Terms of Service

ShelfStep (“we”, “us”) provides launch planning, AI-generated guidance and drafts, a contact and outreach workspace, production records (deliveries, lots, sales, complaints), tools such as pricing and label checks, printable records (labels, invoices, statements, sell sheets), and a wholesale marketplace where makers can list products and other makers can order them.

ShelfStep is a planning, record-keeping and productivity tool. It is not a regulatory authority, a Process Authority, a laboratory, a lawyer, or an accountant. Regulatory paths, food-safety plans, nutrition estimates, label reviews and similar outputs are starting points that you must verify with the appropriate professional or agency before relying on them.

You need an account to use the service. Keep your sign-in secure and tell us if you think it has been compromised. A workspace belongs to the organization that created it; its admins control who is a member and what plan it is on. Anyone you invite sees the whole workspace.

You must be at least 18 and able to enter a contract to use ShelfStep. If you use ShelfStep for a company, you confirm you may bind that company to these terms.

The demo workspace is read-only and its contents are fictional; nothing you do there is saved.

ShelfStep is offered to businesses in the United States and is meant for business use only. You represent that you use it for your food business, not for personal, family or household purposes.

Everything you put into ShelfStep — recipes, formulas, costs, contacts, files, records, listings, messages — stays yours. Where that includes other people’s personal details, the Data Processing Terms apply: you decide why they are there and ShelfStep processes them for you. You give us the limited permission needed to store it, show it to your workspace members and, where these terms say so, to counterparties and the public; to process it with the AI features you invoke; and to send the emails you ask us to send.

You are responsible for what you enter: that you have the right to use it, that contact details you add or import were obtained lawfully, and that records such as lot codes, dates, pH readings, allergens and ingredient lists are accurate. Records kept in ShelfStep are your records and are only as accurate as what you enter. ShelfStep is a convenience for keeping them, not your system of record for regulatory purposes: it does not by itself satisfy any record-keeping rule (for example 21 CFR 117.305 and 117.315 on keeping records available, or the traceability rule’s 24-hour production to FDA), it does not warrant that an export meets any regulator’s format, and it does not warrant that records will be reachable during an inspection or a recall. Keep your own copies. You can export your whole workspace, and CSVs of orders, sales and records, at any time from the Account page.

Your content is confidential. “Your content” means everything your workspace holds, and in particular your recipes and formulas — ingredients, quantities and proportions, processes, costs, suppliers, and your lot, batch, delivery, sales and complaint records. We treat your content as your confidential information. We use it only to provide the service to your workspace and in the ways these terms describe; we do not sell it, license it, use it to advertise, show it to other users or other workspaces except where you publish, send or order something or join a program (and then only what that feature says it shows), combine it with other workspaces’ content (except to honour an email opt-out that applies across ShelfStep), use it to benchmark or build products for anyone else, or use it — or let any AI provider use it — to train AI models. We share it only with the service providers listed in the Privacy Policy, each only for its role and each bound to keep it confidential. Anyone at ShelfStep who can reach it is bound to keep it confidential, and we look at it only as the Privacy Policy describes. We do count things across the service — how many workspaces, launches or lots exist, which features are used — to run and improve ShelfStep; those counts never include what a recipe contains, what anything costs, or who your buyers and suppliers are. This paragraph does not cover information that is already public (for example what you publish on a sell page), that you already gave someone else without restriction, or that we are legally required to disclose under the next paragraph.

If someone demands your content from us. If a government agency, court or other party demands your content, we will send them to you where we can, disclose only what the law requires, and tell your workspace admins before we disclose anything unless the law forbids it or there is an emergency involving risk of serious harm. Where the demand is from a private party in a lawsuit, we will ask them to get it from you, and we may object to a demand we believe is overbroad or unlawful.

