Terms of Service

Blue Obsidian provides software that independent restaurants use to take pickup orders from their own customers. These Terms are between you and blueobsidian io LLC ("we", "us"), the company that operates blueobsidian.io and the Blue Obsidian service. Blue Obsidian is a trading name of blueobsidian io LLC. By using the service you agree to them.

We are not the restaurant. We do not prepare, sell, or deliver food. Every order you place is a contract between you and the restaurant whose page you ordered from - including what is in the food, when it is ready, and whether it is right.

This distinction is the practical answer to most questions. A cold meal, a missing item, an allergen, a wrong pickup time: the restaurant owns all of it. What we own is the software, the payment flow, and the messages sent through us.

You must be at least 13 to use the service and at least 18 to place a paid order or hold a restaurant account. If you create an account for a business, you confirm you are authorized to bind that business.

You may sign in with an email and password or with a Google or Apple account. Where you use a third-party sign-in, we receive only your name, email address and a stable identifier from that provider, and we never receive your password. Signing in with a provider does not give that provider access to your order history with us.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us at hello@blueobsidian.io if you believe it has been used without your permission.

Prices, availability, hours, and pickup times are set by the restaurant and can change without notice. An order is not accepted until the restaurant accepts it; we will tell you if it is rejected, and you are not charged for a rejected order.

Allergen and dietary information comes from the restaurant. If you have a food allergy, contact the restaurant directly before ordering. We do not verify menu descriptions and cannot vouch for them.

A service fee is added to your order and is shown as its own line before you pay. It goes to us, not to the restaurant. We never add it silently and never fold it into item prices.

The fee is a small flat amount per order, disclosed at checkout in the currency you are charged. Sales tax, and any tip you choose to leave, are separate and set by the restaurant. Your card statement may show the restaurant's name rather than ours, because the charge is made on the restaurant's own payment account.

Whether the service fee is returned on a refund is described in the Refund and Cancellation Policy.

Card payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. Your payment is made to the restaurant's connected Stripe account, and by paying you also agree to Stripe's terms as they apply to you.

Every order placed through the platform is paid by card at checkout, before the restaurant is told about it. There is no pay-at-counter option. Anything you buy over a restaurant's counter in person is between you and them and is not covered by these Terms.

Email is the only channel we use to reach you. If you give an email address at checkout we send you a receipt and updates about that order - when it is accepted, when it is ready, and if it is canceled or refunded. These are transactional messages about a purchase you made, and they are part of the service rather than marketing.

A restaurant can export its own customer list from its dashboard and contact those customers separately, using its own email tools. A message sent that way comes from the restaurant rather than from us, and the restaurant is responsible for it and for honoring any unsubscribe. We do not sell your address to anyone, we do not send marketing on a restaurant's behalf, and we do not email you about a restaurant you have never ordered from.

Giving an email address is optional. Without one you can still order; you will simply see the order status on screen rather than in your inbox.

The Acceptable Use Policy is part of these Terms. In short: do not place fraudulent orders, do not attempt to reach data belonging to another customer or another restaurant, do not scrape or resell the service, and do not use it to send messages people did not ask for.

We own the software and everything we put into it. Restaurants own their menus, photographs, branding and customer lists - a restaurant that leaves takes its customer list with it, and we do not claim rights over it beyond what we need to run the service.

You keep the rights to anything you submit, and you give us permission to use it as far as is necessary to run the service - for example, showing your name to the restaurant fulfilling your order.

We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted. We may change, suspend, or withdraw features, and we may suspend an individual restaurant's access for the reasons set out in the Restaurant Agreement.

The service is provided as-is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profits or goodwill.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law - including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions, in which case they do not apply to you.

Claims about the food itself - its quality, safety, description, or preparation - are claims against the restaurant, and this limit does not extend our responsibility for them.

If you use the service in breach of these Terms and that causes a claim against us, you agree to cover our reasonable costs in dealing with it. This does not apply to ordinary consumer use of the service to buy food.

