Beta Participation Agreement

Cheddar is operated by Himanshu Jeetendra Bundel, an individual trading as Cheddar Labs ("Cheddar Labs", "we", "us").

Cheddar Labs is a trading name, not a company. Cheddar is run by an individual, not by a corporation, and your agreement is with that individual. We say so plainly rather than implying a corporate form that does not exist. Contact is by email at cheddarlabsteam@gmail.com; we do not publish a postal address, and you can ask us for one in writing if you need it for a formal notice.

In these terms, "you" or "operator" means the food business that holds the Cheddar account, together with anyone you invite into it. "Guest" means a diner who scans one of your QR codes and uses the menu. Guests are your customers, not ours.

Cheddar is software you access over the internet. It lets you build a digital menu, generate QR codes for your tables, and give your guests an AI assistant that can answer questions about the dishes you have entered. It also gives you a dashboard with analytics about how guests use the menu.

Two things Cheddar deliberately is not:

• It is not a point-of-sale or payment system. Guests do not pay through Cheddar. Anything a guest saves or adds in the guest app is a shortlist to show a server; it is not an order placed with your kitchen, and it does not take money.
• It is not a nutritionist, allergist or medical service. See section 5.

Cheddar is a young product and is still changing. Features may be added, altered or removed — see section 12.

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. That includes keeping passwords secret, choosing who you invite, and what roles you give them. If you think someone has got into your account, tell us promptly at cheddarlabsteam@gmail.com.

You must give us accurate account details and keep them up to date. You must be old enough to enter a contract in your country, and you must not let anyone use your account who is not authorised by you.

People you invite into your organisation can see and change your menu and settings according to the role you give them. Choosing those roles carefully is your responsibility.

For as long as your beta access is active, we give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use Cheddar for your own food business. This is a right to use the service, not a sale: we keep ownership of the Cheddar software, brand, designs and everything in it.

Beta access is granted at our discretion and can be withdrawn — see section 11. It is not a purchase, so nothing in this agreement promises you the service will continue to exist, keep any particular feature, or remain free after the beta ends.

You may not:

• copy, resell, sublicense or white-label Cheddar as if it were your own product;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or try to extract our source code, prompts, models or underlying data structures;
• use automated tools to scrape the service, or access it in a way designed to work around usage limits, rate limits or plan restrictions;
• share one subscription across separate businesses or locations that are not covered by your plan.

Some parts of Cheddar cost us money each time they run — in particular the AI assistant, which is charged per message. We apply reasonable usage limits (including per-session message caps and monthly allowances) to keep the service sustainable, and we may adjust them. We will not remove capacity you have paid for without telling you.

You keep ownership of everything you put into Cheddar: your menu, dish descriptions, photos, prices, allergen records, branding and settings. We claim no ownership of it.

You give us permission to host, copy, display and process that content only as far as we need to in order to run the service for you — for example, storing it in our database, showing it to guests who scan your QR codes, generating search embeddings so the AI can find the right dish, and sending the relevant parts to our AI providers to answer a guest's question. That permission ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for backups that expire on their normal cycle.

You confirm you have the right to use everything you upload, including any photos and trademarks.

We may produce aggregated, de-identified statistics about how Cheddar is used to improve the product. These never identify you, your guests, or your business to anyone else. How we handle personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy.

You agree not to use Cheddar to:

• break the law, or help anyone else break it;
• publish content that is false, misleading, obscene, hateful, or that infringes someone else's rights;
• deliberately enter false ingredient or allergen information, or use the AI assistant to make claims about food safety you know to be untrue;
• attempt to manipulate the AI assistant into producing unsafe, misleading or harmful answers, including trying to make it give allergy all-clears;
• attack, overload, probe or interfere with the service, other operators' accounts, or the underlying infrastructure;
• access data belonging to another restaurant, or attempt to work around the separation between accounts.

We may suspend an account immediately, without notice, where we reasonably believe there is a risk to guest safety, to other operators, or to the security of the service.

Cheddar is pre-release software provided free of charge for evaluation. It is incomplete, it is actively being changed, and it may contain faults that have not been found yet. It may lose data, behave unexpectedly, or be withdrawn. Please do not make Cheddar the only place any information you care about is stored, and please do not rely on it for anything safety-critical — above all, see section 5.

Cheddar is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all warranties that are not expressly stated in these terms, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement.

We do not promise any particular level of uptime. There is no service level agreement, no uptime guarantee and no service credit. The service can be unavailable because of maintenance, faults, or problems at the third-party providers we depend on (including our hosting, database and AI providers). We are not responsible for interruptions to your business caused by downtime.

We take reasonable care with your data and keep backups, but you should keep your own copy of anything you would be upset to lose — in particular an export or backup of your menu.

There is no charge for Cheddar during the beta. We do not ask for a card, we do not store payment details, and there is no subscription, no billing period and no automatic renewal. Nothing in this agreement obliges you to pay us anything.

If we decide to start charging, we will email you before any fee applies. Paid use would need a separate agreement that you actively accept — continuing to use Cheddar, or ignoring an email from us, will never be treated as agreement to pay. If you do not want to continue on paid terms, you can stop using Cheddar and take your data with you under section 6.

Because no money changes hands, the parts of a normal commercial agreement that deal with fees, invoicing, automatic renewal, cancellation of a paid plan, refunds and failed payments do not apply and are deliberately absent. They will appear in the paid agreement, not this one.

You remain responsible for your own costs of taking part — for example your internet connection, devices, printing QR codes, and the time your team spends.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and in addition to section 5.4, Cheddar Labs is not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, business opportunity, anticipated savings or data, however caused.

Where we are found liable to you for any reason, our total liability across all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you actually paid us for the service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you.

You can leave at any time by cancelling your subscription and closing your account. You do not need a reason.

We can end or suspend your access if you break these terms, if you do not pay, if we reasonably believe your use puts guests, other operators or the service at risk, or if we stop offering the service. Except where the breach is serious or urgent, we will give you reasonable notice and a chance to put things right.

What happens to your data. When your account ends, your menus and QR codes stop working for guests. We keep your data for a reasonable wind-down period so you can come back or export it, after which it may be deleted. You can ask us to delete it sooner — see the Privacy Policy for how, and for what we are required to keep (such as billing records).

Sections that by their nature should survive — including sections 5, 6, 8, 10, 13 and 14 — continue to apply after the agreement ends.

We are actively developing Cheddar and may add, change or remove features. If we remove something significant that you rely on and are paying for, we will tell you by email.

We may also update these terms. When we do, we will change the version identifier and the "last updated" date at the top of this page. For material changes we will give you reasonable notice by email before they take effect. Continuing to use Cheddar after that means you accept the new version; if you do not accept it, you may cancel.

If you send us ideas, bug reports, feature requests or other feedback, we may use them freely to improve Cheddar without owing you payment, royalties or credit. You keep the right to use your own ideas however you like; you are simply not charging us for them.

These terms are governed by the laws of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms or the service will be brought exclusively in the courts of California, and you and we each consent to those courts.

If you are a consumer, this does not remove the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live.

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us at cheddarlabsteam@gmail.com so we can try to resolve the problem directly.

Questions about this agreement? Email cheddarlabsteam@gmail.com. That inbox is read by Himanshu Jeetendra Bundel and is the right place for legal notices, data requests and anything urgent.

If any part of this agreement turns out to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. This agreement, together with the Privacy Policy, is the whole agreement between us about the service during the beta.