AI features send the relevant parts of your workspace (for example a product brief, formula, or contact history) to our AI providers, named in the Privacy Policy, to generate a response. They process it under commercial terms that do not allow them to train their models on it, and we have not opted in to any such use. Outputs can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Review them before acting on them, especially anything about food safety, allergens, labeling, regulation, or money, and before sending any drafted email.

Each plan includes an AI allowance with two parts: a monthly amount of AI use, and a daily limit on the number of AI actions. The current amounts for each plan are shown on the Pricing and Billing pages. An add-on bought on the Billing page raises that month’s amount; it does not raise the daily limit, and it expires at the end of the month. We may adjust allowances to keep the service sustainable and will show the current limits on the Billing page.

As between you and ShelfStep, you own the text ShelfStep generates for you. It is not reviewed by a professional before you see it, it may not be unique (similar text may be generated for other makers), and unedited AI-generated text may not be protectable by copyright. ShelfStep is software, not a consultant; no professional relationship is created by using it.

Concept pictures. ShelfStep can make AI pictures of what a product could look like, inside a workspace and on the free See your product page. A concept picture is an idea, not a photo of a real product: its package, label text and details may be wrong, and it is not a label review. You may use and share the concept pictures made for you, including in your own marketing, as long as you do not present one as a photograph of an actual product and do not remove or obscure the “Concept picture” mark that downloaded and free pictures carry. Do not use them to imitate another company’s brand or packaging. Free pictures are limited per visitor per day, and we may change or stop the free page at any time.

No reliance. AI-generated content is provided for you to check, not to act on. You agree that you are not relying on it as legal, regulatory, food-safety or professional advice; that you will verify anything you are about to act on with your Process Authority, a qualified consultant or the agency concerned; and that any decision you make after seeing it is yours. This is the basis on which we make the AI features available at their price.

When you send outreach or an order-related email from ShelfStep, the message goes to a real person or business on your behalf. You are responsible for its content and for complying with anti-spam law (for example CAN-SPAM). Do not use ShelfStep to send unsolicited bulk email. Replies are routed back into your workspace so the conversation stays in one place.

SMS Terms. ShelfStep sends optional text reminders to team members who ask for them: production steps that are due, and wholesale orders waiting to be accepted. ShelfStep never texts a number first. A workspace admin can save a team member’s mobile number, which sends nothing at all; the person holding that phone texts JOIN to ShelfStep’s number, receives the terms naming the workspace asking, and is sent nothing further unless they reply YES. Nobody can opt in on someone else’s behalf.

These are recurring messages, sent at most once a day and only when something is due. Message and data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help, or contact us at hello@shelfstep.com or (260) 285-4984. Reply STOP at any time to end them; that stops texts from every workspace at once, immediately, and needs no explanation. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. What ShelfStep records when you agree, and what Twilio receives, is set out in the Privacy Policy: we do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Publishing a listing makes its sell page public on the open internet — anyone with the link can read it and can send you an inquiry or a sample request without an account. Your contact email is not printed on the page unless you turn that on in the listing; the inquiry form delivers messages to it either way. You are responsible for everything on it: price, availability, claims, and the accuracy of the ingredient and allergen information drawn from your formula. Unpublish it to take it down.

ShelfStep connects buyers and sellers; it is not a party to any order. Sellers are responsible for their products, pricing, compliance, fulfillment, invoicing and collections. Buyers are responsible for paying sellers under whatever terms they agree. Payment terms, due dates, reminders and “payment sent” notices in ShelfStep are records and messages between the two of you, not a guarantee or an obligation of ShelfStep. We do not process payment for marketplace orders and do not guarantee any order will be accepted, fulfilled or paid. Disputes about an order are between buyer and seller.