You may stop using the service at any time and ask us to delete your account. We may suspend or end your access if you breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if continuing would expose us or a restaurant to fraud, chargebacks, or action by a payment provider.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing anything, email hello@blueobsidian.io - nearly everything is a misunderstanding about who charged what, and it is faster to just ask.

Nothing in this section removes any right you have to bring a claim in your local small-claims court, or any consumer right that cannot be waived where you live.

Please read this section carefully. It affects how any dispute between you and us is decided, and it limits the ways you can bring a claim.

First, talk to us. Send a written description of the problem and what you want to hello@blueobsidian.io and give us sixty days to sort it out. Most disputes are a misunderstanding about who charged what and are resolved in a single reply.

If it is not resolved in those sixty days, you and we agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be settled by binding individual arbitration, administered by a recognized US arbitration provider under its consumer rules, rather than in court. The arbitrator decides the dispute and the award may be entered as a judgment. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, if it qualifies.

Claims are brought individually. You and we each waive any right to a jury trial and any right to bring or take part in a class, collective, consolidated or representative action. An arbitrator may award relief only to the individual party seeking it, and only to the extent needed to resolve that party's own claim.

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing hello@blueobsidian.io within thirty days of first accepting these Terms, saying that you opt out and giving the account or order the opt-out relates to. Opting out costs you nothing and changes nothing else in these Terms.

If the class-action waiver above is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim is severed and heard in court, and the rest of this section still applies to everything else. Nothing here prevents either of us from seeking an injunction in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorised access to the service.

Any claim relating to the service must be brought within one year of when it arose, to the fullest extent the law allows. After that it is permanently barred. Some jurisdictions do not allow a shortened limitation period, in which case this does not apply to you.

• Force majeure. Neither of us is responsible for a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control - a payment processor, hosting or network outage, a power or telecommunications failure, an act of government, an epidemic, a strike, a fire, a flood, or a war.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may transfer ours to a company that acquires the business or its assets, or within our corporate group, without notice; your rights under these Terms travel with you.
• Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is narrowed to the smallest extent that makes it enforceable, or removed if it cannot be, and the rest of these Terms continue in force.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a provision on one occasion is not a waiver of it on any other. A waiver counts only if it is in writing from us.
• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the policies they reference, are the whole agreement between you and us about the service and replace anything said before.
• No third-party beneficiaries. Nobody other than you and us can enforce these Terms, except that a restaurant may rely on the sections that describe your obligations to it.
• Independent parties. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment or agency relationship between you and us, or between us and a restaurant.
• Notices. We give notice through the service or by email to the address on your account; you give notice to hello@blueobsidian.io. Notice by email counts as received the day it is sent.
• Electronic communications. You agree to receive agreements, disclosures and notices from us electronically, and that they satisfy any requirement that they be in writing.
• Survival. The sections on ownership, disclaimers and liability, indemnity, arbitration, the time limit for claims and this section survive the end of this agreement.

The service relies on providers we do not control - a payment processor, a hosting provider, an email provider, a maps link. We choose them carefully, and we will name the current ones if you email hello@blueobsidian.io. We are not responsible for their own acts, outages or terms. A link from our pages to somewhere else is not an endorsement of it.

If you send us feedback or an idea about the service, we may use it without owing you anything for it. That is not us claiming anything else you own; it is so a suggestion in a support email does not become a dispute about a feature.

We may update these Terms. The date at the top of this page changes when we do. If a change materially reduces your rights we will give notice through the service before it takes effect, and continuing to use the service afterwards means you accept it.

Questions about these Terms: hello@blueobsidian.io. Anything else: hello@blueobsidian.io, or the contact form on this site.

Written notice goes to blueobsidian io LLC, 11000 W McNichols Rd, Ste 323, Detroit, MI 48221, United States. Telephone (313) 246-3280.