Food safety and allergens

# Food safety and allergens **Version 1.0-pilot · controlled pilot** Written and approved by the founder of Digital Kitchen Marketplace for a small invitation-only pilot. Not reviewed by a lawyer, and it does not claim to have been. It makes no claim of legal compliance, government approval or professional certification. This policy forms part of the Terms of Service and of the Kitchen/Seller Agreement, and is readable on its own. --- ## Who is responsible for the food **The Kitchen.** The Kitchen that cooks your food is responsible for preparing it safely and lawfully, for handling and storing it, for the accuracy of its ingredients and allergen information, for the conduct of its staff, and for meeting the food-safety requirements that apply to its own operation. **Digital Kitchen Marketplace is the marketplace and the software.** We do not prepare, manufacture, own, store or handle food. ## What we check, and what that means Before a Kitchen may trade, a person at Digital Kitchen reviews its documents. No approval is automatic. Nobody can approve their own account. Every approval writes a record naming who made it. What we require depends on how the Kitchen operates. A private chef cooking in a client's kitchen and a restaurant with a dining room do not hold the same paperwork, and demanding a single universal list would mean asking some Kitchens for documents that do not exist for them while accepting nothing meaningful from others. **A food handler certificate is required of every Kitchen**, because it is the one document about the person cooking rather than the premises. Beyond that, depending on the operation, we may require business registration, an operating permit or licence, and public-health documentation, and we may ask for supporting documents at any time. ### What our review is not We hold documents, have a person read them, and record what they found. **We do not inspect kitchens. We do not watch food being prepared. We do not supervise, sample, test, or re-verify after approval.** The gap between *we checked their certificate* and *we vouch for their kitchen* is real, and this policy exists partly to state it plainly. Our checks are our own conditions of taking part in this pilot. They are not a statement that any government body, public-health authority or professional organisation has approved, certified or inspected anything. You will not see us describe a Kitchen as government approved, certified safe, guaranteed safe, or Digital Kitchen certified, because none of those would be true. ### What the badges mean Where we display a badge, it means exactly what it says and no more: - **Identity Reviewed** — a person checked identity or business-registration documents on a date. - **Documents Reviewed** — the documents we required for that Kitchen's operation type were reviewed and were in date. - **Insurance Reviewed** — insurance documentation was reviewed on a date. It does not say the cover is adequate, still current, or suitable for anything particular. Each badge carries its own limitation where it is displayed. The absence of a badge is not a claim in either direction. ## Allergens **Allergen information comes from the Kitchen** and is passed to you as the Kitchen gave it. We do not test food and we cannot verify an ingredient list. You can save a household dietary profile with allergies and dietary requirements. When you order, a snapshot of the relevant profile is attached to that order and frozen. The Kitchen sees only that snapshot, never your live profile, and the snapshot does not change afterwards even if you edit the profile. The profile deliberately holds no diagnosis, no medication, no health-card number, and no unnecessary information about children. We do not need those to help a Kitchen cook safely. ### Allergy Lock Allergy Lock is how a disclosed allergy reaches the Kitchen and gets an answer. When it triggers, the Kitchen must actively accept or decline, based on whether it can reasonably accommodate what you have disclosed. It cannot be ignored into a default. **Allergy Lock is a communication and acknowledgement feature. It is not:** - medical advice - a guarantee of allergen-free preparation - a guarantee against cross-contact - a substitute for talking to the Kitchen when more information is needed Stated plainly, because it is the sentence that matters most in this document: **Allergy Lock is not a guarantee of allergen-free preparation.** **Strict cross-contact avoidance is a request, not a guarantee.** Most kitchens handle many ingredients in one space. A Kitchen accepting the request is telling you it believes it can reasonably accommodate you — it is not certifying an allergen-free environment, and neither are we. **A Kitchen that declines is doing the right thing.** We do not treat a legitimate safety decline as poor performance. A Kitchen that accepts a request it cannot safely meet is the outcome this feature exists to prevent. ### What we each contribute **You** give accurate information about the allergy when you choose to use the feature, and ask the Kitchen if you need to know more. Nobody can cook safely around something they were not told about. **The Kitchen** decides whether it can reasonably accommodate the order, and is responsible for its own preparation and for the accuracy of what it tells you about ingredients. **We** carry the message, make sure it cannot be silently ignored, and keep the snapshot immutable so there is no dispute later about what was disclosed. That division is the truthful one. We are not going to write that an allergic customer bears sole responsibility for whatever happens — they do not control the kitchen — and we are not going to write that a Kitchen is responsible for an allergy nobody mentioned. ## When something goes wrong **Tell us, and tell the Kitchen, straight away.** Food-safety reports are kept separate from ordinary order-support cases throughout our system. They are not quality complaints and are not handled as such. **There is no time limit on reporting a safety problem.** Illness is sometimes diagnosed weeks after a meal. A safety report may lead to review of a Kitchen, suspension of a listing, restriction of an account, or a recall. While a safety hold is open on a Kitchen, its funds are not released — a control that matters if funds ever flow through this platform, which during the pilot they do not. An incident priority is a handling label. **It is not a diagnosis** and must not be read as one. ### Recalls A recall traces from a batch to the orders affected. It cannot be closed while notification records remain pending or failed. Where we cannot prove a notification was delivered, reach is reported as **unknown**. We do not claim to have reached someone we cannot show we reached. ### Reporting to a public-health authority The Kitchen is responsible for reports arising from its own operation. It is the operator a public-health authority regulates, and the only party that knows its own premises. We will cooperate with a lawful request from an authority, and we may report where we reasonably believe we are required to, or where there is a serious risk to health. We do not decide whether a legal reporting duty applies to a particular Kitchen. **Telling a public-health authority about a concern is never a breach of any policy of ours**, and we will not restrict an account for doing it. ## What we warrant We warrant our own activity: that we required the documents we say we require, that a person reviewed them, and that the records we show reflect what that person found. We do not warrant the food, the premises, the preparation, or the accuracy of ingredient and allergen information, because we do not make, see or test any of them. **Nothing in this policy limits or excludes any right or liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded**, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence. ## Contact Digital Kitchen Marketplace is the marketplace operated by Digital Kitchen Marketplace. 400 Mississauga Valley Blvd, Mississauga, Ontario, L5A 3N6, Canada Telephone: +1 416-358-2594 - General and order support: support@digitalkitchenmarketplace.com - Policy and contract questions: legal@digitalkitchenmarketplace.com - Privacy and data requests: privacy@digitalkitchenmarketplace.com