split and banking-cost rules; unpaid cash creates no payment, payout or collection-fee debt. Statutory rights and exceptional circumstances remain protected. No-show orders are not recorded as completed meals.

11. Cash orders

If you accept cash at handover, you take the money directly and the —% service fee on that order is still owed to HomeChefs. Cash orders still require a handover code.

• You can only offer cash while a working card is on file for the service fee. If no card is usable, cash is switched off until you add one.
• The service fee becomes payable when the order completes. We attempt to collect it from your saved card. If collection fails, the outstanding orders, fees and recovery attempts remain visible in your finance section.
• HomeChefs sets a cash allowance, using a default limit or an individual kitchen limit. Outstanding fees, amounts awaiting recovery confirmation and fees committed on unfinished cash orders count towards that allowance. Fees on unfinished orders are not yet payable.
• A new cash order must fit within your remaining allowance. When the allowance is reached, further cash orders are unavailable; card orders remain available if your kitchen is otherwise eligible to accept them. Cash becomes available again when there is sufficient allowance and the other requirements are met.
• Outstanding service fees and confirmed banking-cost adjustments are offset automatically against eligible future earnings. You can also pay the amount due through the secure link in your finance section or fee reminder. The payment carries the correct reference and is allocated to your outstanding balance once confirmed; amounts already awaiting payment confirmation are excluded from the amount requested.
• After you reach the limit with an unpaid balance, we send a statement of outstanding orders and fees and repeat the reminder daily while that balance remains unsettled. Reaching the cash limit does not itself suspend or unpublish your kitchen; our standards and suspension rules below still apply.

12. Tax, registration and insurance

• You are responsible for declaring your income and paying any income tax, VAT and social contributions that apply to you.
• If you are registered to charge sales tax, turn on Tax on sales in your kitchen's money settings and enter your valid registration number. If you are not registered, leave it off. HomeChefs does not add sales tax for you by default.
• Menu and delivery prices are the full customer prices. If you charge sales tax, the applicable tax is included in those prices and shown separately on the order record. You remain responsible for confirming the correct treatment and issuing any invoice the law requires.
• You are responsible for any trade registration or licence your activity requires.
• We provide statements of your sales and fees; they are not tax advice, and we recommend you take your own.
• We strongly recommend appropriate liability insurance covering food sold to the public. Check that your policy covers selling from home.
• Where the law requires it, we may report information about your earnings to tax authorities.

13. Customer data and communication

• Use customer details only to fulfil their order. Do not add anyone to a mailing list without their opt-in through HomeChefs.
• Menu announcements may go only to followers who opted in, through the app's own tools, and must be about your food — not general advertising.
• Keep order chat professional and about the order. Do not ask customers to pay or order outside HomeChefs.
• Follow data protection law for anything you keep yourself; for those purposes you are the controller.
• You may decline future orders from a particular customer from that customer's order page. This applies to your kitchen only, and to new orders only.
• Use it for lawful, reasonable reasons — for example repeated no-shows, abuse of you or your household, or fraud. Unlawful discrimination on a protected ground, and retaliation for a lawful complaint, report or honest review, are not permitted.
• Declining future orders changes nothing about orders already placed: you still fulfil or refund them, and the fees, payouts, reviews and reward rules for those orders are unchanged.
• Any private note you record is visible only to you and to HomeChefs support, which may review or reverse the decision.

14. Reviews

Reviews come only from customers who received an order. You may reply publicly once per review, and you should — a calm reply reads better than a perfect score. You may not offer refunds, discounts or free food in exchange for a review, ask a customer to change one, or write reviews of your own kitchen. Report a review that breaks the rules and we will look at it; we do not remove reviews for being unflattering.

15. Your reward scheme

Running a reward scheme is optional. If you switch one on, it is your scheme: you set the earning rules, the minimum before points can be used, the maximum share of a meal they can cover and whether they expire, and you fund every discount granted. HomeChefs is not a party to it — we keep the ledger and apply the discount at checkout.

• A redeemed discount reduces the food subtotal only. It comes out of your share, and the service fee is calculated on the reduced amount.
• Points you have issued are an obligation of your kitchen towards your customers. You may change or end the scheme for the future, but points already held must be honoured for a reasonable notice period.
• If an order is refunded, points spent on it return to the customer and points earned from it are taken back.
• Do not use rewards to buy reviews, and do not promise anything the scheme cannot deliver. We may switch off a scheme that is misleading or abused.
• Points are not legal tender and carry no cash value. See the customer terms on reward points.

16. Leaderboards and badges

• Rankings and achievement badges are calculated automatically from real completed orders and eligible reviews in an area. They cannot be bought, requested or negotiated.
• Demonstration, unpublished and suspended kitchens are excluded, and self-reviews and hidden reviews are ignored.
• A minimum level of genuine activity is needed before a kitchen qualifies, and a position or badge can change or be lost as activity changes.
• Attempting to inflate a position — fake orders, review swaps, extra accounts — costs you the badge, the position and possibly the kitchen.

17. Standards, suspension and appeal

We may pause or close a kitchen for safety reports, undeclared allergens, repeated cancellations or late confirmations, misleading listings, off-platform payment, unpaid fees or abuse of customers. Where the situation allows, we tell you why first and give you a chance to put it right. Safety cases are paused immediately and reviewed afterwards. You can appeal any decision by replying to the notice.

18. Liability and indemnity

You are liable for the food you sell and its consequences. You agree to cover HomeChefs against claims, fines and costs arising from your food, your listings, your failure to declare an allergen, or your breach of law or of these terms. HomeChefs' liability to you is limited to the service fees you paid us in the previous twelve months, except where liability cannot be limited by law.

19. Ending the relationship

You may unpublish your kitchen or close your account at any time, once you have fulfilled or refunded every open order. We may end this agreement on notice, or immediately for a serious breach or safety risk. Payouts already earned are still paid, fees already owed are still due, and we keep order and payment records for as long as tax law requires.