Seller Policy
Food Prepped is a marketplace where you can sell your food and beverage products, supplies and handmade products directly to buyers around the UK. We want to make sure that you and your buyers have a positive experience on Food Prepped. Please read our Seller Policy to find out more about your rights, as well as what is expected of you, as a seller.
This seller policy was published on 1st December 2023.
This seller policy is a part of our Terms of Use. By opening a Food Prepped shop, you’re agreeing to this seller policy and our Terms of Use
Selling Basics
- What can be sold on Food Prepped
- What can’t be sold on Food Prepped
- Managing your Food Prepped shop
- Seller Standards
- Selling Fees
Being a Member of the Food Prepped Community
- Creating and Uploading Content
- Privacy and Protecting Personal Information
- Communication Standards
- Communicating Cancellations
Feedback, Cases, and Your Success
- Reviews
- Food Prepped’s Case System
- Your Seller Account and Food Prepped’s Terms
- Food Prepped’s Purchase Protection Programme for Sellers
Selling Basics
Keeping in mind these basic requirements will set you up for success on Food Prepped.
What can be sold on Food Prepped
- Food Prepped is a unique marketplace. Buyers come here to purchase items that they might not find anywhere else. Items that are made and/or designed by you or your business, the seller.
If you sell handmade items, you agree that:
- All handmade items are made or designed by you or your company. If you work with a production partner, you must divulge that production partner in your applicable listings.
- You accurately describe every person involved in the making of an item in your shop in your About section.
- You are using your own photos or video content – not stock images, artistic representations, or photos used by other sellers or sites. Read more about using suitable photographs in this Help article.
If you are selling bespoke or custom-built products in the Handmade category, you agree that:
- All listings are available for purchase at a set price.
- If you are using photographs of previous work with options for customisation included in the listing (e.g., colour, flavour, shape), it is clear in your narrative that the photos shown are just examples.
For more information on how to list bespoke items, please see this Help article.
Supplies main purposes are for use in the manufacture of an item or product and may include tools, ingredients, or materials. Supplies may be handmade or commercial. Party supplies may also be sold as supplies. Click here to discover more about what may be sold as a craft supply.
We encourage you to be clear about how your craft supplies were made and where your resources come from. You can disclose whether your items have social or environmental attributes, such as organic or recycled.
What can’t be Sold on Food Prepped
Even if they otherwise meet our marketplace standards, prohibited items, services, and items that violate our intellectual property policies are not permitted to be sold on Food Prepped. All listings must offer a product for sale.
You may not create a Food Prepped listing for the purpose of sharing a referral code, posting a want ad, or similar activity that does not offer a physical or digital item for sale.
Reselling is not allowed in the handmade category on Food Prepped. Reselling refers to listing an item as handmade when you were not involved in designing or making that item.
Keep in mind that members or, in some cases third parties, may flag listings that appear to violate our policies for Food Prepped’s review.
Food Prepped may remove any listings that violate our policies. Note that listing fees are non-refundable. Food Prepped may also suspend or terminate your account for any violations. You will still be liable for settling any outstanding fees on your Food Prepped statement. You can find more information in our Fees & Payments Policy.
If you are raising money on behalf of a charity, you must obtain that charity’s consent. Please see this Help article for more information about donating any portion of your sales to charity.
Managing your Food Prepped Shop
Your shop represents you and your business to the Food Prepped community. It’s important that you, your items, and your shop are honestly and accurately represented. By selling on Food Prepped, you agree that you will:
- Provide honest, accurate information to Food Prepped and in your About section. Honour your Shop Policies.
- Ensure your shop content, such as any text, photos or videos used to represent yourself, your shop or your listings, abide by Food Prepped’s policies, including our Anti-Discrimination Policy.
- Accurately represent your items in listings and listing photos.
- Respect the intellectual property of others. If you feel someone has violated your intellectual property rights, you can report it to Food Prepped.
- Not engage in fee avoidance.
- Not create duplicate shops or take any other action (such as influencing clicks, baskets, or sales) for the purpose of evading Food Prepped’s policies, shilling or influencing search.
