Terms of Service

You must be at least 13 years old to hold an account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use Tastbudz only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these terms on your behalf.

You may not use Tastbudz if we have previously terminated your account, or if doing so would break a law that applies to you.

You are responsible for what happens under your account, including keeping your password to yourself. Tell us at privacy@tastbudz.com if you believe someone else has access to it.

One person, one account. Creating additional accounts to evade a suspension, inflate a dish's rating, or misrepresent how many people hold an opinion is not permitted.

Some actions require a verified email address. We may ask you to verify before you can rate a dish, upload a photo, or submit a correction.

“Your content” means everything you contribute: ratings and scores, the notes you write, photos you upload, dishes and restaurants you submit, corrections you propose, and the lists you make.

You keep ownership of your content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example, to resize a photo or generate a thumbnail), publish and display it in connection with operating and promoting Tastbudz. That licence lasts as long as your content is on the service, and continues for content that has been shared or aggregated in ways that cannot practically be undone.

You confirm that you own your content or have the right to post it, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights. Do not upload a photo you did not take unless you have permission to use it.

Ratings, scores and the aggregate statistics built from them — averages, counts, rankings — form part of the Tastbudz catalogue. Aggregate figures remain available even if an individual rating is later removed, because they describe the dish rather than the person.

Do not use Tastbudz to:

• post ratings that are not based on your own experience of the dish, or that you were paid or incentivised to leave;
• post content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, or that targets a person rather than the food;
• include another person's private information — a full name, phone number, address or workplace — without their consent;
• impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your connection with a restaurant, brand or person;
• scrape, crawl, or bulk-extract the catalogue, or attempt to reconstruct it; access the service by automated means other than a documented API; or circumvent rate limits, authentication, or the moderation queue;
• probe or interfere with the service's security, or upload anything designed to damage it;
• resell or commercially redistribute the catalogue, or use it to build a competing product.

If you run or represent a restaurant, you may correct information about your own business. You may not rate your own dishes, or arrange for others to do so on your behalf.

Contributions may be reviewed before or after they appear. We may edit, reclassify, hide or remove content, decline a submission, limit how often you can contribute, or suspend or terminate an account — with or without notice where the circumstances call for it.

We are not obliged to monitor content, and we do not guarantee that anything objectionable will be found or removed promptly. If you see something that breaks these rules, write to privacy@tastbudz.com.

Much of the restaurant and menu information on Tastbudz is assembled automatically from public sources and from what other users submit. It may be out of date, incomplete, or simply wrong: prices change, dishes are discontinued, restaurants close, and automated classification makes mistakes.

Do not rely on Tastbudz for allergy, dietary, religious or medical decisions. Dietary labels such as “vegan”, “gluten free”, “halal” or “kosher” are derived from menu text and user input, not verified with the restaurant. Always confirm directly with the restaurant before eating something that matters to your health or beliefs.

Tastbudz links to restaurant websites and third-party ordering services. We do not operate those services, take orders, handle payments, or deliver food. Anything you buy through a link is a transaction between you and that provider, governed by their terms, and we are not responsible for it.

The Tastbudz name, logo, design, software, and the structure and organisation of the catalogue — including the food taxonomy and the way dishes are classified and related — belong to Tastbudz LLC. These terms do not grant you a licence to use them beyond using the service as intended.

You may stop using Tastbudz at any time. To close your account, write to privacy@tastbudz.com. What happens to your data is described in our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these terms, if your use exposes us or other users to legal or security risk, or if we discontinue the service. Sections 3, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 14 survive termination.

Tastbudz is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any information on it is accurate, complete or current. Opinions expressed in ratings and notes are those of the people who wrote them, not ours.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Tastbudz LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, arising out of or relating to your use of Tastbudz — whether or not we were advised such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred US dollars (US$100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Tastbudz LLC and its officers, employees and agents from any claim, demand, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your content, your use of the service, or your breach of these terms.

We may update these terms. If a change is material, we will give reasonable notice — by email or a notice in the product — before it takes effect. Continuing to use Tastbudz after that means you accept the updated terms. The date at the top of this page shows the last substantive revision.

Tastbudz is offered from the United States and is intended for use there. Our restaurant and menu coverage is United States only and we do not market the service elsewhere. You are welcome to read the site from anywhere, but we make it available on the understanding that it is not directed at any other country, and you are responsible for complying with your own local law if you use it.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and Tastbudz LLC agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in California for any dispute that is not subject to small-claims jurisdiction.

Before filing anything, please write to us at privacy@tastbudz.com. Most disputes can be resolved that way.

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about Tastbudz. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

Tastbudz LLC — privacy@tastbudz.com