LAST UPDATED: JUNE 29, 2026
The Chef’s Pact
Please read these Terms carefully before you start cooking with us. By using Chef Happens you agree to everything below — it’s the legal seasoning that keeps the kitchen running.
1. Welcome & Introduction
By downloading, installing, or using Chef Happens (the “App”, “Service”, “we”, “us”, “our”), you agree to these Terms of Service (the “Terms”). If any clause doesn’t sit right with you, please stop using the App. The Service generates recipe suggestions using large language models and provides related cooking features (meal planning, pantry tracking, AI image scans, and social-video parsing).
Recipes are AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies. You are responsible for verifying ingredients, preparation methods, and food safety before cooking. These Terms form a binding contract between you and Chef Happens. Nothing in these Terms is intended to exclude, restrict, or modify rights you cannot lawfully waive under the consumer laws of your country of residence — including the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) under Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, and the Indian Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
2. Eligibility & Prohibited Regions
You must be 13 years or older to use Chef Happens. In India, anyone under 18 should use the App only with parental or guardian consent in line with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. If you are using the App on behalf of a household member who is a minor, you accept these Terms on their behalf and are responsible for their use.
Chef Happens is currently offered only in Australia, New Zealand, and India. You may not use the App if you are located in, or are a resident of, any other country, or if you appear on any sanctions list maintained by the Australian Government (DFAT), the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), or the Government of India (MEA). You also confirm you will not use the App to violate any applicable law or to facilitate any activity that does.
3. User Accounts
To unlock the full experience you create a Chef Happens account using email + password or Google sign-in. You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it current. One account per person; you may not share login credentials. Each account is single-device by design — logging in on a new device signs out the previous one.
Suspension & closure. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms, abuse the Service, attempt to bypass tier gating, request prohibited content, or pose a security risk. Where the law permits, we will give you a brief opportunity to remedy the issue before closure. On closure, your paid period continues to the end of the current billing cycle unless the breach is serious enough to warrant immediate termination.
4. Subscription & Billing
Chef Happens offers three tiers. Premium tiers (Sous Chef and Head Chef) are billed monthly. Every new account gets 14 days of Head Chef for free — no card required up front.
Free forever — 6 recipes/day, Fizz drinks, full pantry tracking + expiry, daily meal plan ideas.
Unlimited recipes, mood-aware + style chips, leftover-aware cooking, weekly meal plans, WTF Safe/Lazy.
Everything in Sous Chef plus 5 meal plans/week, unlimited cook-by-dish, WTF Unhinged, early access.
Currency & taxes. Subscription prices are displayed in your local currency based on the country you selected when registering — Australian Dollars (AUD), New Zealand Dollars (NZD), or Indian Rupees (INR). Prices are inclusive of taxes where applicable: Australian customers pay inclusive of 10% GST, New Zealand customers pay inclusive of 15% GST, and Indian customers pay inclusive of CGST + SGST (or IGST for inter-state) at prevailing statutory rates. The final amount in your local currency — including all applicable taxes — is always confirmed on the checkout screen before you authorise payment.
Auto-renewal. Paid subscriptions auto-renew at the end of each billing period at the then-current price unless cancelled. You can cancel any time from Account → Manage Subscription (or through Apple App Store / Google Play settings if you subscribed on a mobile store). For Indian cards processed under the RBI e-mandate framework, we send a pre-debit notification at least 24 hours before each renewal.
Free trial. If you start a free trial, your card (where required) is verified but not charged until the trial ends. You can cancel any time during the trial to avoid being charged. We email a reminder before the trial rolls into a paid subscription.
Upgrades, downgrades, cancellations. Upgrades are charged immediately on a prorated basis. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period so you don’t lose paid-for time. Cancellations stop future renewals — your access continues until the period ends.
Price changes. We will give you at least 30 days’ notice (in-app and by email) before any increase to your subscription price. If you don’t accept the new price, you can cancel before it takes effect and the existing price applies until the end of your current billing period.
Where you bought matters. If you subscribed via Apple App Store or Google Play, your purchase, refund, and cancellation are governed by Apple’s / Google’s billing terms — we cannot directly issue refunds for store purchases and you must use the relevant store’s refund flow. If you subscribed via our website / Stripe checkout, the refund section below applies.
