Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Bartender Stories ("we", "us", "our") is operated by MM Creatives, a sole proprietorship based in Ontario, Canada. You can reach us at bartenderstories1@gmail.com.

By creating an account, publishing content, browsing the site or otherwise using the service, you agree to these Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract. If you use the service on behalf of a business, you confirm you are authorised to bind that business to these terms.

2. The service

Bartender Stories lets people in the food and beverage industry create a public profile, publish their story, save cocktail recipes and the ingredients behind them, publish articles, and share a CV. Visitors can browse published content without an account.

The service is currently free. We may introduce advertising, sponsored placements, promoted visibility or paid features. Where a feature is paid, we will show the price and any additional terms before you buy, and those additional terms will apply to that purchase.

We provide a publishing platform only. We do not sell alcohol, take orders for drinks, employ the people who publish here, or verify professional qualifications unless we say so expressly.

3. Your account

You must give accurate information when you register and keep it up to date. One account per person; do not share your login or create accounts for others.

You are responsible for everything that happens through your account and for keeping your password confidential. Tell us immediately at the address above if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

You may delete your account at any time from your dashboard. We may refuse, suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that we reasonably believe is fraudulent, or that exposes us or other users to legal risk.

4. Your content

You keep ownership of the text, images, recipes and other material you publish ("your content"). We do not claim ownership of it.

To run the service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, reformat, translate, display, distribute and promote your content in connection with Bartender Stories, including on our pages, in search previews, in newsletters and on our social media accounts. This licence lasts while your content is published and for a reasonable period afterwards while it remains in backups, caches or third-party indexes. It ends when you delete the content, except for copies that others have already shared or that we are required to keep by law.

You confirm that you own or have all necessary rights to everything you publish, including photos, logos, music and recipe text, and that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights or break any law.

Public content can be indexed by search engines and copied by other people. Do not publish confidential information, trade secrets, identity documents, private contact details of others, or anything you would not want to be public. Visibility settings in your dashboard are a courtesy, not a guarantee of privacy.

We may reformat content, add labels such as "community submission" or "sponsored", and remove content that breaches these terms.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without obligation or payment to you.

5. Acceptable use

You must not use the service to:

• break any law, including copyright, trademark, privacy, defamation, food-safety or alcohol-licensing law;
• publish hateful, discriminatory, harassing, threatening or violent content, or content that exploits or endangers anyone, especially minors;
• publish sexual content involving minors, non-consensual intimate images, or content that sexualises anyone under 18;
• publish another person’s private information, or impersonate any person or organisation;
• promote or sell alcohol to minors, or encourage unsafe or excessive drinking;
• make false or misleading claims about qualifications, awards, employers, ingredients, health effects or endorsements;
• upload malware, phishing content, spam, chain messages, or run pyramid or fraudulent schemes;
• scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-download the service, or use it to train machine-learning models, without our written permission;
• attempt to access accounts, servers or data you are not authorised to access, or probe, overload or circumvent security and moderation;
• create accounts automatically, buy or sell accounts, or manipulate rankings, likes or promotions;
• advertise or promote products or services without our written agreement, except where a paid or sponsored feature expressly allows it.

We may investigate suspected breaches and co-operate with law enforcement where the law requires it.

6. Alcohol, food safety and professional advice

The service is intended for adults. You must be of legal drinking age wherever you are to prepare or consume any drink described here. Drink responsibly, never drink and drive, and do not rely on this site for medical or dietary decisions.

Recipes, ingredient notes and articles are submitted by users. We do not test them in a professional kitchen or bar, and we do not verify alcohol content, allergens, sourcing, preparation methods or hygiene. Ingredients can cause allergic reactions, interact with medication, or be unsafe for pregnancy, children or people with health conditions. You are responsible for checking every ingredient and for preparing and serving food and drink safely.

Nothing on the service is medical, nutritional, legal, financial or professional advice, and nothing is a recommendation to buy or consume any product.

7. Moderation, reports and removal

We are not obliged to monitor content, but we may review, edit, label, hide or remove any content, and suspend or close any account, when we reasonably believe it breaches these terms or the law, or to protect users, third parties or the service.

To report content, email bartenderstories1@gmail.com with the link and a short explanation. We aim to review reports within seven days. If we remove your content, you may appeal by replying to the removal notice within 30 days; we will explain our decision in writing.