- Not coordinate pricing with other sellers.
Seller Standards
By listing a product for sale on Food Prepped you understand and agree that you are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations for the products you list for sale, including any required labels and warnings. Food Prepped assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, labelling, or content of your listings meeting Service Level Standards. As a seller, you must provide great customer service and maintain trust with your buyers. These requirements are called our Seller Service Level Standards. Food Prepped may reach out to you if your shop fails to meet Food Prepped’s Seller Service Level Standards. Read more here.
By selling on Food Prepped, you agree to:
- Honour your dispatch and processing times. Sellers are obligated to dispatch an item or otherwise complete a transaction with a buyer in a prompt manner unless there is an exceptional circumstance. Please be aware that legal requirements for dispatch times vary by country. Read more in our Delivery Policy.
- Respond to Messages in a timely manner.
- Honour the commitments you make in your shop policies.
- Resolve disagreements or order issues directly with the buyer. In the unlikely event that you can’t reach a resolution, Food Prepped can help through our case system. Read about your rights and responsibilities regarding cases here.
- If you are unable to complete an order, you must notify the buyer and cancel the order. Read about how to cancel an order in this Help article.
Selling Fees
Sellers may be charged for using some of Food Prepped’s services. There are fees associated with listing, selling, advertising, and certain other Food Prepped products and features. You can find information on fees in the Fees and Payments Policy.
Being a Member of the Food Prepped Community
At Food Prepped, everyone is expected to treat fellow members of the Food Prepped community with respect. As a seller, you have additional responsibilities to safeguard personal information and communicate promptly with buyers to provide a great customer experience.
Creating and Uploading Content
As a member of Food Prepped, you can create and upload a variety of content, like listings, Messages, text, photos, and videos. To keep our community safe and respectful, you agree that you will not upload content that:
- Contains hateful or derogatory language or imagery, or any content that is subject to our Anti-Discrimination and Hate Speech Policy;
- Contains threats, harassment, extortion, or violates our rules about interference.
- Violates someone else’s intellectual property rights.
- Is false, deceptive, or misleading.
- Contains unwelcome advertising or promotions, appeals for donations, or spam.
- Contains private information, whether it is your own, or someone else’s.
- Encourages or facilitates a transaction that evades the Food Prepped checkout process.
- Contains prohibited medical drug claims.
- Violates any of the rules defined in our Prohibited Items Policy.
Some content on Food Prepped is subject to additional requirements. Please see below for more details.
Read more about how Food Prepped search works, what factors impact search ranking, and how you can help optimise your listings and shop here and in The Ultimate Guide to Food Prepped Search.
Privacy and Protecting Personal Information
You are responsible for protecting members’ personal information you receive or process, and you must comply with all relevant legal requirements. This includes applicable data protection and privacy laws that govern the ways in which you can use Food Prepped user information. These laws may require that you post and comply with your own privacy policy, which must be accessible to Food Prepped users with whom you interact. Your privacy policy must be compatible with this seller policy and Food Prepped’s Terms of Use, and Food Prepped’s Privacy Policy.
When you sell using our Services (subject to this Seller Policy) or use Food Prepped’s API (also subject to the Food Prepped API Terms of Use), you may receive and determine what to do with certain personal information, such as when communicating with users and entering transactions with buyers. This means you process personal information (for example, buyer name, email address, and delivery address) and, to the extent you do so, under EU law, you are an independent controller of data relating to other users that you may have obtained through the Services. For more information on the General Data Protection Regulation, see more resources at https://gdpr-info.eu and http://gdprandyou.ie.
As a data controller (that is someone who decides what personal data is collected and the purpose you’ll use the data for) to the extent that you process user personal information outside of the Services, you may be required under applicable data protection and privacy laws to honour requests received from such users for data access, portability, correction, deletion, and objections to processing. Also, if you disclose personal information without the buyer’s proper consent, you are responsible for that unauthorised disclosure. This includes, for example, disclosures you make or unintentional data breaches. For example, you may receive a buyer’s email address or other information because of entering a transaction with that buyer. This information may only be used for Food Prepped-related communications or for Food Prepped-facilitated transactions.