Refunds. Subscription fees paid via Stripe are non-refundable except where required by law. Nothing in this clause limits any non-excludable consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law, the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and Fair Trading Act 1986, or the Indian Consumer Protection Act, 2019. If you believe you were charged in error, contact us within 14 days and we’ll investigate promptly.
5. Cooking, Allergens & Health
Not medical or nutritional advice. Chef Happens does not provide medical, dietary, nutritional, weight-loss, or therapeutic advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional or registered dietitian before relying on any recipe or nutritional information for health-related decisions, especially during pregnancy, illness, or when feeding infants and young children.
Cooking risks. Cooking involves heat, sharp tools, electrical appliances, and potentially hazardous ingredients (raw meat, raw seafood, raw eggs, alcohol, hot oil). You assume all risk of burns, cuts, fire, food poisoning, and other injury or damage that may result from following an App-generated recipe. Supervise children at all times and do not leave cooking unattended.
Local food laws. Some ingredients in AI-generated recipes may be restricted or regulated in your jurisdiction (e.g., certain game meats, raw-milk products, unpasteurised cheese, or psychoactive culinary herbs). Compliance with local food-safety, labelling, and import regulations is your responsibility.
5A. Alcohol Content & Responsible Use
Chef Happens includes the Fizz sub-agent, which generates cocktail and mocktail recipes. By generating, viewing, or following an alcoholic-drink recipe in the App, you confirm that you are at or above the legal drinking age in your country of residence: 18 in Australia, 18 in New Zealand, and 21 in India. The legal drinking age in India varies considerably by state and Union Territory — from 18 in Goa, Sikkim, Karnataka (for beer/wine) and Puducherry, through 21 in most states, up to 25 in Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, and Delhi. Rather than attempt state-by-state enforcement (which can shift with each state’s policy reviews and would be impossible to keep current in-app), Chef Happens applies a single conservative threshold of 21 across India. If the legal age where you live is higher than 21, you remain responsible for complying with your state law before generating, sharing, or consuming an alcoholic recipe. If your date of birth on file is below 21, Fizz will automatically substitute the non-alcoholic / virgin version of the requested drink — this is by design and is not a bug.
We collect date of birth at registration solely to enforce this gate and the COPPA-13 floor described in Section 2. We do not use DOB for marketing, profiling, or any third-party sharing — see the Privacy Policy for full retention details.
Honest about what we are not. Fizz is a creative recipe assistant, not a licensed bartender, sommelier, or medical professional. Measures are approximate; ingredient potency varies by brand; serving sizes assume one adult serving unless explicitly stated. You are solely responsible for following local alcohol-service laws when entertaining guests.
6. AI Output, Limitations & Training
AI is imperfect. Outputs may be inaccurate, biased, outdated, culturally insensitive, or factually wrong. The same prompt may yield different results from one moment to the next. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or originality of any generated text, image, nutrition estimate, or substitution suggestion.
Your inputs are not used to train third-party models. Chef Happens does not sell or share your ingredient lists, pantry contents, or saved recipes with third-party AI providers for training purposes. Some inputs are sent to Google Gemini, OpenAI Whisper, or DeepInfra in real time to generate the output you requested, after which their handling is governed by the third party’s own data policies (see our Privacy Policy for details and links).
Acceptable use. You agree not to use the App to: (a) generate content that is unlawful, threatening, defamatory, sexually explicit, hateful, or promotes self-harm; (b) attempt to extract proprietary prompts, model weights, or internal data; (c) circumvent rate limits, paywalls, or tier gating; (d) reverse-engineer, decompile, or scrape the App or its APIs; (e) impersonate another person; (f) infringe anyone’s intellectual property or privacy rights. Violations may result in immediate suspension or termination.
6A. Meet Pepper & Fizz (Our AI Assistants)
Chef Happens features two named AI personas: Pepper, your main kitchen assistant who suggests recipes, meal plans, substitutions and answers cooking questions; and Fizz, our cocktail/mocktail/coffee/tea/smoothie sub-assistant who takes over whenever you search for a drink. Both are generative AI powered by Google’s Gemini family of large language models. They are not human chefs, bartenders, nutritionists, dietitians, sommeliers, or medical professionals — even though their tone is warm and conversational.