We operate a notice-and-action process for illegal content and terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. We may keep records of moderation decisions as required by law.

8. Copyright and intellectual property complaints

If you believe content on Bartender Stories infringes your copyright, send a notice to bartenderstories1@gmail.com including: (a) identification of the protected work; (b) the exact URL of the allegedly infringing content; (c) your name, address and email; (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised; (e) a statement that the information is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them; and (f) your signature.

We may remove or disable access to the content, notify the person who uploaded it, and forward notices in accordance with Canada’s notice-and-notice regime. If you believe your content was removed in error, you may send us a counter-notice with the same details, your consent to the jurisdiction of the courts of Ontario, and a statement under penalty of perjury that the removal was a mistake or misidentification.

The Bartender Stories name, logo, design, code and editorial content are owned by us or our licensors. You may view and share links to the service, but you may not copy, republish, sell, scrape or create derivative works from our branding or site content without our written permission.

9. Third-party services and links

We use third parties to host the service, store uploads, deliver email, measure traffic (with consent) and, in future, display advertising or process payments. Their terms and privacy policies apply to their own processing.

Links to other websites, social accounts or products are provided for convenience. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, accuracy, security or practices.

10. Advertising, sponsored content and paid promotion

Content on the service may include advertising, sponsored placements, affiliate links or promoted visibility. We will label paid or sponsored material where the law or advertising standards require it. Advertising does not mean we endorse the advertiser or its products.

If you buy promoted placement or any other paid feature, you must comply with advertising, consumer-protection and alcohol-marketing rules, and you must not promote illegal, unsafe or deceptive products. We may reject or remove any promotion at our discretion.

Prices, taxes and billing terms will be shown before purchase. Payments are handled by a third-party payment processor; we do not store full card numbers. Refunds are governed by the terms shown at purchase and by any rights you have under mandatory consumer law.

Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 (Ontario), the laws of your province or territory, or mandatory consumer law in your country of residence, including EU consumer law.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why, how long we keep it and the rights you have. Our Cookie Policy explains the cookies and similar technologies we use. Both form part of these terms.

12. Availability, changes and termination

We aim to keep the service available but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free access. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the service, including features, at any time, and we may perform maintenance that makes the service temporarily unavailable.

You may stop using the service at any time and delete your account. We may suspend or terminate your access immediately if you breach these terms or if we are required to do so by law. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including content licences, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and governing law) will continue to apply.

13. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the service and all content on it are provided "as is" and "as available". We make no warranty that content is accurate, complete, current, lawful or safe, that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors, or that publishing will bring you any particular audience, traffic, work or income.

We do not endorse or verify user content, including claims about qualifications, venues, products or awards. You rely on user content at your own risk.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill or opportunities, arising from or related to the service, your content, another user’s content, third-party services, or any inability to use the service.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the service in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of (a) CAD $100 and (b) the total amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, including liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or your non-waivable rights as a consumer.

You acknowledge that these limitations are a reasonable allocation of risk and are fundamental to us offering the service free of charge.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Bartender Stories and MM Creatives, and their respective owners, contractors and agents, from any claim, demand, loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of: your content; your breach of these terms or the law; your infringement of another person’s rights; or your misuse of the service.

16. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable in Ontario, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.

Before starting a formal claim, please email bartenderstories1@gmail.com with a description of the dispute and the outcome you are seeking. We will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. Most issues can be settled this way.

Subject to the paragraph below, you and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Ontario, sitting in Toronto, Ontario, for any dispute that cannot be resolved informally.

Nothing in this section prevents you from bringing a claim in a court that has mandatory jurisdiction over you as a consumer. Consumers in the EU, the UK and other jurisdictions keep the protection of mandatory rules of their country of residence, including the right to bring proceedings in their local courts.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The current version is always published on this page with the date it was last updated. For material changes we will give at least 14 days’ notice by email to registered users or by a prominent notice on the site before the new version takes effect.

If you continue to use the service after the new version takes effect, you accept the updated terms. If you do not agree, stop using the service and delete your account before the effective date.

18. General

If a provision of these terms is found unenforceable, it will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions stay in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the service. You may not assign your rights or obligations without our written consent; we may assign ours as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

We may provide notices by email to the address on your account or by posting them on the site. These terms are written in English; translations are provided for convenience and, to the extent permitted by law, the English version prevails.

Questions about these terms: bartenderstories1@gmail.com.