BestChef Terms of Service

Effective date: 6 September 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the BestChef mobile application and related services (together, "BestChef"), operated by Trey Shuldberg, an individual developer based in the United States ("we", "us"). By creating a profile, casting a vote, submitting a recipe, or otherwise using BestChef, you agree to these Terms.

1. What BestChef is

BestChef is a competitive recipe platform: users submit recipes for dishes, other users cook them and vote with photo proof, and leaderboards rank the best recipe for every dish. BestChef also includes a private kitchen area (saved recipes, grocery lists, pantry) that stays on your device.

2. Eligibility and age

You must meet the minimum age for your country to use BestChef: 16 in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, and Romania; 15 in France, Czechia, and Greece; 14 in Italy, Spain, Austria, Bulgaria, and Cyprus; and 13 everywhere else. The app asks you to confirm this during onboarding and refuses use if you do not meet the threshold. If we learn an account belongs to someone under the applicable age, we will remove it.

3. Your account

BestChef starts you with an anonymous account and lets you optionally link an email address. You are responsible for activity on your account. We do not require a password for anonymous accounts; linking an email is the only way to recover access after losing a device. You may delete your account at any time from Settings (see the Data Deletion policy).

4. Your content

You keep ownership of the recipes, photos, videos, comments, and other content you submit. By submitting content to public areas of BestChef, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute that content for the purpose of operating and promoting BestChef. This license ends when your content or account is deleted, except where content has been shared by others or where we must retain it to comply with law.

You promise that content you submit is yours to share and does not infringe anyone else's rights. Recipes as such (lists of ingredients and steps) may be freely re-created by others; that is the point of a recipe competition.

5. Community rules and enforcement

BestChef has zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive behavior. The Community Guidelines (bestchef.app/guidelines) are part of these Terms. We may remove content, restrict features, or suspend or terminate accounts that break them. Automated systems screen uploads (including vote-proof photos), moderators review flagged content and vote proofs, and durable rate limits apply to voting, commenting, reporting, following, and uploads.

When we remove, hide, or reject your content, we send you an in-app notification with a statement of reasons: what happened, the reason category, and how to appeal. You can contest the decision through the in-app appeal flow (My Reports) or by emailing support@bestchef.app. We handle appeals within a reasonable time, a human reviews them, and we notify you of the outcome.

6. Voting integrity

Votes are weighted by cook-proof: a photo showing you actually cooked the recipe. Staged, reused, or shared proof photos, vote rings, engagement farming, and deletion/recast churn violate these Terms. Each proof photo may back only one vote per user, ever. We may remove votes, void proofs, and suspend accounts involved in vote manipulation.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to: break the law; upload content that is illegal, sexually explicit, hateful, harassing, or endangers minors; impersonate others; scrape or bulk-download content; probe, bypass, or overload our systems (including rate limits and moderation); reverse engineer the service except where law permits; or use BestChef to spam or advertise without our written consent.

8. Fees

BestChef is currently free. The creator program is non-paid. If paid features launch, they will be announced in-app with their own terms before you are charged anything.

9. Termination

You can stop using BestChef and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, create risk for other users, or as required by law. Where proportionate, we will warn you first; for serious violations (illegal content, child safety, vote fraud at scale) we act immediately.

10. Disclaimers

BestChef is provided "as is". Recipes are user-generated: we do not verify nutritional claims, allergen information, or food-safety practices. Cook at your own judgment. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties and our total liability for any claim relating to BestChef is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the last 12 months or USD 50. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including under mandatory consumer-protection rules of your country of residence.

11. Changes

We may update these Terms. For material changes we will notify you in-app at least 14 days before they take effect. Continuing to use BestChef after that means you accept the updated Terms.

12. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of [GOVERNING LAW / VENUE TO BE COMPLETED BY OPERATOR BEFORE PUBLICATION - F2, see operator.md], without prejudice to mandatory consumer protections of your country of residence. EU users may also use the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform.

13. Contact

Questions, privacy requests and legal notices: trey@receeps.com. Support inside the app: Settings, Support. Postal address available on request by email. (Operator: Trey Shuldberg, individual developer, United States.) support@bestchef.app