What they do: generate recipe text, ingredient substitutions, weekly meal plans, drink mixology suggestions, image descriptions, and short replies to your kitchen questions. What they don’t do: provide professional medical, nutritional, dietary, or alcohol-service advice; remember previous conversations between sessions (each prompt is stateless); or access any device data beyond what you enter into the prompt fields and what we declare in the Privacy Policy.
Inputs & outputs may be logged. Your prompts and the AI responses can be retained for safety review, abuse detection, and model-quality improvement, subject to the retention windows in our Privacy Policy. We do not send personally-identifying data (your email, full name, date of birth, country, or payment details) to the LLM provider — only the content you explicitly type into prompt fields (ingredients, dish names, wishes, etc.).
Pepper and Fizz may produce inaccurate, biased, or culturally-inappropriate output. They may invent ingredients, mis-state nutrition values, or recommend techniques that don’t suit your equipment. Always apply your own judgement, especially around allergens, dietary restrictions, food safety, and alcohol. If something feels off, tap the feedback icon on the recipe — it helps us tune them.
7. Content & Intellectual Property
Your content. You retain ownership of the ingredients you enter, photos you scan, recipe URLs you paste, and the notes you save. By using the App you grant Chef Happens a limited, world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, store, transmit, display, and process this content solely to provide the Service to you. Your pantry and saved recipes remain private to your account.
Our content. All App software, branding, design assets, the Pepper mascot, and the “Chef Happens” name are the property of Chef Happens and protected by the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and equivalent laws worldwide. Recipes generated for you are yours to cook, share, photograph, and adapt freely for personal use. Commercial republication of generated recipes — including in cookbooks, restaurant menus, blogs monetised by ads or affiliates, or sponsored content — requires our prior written permission.
Third-party services. The App uses Google Gemini for AI generation, Wikipedia, Unsplash, DeepInfra, Cloudinary and Pollinations for imagery, OpenAI Whisper for social-video transcription, Resend for transactional email, Sentry for telemetry, and Stripe / Apple / Google for payments. Use of those services is governed by their respective terms.
8. Notice & Takedown (Copyright)
We respect intellectual property rights. If you believe content surfaced by the App (including a video parsed from a public link) infringes your copyright, send a written notice to support@chefhappens.app with: (a) your contact details; (b) the work claimed to be infringed; (c) the URL or screenshot of the allegedly infringing material; (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised; and (e) an electronic signature. This procedure aligns with India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and the safe-harbour framework recognised under Australian copyright law. We will action verified notices within 36 hours where reasonably practicable.
9. Disclaimers & Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the App is provided “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant uninterrupted, error-free, or secure operation.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Chef Happens shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including loss of profit, loss of data, loss of goodwill, food spoilage, or personal injury arising from your use of the App. Our total aggregate liability for direct damages is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid to Chef Happens in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) AUD 100 / NZD 100 / INR 5,000, whichever applies in your jurisdiction.
10. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Chef Happens, its officers, employees, and contractors from any claims, liabilities, damages, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: (a) your breach of these Terms; (b) your misuse of the App; (c) your infringement of any third-party right (including IP or privacy); (d) content you submit to the App; or (e) your reliance on any AI-generated output in violation of the safety notices in Section 5. This indemnity does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or breach of non-excludable statutory obligations.
11. Force Majeure
Neither party is liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events outside its reasonable control, including acts of God, fire, flood, earthquake, pandemic, war, civil unrest, terrorism, cyber-attack, internet outage, denial-of-service, governmental action, sanctions, strike, or the failure of upstream providers (e.g., Google, Stripe, AWS, Cloudflare). If a force majeure event lasts longer than 60 days, either party may terminate the affected subscription on written notice and a pro-rata refund will be issued for the unused paid period.
12. Termination & Survival
You may terminate your account any time from Account → Delete Account. We may terminate or suspend access immediately, without notice, for a material breach of these Terms, fraud, chargeback abuse, security compromise, or if continued operation would expose us or other users to legal risk. On termination: (a) your paid period is honoured to the end of the current billing cycle unless terminated for cause; (b) your personal data is deleted or anonymised in line with our Privacy Policy and the retention periods required by law; (c) Sections 5, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, and 17 survive termination.
13. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. For minor clarifications we update the LAST UPDATED date at the top of this page. For material changes (anything affecting your rights, billing, data handling, or dispute resolution) we will notify you in-app and by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Continued use of the App after that date constitutes acceptance.
14. Privacy & Data Rights
Your pantry, recipe history, and preferences are private to your account. We never sell personal data, and your ingredient lists are not used to train external AI models. We comply with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 and the thirteen Information Privacy Principles (IPPs), and the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act). You may at any time:
- Request a copy of your personal data (data access).
- Correct inaccurate personal data (rectification).
- Delete your account and associated personal data (erasure / right to be forgotten).
- Withdraw consent for processing where consent is the lawful basis.
- Object to direct marketing and certain automated decisions.
- Lodge a complaint with OAIC (AU), OPC (NZ), or the Data Protection Board of India.
For the full breakdown — what we collect, why, how long we keep it, with whom we share it, and how to exercise your rights — see our Privacy Policy.
15. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution
These Terms are governed by the laws of Australia (and the State of New South Wales) for users registered with an Australian address, by the laws of New Zealand for users registered with a New Zealand address, and by the laws of the Republic of India for users registered with an Indian address. Because Chef Happens is currently offered only in Australia, New Zealand, and India, no other jurisdiction’s law applies.
Try to resolve directly first. Before starting formal proceedings, please contact support@chefhappens.app describing the issue. We will respond within 10 business days and try to resolve the dispute amicably.
Australia. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally and the matter concerns a consumer right under the Australian Consumer Law, you may take the complaint to your state or territory consumer-affairs office (e.g., NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria) or the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Court proceedings, if any, may be commenced in the courts of New South Wales.
New Zealand. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally and the matter concerns a consumer right under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986, you may complain to the Commerce Commission (comcom.govt.nz) or pursue the matter through the Disputes Tribunal for claims up to NZD 30,000. Court proceedings, if any, may be commenced in the courts of New Zealand.
India. Disputes that remain unresolved may be referred to mediation under the Consumer Protection (Mediation) Rules, 2020, or to the appropriate Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (District, State, or National) based on the value of the claim. Courts in Bengaluru, Karnataka have exclusive jurisdiction for any non-consumer matters, subject to the consumer’s right under Section 34(2)(d) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 to file a complaint where they ordinarily reside.
No class actions where lawful to exclude. Where permitted by your local law, you and Chef Happens agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, not as a class or representative action. This clause does not apply where it would conflict with non-waivable consumer rights.
16. App Store Terms
If you downloaded Chef Happens from the Apple App Store, you acknowledge that these Terms are between you and Chef Happens (not Apple), and that Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support. Apple is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms and may enforce them against you. Equivalent acknowledgments apply to Google Play and any other platform store from which you obtain the App.
17. General Provisions
Entire agreement. These Terms (together with the Privacy Policy and any in-app notices we display) constitute the entire agreement between you and Chef Happens. They supersede any prior agreement on the same subject matter.
Severability. If any clause is held unenforceable, the rest of the Terms remain in full force. The unenforceable clause is replaced by an enforceable provision that most closely reflects the original intent.
No waiver. A failure or delay by us in enforcing any right under these Terms is not a waiver of that right.
Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms (including to a successor in a merger, acquisition, or asset sale) on notice to you; this will not reduce your rights.
Notices. Legal notices to us must be sent to support@chefhappens.app with “Legal Notice” in the subject line. Notices to you are given by in-app message or to the email on file.
Accessibility. We are committed to making the App usable by people with disabilities and aim to meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards. Please report any accessibility barriers to us — we will respond promptly.
Language. The authoritative version of these Terms is in English. Any translation provided in-app is for convenience only; in the event of a conflict, the English version prevails.
18. Contact
Questions about these Terms, refunds, account issues, or anything else? Our Culinary Concierge is happy to help. For data-protection requests, please mention “Privacy Request” in your message so we can route it to the right team and meet statutory response timelines.