If you sell, you warrant for every listing that it is accurate; that the ingredient, allergen, net-quantity and label information is complete and complies with federal and your state’s food law; that you hold the licenses and registrations your product needs; that you are the seller of record; that you carry, or will obtain before shipping wholesale, product liability insurance appropriate to your product (we recommend at least $1,000,000 per occurrence, and we may ask for a certificate of insurance before a listing stays live or above a sales volume we announce with 30 days’ notice); and that you will tell affected buyers and ShelfStep within 24 hours of learning of a recall or safety problem with a product you sold here. If you buy, you acknowledge that ShelfStep is not the seller, has not inspected the product, and is not a party to the sale. The sale of goods between buyer and seller is governed by Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code as enacted in the applicable state. Nothing here makes ShelfStep the agent, partner or joint venturer of either of you.

We may unpublish a listing or remove marketplace access that appears to break the law, to misstate food-safety or allergen information, or to infringe someone else’s rights. If you believe a listing or document infringes your copyright, follow the notice steps on our copyright policy page, which names our designated agent; we act on complete notices and close the accounts of repeat infringers.

The Free plan is free. Paid plans are billed monthly or yearly, as you choose at checkout, in USD through Stripe, in advance, and renew automatically for the same period until cancelled. You can cancel anytime from Plan & billing, which opens Stripe’s secure billing page where the cancellation is made; access continues until the end of the paid period (the month or year you paid for) and is not refunded for a partial period. If a payment fails, Stripe retries it and your plan stays active while it does; if the subscription ends, the workspace moves to Free. Everything you entered stays stored, and paid-only features (such as publishing on the Market, or launches beyond the Free allowance) become available again when you upgrade.

Plan limits (such as active launches or team members) are described on the Pricing page and may change with notice. Prices may change with at least 30 days’ notice, taking effect at your next renewal. If you pay yearly, we email your workspace admins 25 to 40 days before each renewal with the date, the amount, and how to cancel.

Free and promotional time. We sometimes give a workspace paid features at no charge: a trial when you sign up, a founding-maker offer, a code, an invite reward, or time we grant directly. No card is needed and nothing is ever charged for it. That time has no cash value, cannot be transferred, exchanged or refunded, and runs to the date shown on your Plan & billing page; when it ends the workspace moves to the Free plan and nothing you entered is deleted. We may change or end these offers for new sign-ups at any time, and we may withdraw free time claimed through abuse — for example, extra accounts or workspaces created to claim an offer more than once. The offers running today, and the rules for each, are on our offers page.

Add-ons and top-ups. Some things are bought on top of a plan. Add-ons — extra team seats, extra active launches, and unbranded emails and pages — are added to your subscription, billed with it for as long as they are on it, prorated when you add or remove them, and they end when the plan ends. Top-ups — extra AI allowance for the month, extra concept pictures, extra file storage — are one-time purchases, are not refundable, and do not renew: picture and storage top-ups stay with the workspace, while AI allowance expires at the end of the month you bought it for. The prices for each are shown on the Billing page before you buy. If your workspace has add-ons and you want a smaller plan, email us and we will make the change with you.

Who can cancel. Only a workspace admin can change or cancel the plan, and the workspace is responsible for the charge. If your card is on the subscription but you are not an admin, ask an admin to cancel, or email legal@shelfstep.com from the address Stripe has for you and we will cancel it for you within two business days, effective at the end of the paid period. If a charge was a mistake — a double charge, or a plan you meant to cancel — email hello@shelfstep.com and we will put it right.

Don’t use ShelfStep to break the law, infringe someone else’s rights, send spam, submit false inquiries or orders, probe or overload the service, scrape other makers’ data, or misrepresent who you are, or post reviews or testimonials that are fake, paid for without saying so, or shared without the author’s permission. Don’t upload malware. We can suspend or close accounts that do.

Reporting a security flaw is the exception. If you find one and tell us in good faith at security@shelfstep.com, without accessing anyone else’s data beyond what proving the flaw requires and without breaking or degrading the service, that is not a breach of this section and we will not pursue you for it. The Privacy Policy says the same.

We aim for the service to be reliable, but it is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We may change, add, or remove features. If we ever shut the service down, we will give at least 30 days’ notice and a way to export your data.