You may not use this information for unsolicited commercial messages or unauthorised transactions without the buyer’s consent, and subject to other applicable Food Prepped policies and laws, you may not add any Food Prepped member to your email or physical mailing list, use that buyer’s identity for marketing, or obtain or retain any payment information. Please bear in mind that you’re responsible for knowing the standard of consent required in any given instance.
If Food Prepped and you are found to be joint data controllers of personal information, and if Food Prepped is sued, fined, or otherwise incurs expenses because of something that you did in your capacity as a joint data controller of buyer personal information, you agree to indemnify, defend and hold Food Prepped (and its employees, agents, consultants, subsidiaries, partners, affiliates, and licensors) harmless against any claims, costs, losses, damages, liabilities, judgements and expenses (including reasonable lawyer fees) in connection with your processing of buyer personal information.
For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.
Communication Standards
Messages:
With Food Prepped’s “Messages”, you can communicate directly with your buyers or other Food Prepped members. Messages are a great way for buyers to ask you questions about an item or an order. Messages may not be used for the following activities:
- Sending unsolicited advertising or promotions, requests for donations or spam.
- Harassing or abusing another member or violating our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
- Contacting someone after they have clearly asked you not to.
- Interfering with a transaction or the business of another member.
- Exchanging personal contact, financial or other information for the purposes of evading the checkout process on Food Prepped, including phone number, address, email, social media handles, external URLs, instructions for money transfer, etc.
Interference:
Interference occurs when a member purposely interferes with another member’s shop to drive away their business. This is strictly forbidden on Food Prepped. Illustrations of interference include:
- Contacting another member via Messages to advise against a certain member, shop, or item.
- Posting in public areas to demonstrate or discuss a dispute with another member.
- Purchasing from a seller for the solitary drive of leaving a negative review.
- Maliciously clicking on a competitor’s ads to drain that member’s advertising budget, also known as “click fraud”.
- Creating or using an independent buyer account to maliciously up-vote another shop’s negative reviews to position those reviews more prominently.
Harassment and Discrimination: Any use of Messages to harass other members is strictly prohibited. Similarly, Messages may not be used to support or glorify hatred or otherwise violate our Anti-Discrimination Policy. If you receive a Message that infringe this seller policy, please let us know at the earliest opportunity.
Forums and Teams:
Forums and Teams are public spaces provided by Food Prepped where sellers can connect, but there are communication standards that must be followed. More information can be found in the Food Prepped Community Policy.
Communicating Cancellations
If you are unable to complete a transaction, you must inform the buyer via Messages and terminate the transaction. If the buyer already submitted payment, you must issue a full refund. You are encouraged to keep proof of any refunds in the event a dispute arises. All cancellations are subject to our Cancellation Policy.
Please be mindful that in addition to this seller policy, each country has its own laws surrounding distribution, terminations, returns and exchanges. Please acquaint yourself with the laws of your own country and those of your buyers’ countries.
Sellers may still cancel an order and work toward a resolution with a buyer as they see fit for policies applied to their shops.
Feedback, Cases and Your Success
Reviews
Reviews are a great way for you to build a reputation on Food Prepped. Buyers can leave a review, including a one to five star rating and a photograph or video of their purchase, within 100 days after the latter date of their item’s estimated delivery date. If an estimated delivery date is not available, the review window opens after the order’s processing time and delivery time have elapsed. Buyers can edit their review, including the photograph or video, any number of times during that 100-day period.
On the rare occasion you receive an unfavourable review, you can reach out to the buyer or leave a response.
In addition to our rules for Creating and Uploading Content in Section 2a, reviews and your response to reviews may not:
- Contain graphic, mature, or obscene language or imagery, or any content that is subject to our mature content policy;
- Be about things outside the seller’s control, such as a delivery company, Food Prepped or a third party.
- Include shilling or falsely inflating a shop’s review score.
- Undermine the integrity of the Reviews system.
Food Prepped’s Case System
The Case system is how a buyer notifies Food Prepped of an order issue or dispute that they’re unable to resolve with a seller, for Food Prepped to help them reach a resolution. Buyers must contact sellers directly through the Help with Order link and endeavour to resolve any unresolved issues before opening a case on Food Prepped. For this reason, it is important that you fill out your shop policies and regularly respond to Messages from your buyers.
Once a buyer contacts you to report an issue with an order, you will have 48 hours to resolve the issue. If the issue is unresolved in this time frame, a case may be opened by the buyer. Once a case has been opened, Food Prepped will assist in the resolution of the case between the buyer and seller. This may include, but is not limited to, spontaneously closing the case, and issuing a refund to the buyer or reviewing the case further to help the buyer and seller settle it as quickly as possible.
Food Prepped reserves the right to settle order issues for situations involving, but not limited to, seller inactivity, harassment, refusal of service, manipulation, and undermining the veracity of the case system before the 48-hour window.
Buyers may file a case for items that never arrive, arrive damaged, or do not match the listing description as part of Food Prepped’s Purchase Protection Programme (for more information on case eligibility, click here. Food Prepped may request your assistance in resolving a case opened against your shop. By using Food Prepped’s case system, you understand that Food Prepped may use your personal information for the purpose of resolving disputes with other members. For more information on our privacy policy, click here.
For certain cases, sellers are protected by Food Prepped’s Purchase Protection Programme. If the case falls outside of Food Prepped’s Purchase Protection Programme for Sellers, unless otherwise required by law, you will be required to refund the order, including original postage and return postage. Food Prepped reserves the right to issue a refund to the buyer and recoup funds from your account, including your payment account reserve, if payment was made via Food Prepped Payments.
Your Seller Account and Food Prepped’s Terms
To keep Food Prepped safe and improve our Services, we may take actions that limit the visibility of your shop, listings, or ads, or that impact your payment account. In the event a shop sees unusual order activity, or we otherwise believe that your actions or shop may result in buyer disputes, chargebacks, increased risk of fraud, counterfeiting, or other claims, Food Prepped may take actions such as limiting visibility of your account, or placing restrictions or reserves on your payments account, in accordance with our Terms of Use, including this Seller Policy and our Food Prepped Payments Policy. When appropriate and permitted by law, Food Prepped will communicate information to the affected seller about the issue.
In the event a shop sees an abnormal spike in orders, particularly in a high demand classification, a shop may see an increase or decrease in its search ranking. Often, if a shop sees an increase in fulfilled orders and good reviews, this may result in higher visibility and search rank. However, sometimes a rapid increase in orders can reduce visibility. Read more about how Food Prepped search works, and what factors impact search ranking, and how you can help optimise your listings and shop here and in Guide to Food Prepped Search.
In addition, we may limit the visibility of listings or ads in the interest of keeping Food Prepped safe and improving our Services. For example, listings or ads may have decreased visibility because they include terms that represent a prohibited item or based on third party policies. These listings or ads may also be restricted from appearing in one or more features of the Services. While these listings or ads may have limited visibility, they are still discoverable in search.
Food Prepped may make changes to onboarding or authentication processes for sellers at our sole discretion. Completion of these processes may be required for seller account activation or continued access and usage.
We may deactivate Your Content to some or all users, If Food Prepped has cause to believe you, Your Content, or your use of the Services infringe our Terms of Use, including this, Seller Policy. We may even suspend or terminate your account (and any accounts Food Prepped conclude are related to your account) and your access to the Services. Usually, Food Prepped will notify you that Your Content or account has been suspended or terminated, unless you’ve frequently violated our Terms of Use, or we have legal or regulatory motives preventing us from informing you.
Food Prepped’s Purchase Protection Programme for Sellers
Food Prepped also provides limited solutions to sellers who meet the requirements of our Purchase Protection Programme for Sellers. Read more about Purchase Protection Programme for Sellers here.
Last updated on 01 Dec 2023