To the fullest extent the law allows, ShelfStep is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, lost profits, lost data, product recalls, regulatory penalties, or losses arising from a marketplace order or from acting on AI output, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim (or US$100 if you paid nothing). Nothing in this section limits our liability for our own gross negligence or willful misconduct, or for anything the law does not allow us to limit. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits; in that case they apply as far as the law permits.

You agree to defend and hold us harmless from third-party claims arising from your products, your listings, the records and content you enter, the emails you send, or your breach of these terms.

You can delete your workspace or your account at any time from the Account page; the data is removed immediately, except records we must keep (for example billing) and backups — including the copy kept with a second provider — which are deleted within 30 days. Where we receive or reasonably expect a legal claim or an official request, we may preserve the records relevant to it for as long as the matter requires, as the Privacy Policy describes, and we tell you when that stops a deletion. We may end or suspend the service for an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless the law prevents it. Sections 3, 4, 6, 10, 11 and 12 survive termination; our confidentiality duty in section 3 lasts for as long as we hold any of your content, backups included.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Indiana, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that we cannot resolve informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Allen County, Indiana, and you consent to their jurisdiction; either of us may instead bring an eligible claim in small-claims court. Each of us waives a jury trial. If a part of these terms is unenforceable the rest stays in force. These terms, the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Terms are the whole agreement between you and ShelfStep about the service.

Changes. We email workspace admins at their account address at least 30 days before a material change takes effect, and note it here. Changes never apply to a dispute that arose before the effective date. A material change binds you only when you accept it: on your first sign-in after the effective date we show what changed and ask you to click to accept before you continue. Continued use, silence or not opening the email is not acceptance. If you do not accept, you may export your data and close your account, and anything you have already paid for runs to the end of its period.

Clarified September 15, 2026 (not a material change — nothing you get or pay changed, and the version you accept in the product is still the September 12, 2026 version): section 7 says how a mistaken charge is put right, and section 8 names fake or unauthorised reviews and testimonials, which it already covered as misrepresentation.

Clarified September 21, 2026 (not a material change — nothing you get or pay changed, and the version you accept in the product is still the September 12, 2026 version): section 5 now sets out the text reminders in the form US carriers require, including that message and data rates may apply and how to stop. The reminders themselves are optional, already described on the Privacy Policy, and send nothing to anyone who has not texted JOIN and replied YES.

Clarified September 13, 2026 (not a material change — nothing about what you get or pay changed): section 4 now describes both parts of the AI allowance that the Pricing and Billing pages already show, and section 7 now covers the yearly billing option offered at checkout. Spelling was also standardized.

Added September 14, 2026 (nothing already charged changed): section 7 now describes add-ons and top-ups, which the Billing page already priced.

Added September 13, 2026 (nothing you pay for changed): section 7 now covers free and promotional plan time — trials, founding-maker offers, codes, invite rewards and time we grant directly — which the service began offering on this date.

Added September 13, 2026 (not a material change — each addition limits what ShelfStep may do; nothing you get or pay changed): section 3 now defines your content, including recipes and formulas, as your confidential information and says how we respond to a demand for it; section 4 says our AI providers may not train on it; section 11 names the off-site backup copy and the legal-hold exception the Privacy Policy already described; section 7 now describes the reminder we email before a yearly plan renews; and this section now says what happens to these commitments if ShelfStep changes hands.

If ShelfStep changes hands. If ShelfStep LLC merges, is acquired, or sells the service, these terms may pass to the new owner, who is bound by section 3 and the Privacy Policy for everything already in ShelfStep. The new owner may handle your content under different terms only after the notice and acceptance this section requires for a material change.

Notices. Your account email is where we send notices; keep it current. Notices to us go to legal@shelfstep.com.

“ShelfStep”, “we” and “us” mean ShelfStep LLC, an Indiana limited liability company. Accounts created before the LLC existed were contracted with its founder personally and were assigned to ShelfStep LLC on its formation; nothing else about those accounts changed.