Terms of Service

The StaffApp™
Effective Date: April 15, 2026  |  Last Updated: April 17, 2026

1. Agreement Overview

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of The StaffApp™ (the “Service” or “Platform”), operated by Chef Life Media LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company (“Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), located at 65 Merrimon Avenue, Suite 1153, Asheville, North Carolina 28801. The Service is accessed at app.thestaffdevapp.com.

By creating an account, accessing, or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of a company or other legal entity (a “Customer Organization”), you represent that you have the authority to bind that entity, and “you” and “your” refer to that entity and its authorized users.

2. Definitions

• “Customer Organization” or “Customer” means the business entity (typically a restaurant, bar, hotel, or other hospitality operation) that subscribes to the Service.
• “Account Owner” means the individual who creates and pays for a Customer Organization’s subscription.
• “Authorized User” means a manager, administrator, or staff member of a Customer Organization granted access to the Service by the Account Owner or a delegated administrator.
• “Staff Record” means information maintained in the Service about an individual employee or worker of a Customer Organization, including but not limited to onboarding plans, performance check-ins, progressive discipline documentation, and associated notes, attachments, and audit trails.
• “Customer Content” means all data, text, files, voice recordings (if any), and other materials that any Authorized User submits to, generates within, or uploads to the Service.
• “DevCoach” means the AI-assisted coaching feature included in the Service.

3. Your Account

3.1 Account Registration

To use the Service, you must create an account and provide accurate, current, and complete information. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activities that occur under your account.

3.2 Minimum Age

You must be at least 18 years of age to create an account. The Service is designed for use by adult workforce-management professionals and is not intended for minors.

3.3 Authorized Users

The Account Owner is responsible for:

• Designating Authorized Users and assigning appropriate access levels
• Promptly deactivating access for former employees or users
• Ensuring all Authorized Users comply with these Terms
• All actions taken by Authorized Users under the Customer Organization’s account

3.4 Account Security

You agree to notify us immediately at support@thestaffdevapp.com of any unauthorized access or security breach. We are not liable for losses arising from unauthorized use of your account prior to such notification.

4. Subscriptions, Billing, and Trial

4.1 Plans

The Service is offered on a subscription basis. Current plans and pricing are published at thestaffdevapp.com/pricing and currently include:

Pricing may change on 30 days’ notice to active subscribers. Existing billing cycles are honored at the prior rate.

4.2 Free Trial

New accounts receive a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. At trial end, access is suspended unless a paid plan is selected. No conversion to paid is automatic.

4.3 Billing

Paid subscriptions are billed monthly or annually in advance, depending on the plan selected. All fees are non-refundable except as required by applicable law or as expressly provided in Section 4.4. You may cancel at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

4.4 Refunds

We may, at our sole discretion, issue partial refunds in cases of verified extended Service outages or billing errors. Refund requests must be submitted in writing within 30 days of the charge to support@thestaffdevapp.com.

4.5 Taxes

Fees do not include applicable taxes. You are responsible for all taxes, duties, or similar governmental assessments associated with your subscription.

4.6 Suspension for Non-Payment

We may suspend the Service for accounts 10 or more days past due. Data is retained for 30 days after suspension, after which accounts may be terminated and data deleted per Section 13.

5. Your Data and Ownership

5.1 Ownership of Customer Content

You retain all rights, title, and interest in and to Customer Content. We claim no ownership over the information you enter into the Service, including Staff Records, notes, attachments, and documentation.

5.2 License to Us

You grant Company a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide license to host, store, process, transmit, display, and otherwise use Customer Content solely to operate, maintain, secure, and improve the Service for you. This license ends when Customer Content is deleted from the Service per Section 13.

5.3 No Training on Customer Content

We do not use Customer Content to train our AI models, and we do not permit our subprocessors to do so. Specifically:

• Voice dictation audio is processed under zero-retention agreements with our speech recognition provider and is never used for model training
• DevCoach conversations and Staff Records are never used to train the underlying language models
• Aggregated, fully anonymized, non-reversible usage statistics may be used to improve the Service (e.g., “average onboarding plan length is 14 days”)

5.4 Your Responsibilities as Data Controller

For Customer Content that includes personal information about employees, job applicants, or other individuals, you (the Customer Organization) are the data controller under applicable law. You represent and warrant that:

• You have a lawful basis under applicable employment and privacy laws to collect, store, and process each individual’s information in the Service
• You have provided any legally required notices to your employees regarding the collection and use of their information, including any applicable state law notices (California, Illinois, New York, and others may apply)
• You have obtained any legally required consents, including for voice recording if applicable in your jurisdiction (Illinois BIPA, Texas CUBI, Washington, and others may apply)
• Your use of the Service for progressive discipline, performance documentation, and related employment decisions complies with applicable federal, state, and local employment laws
• You will execute a Data Processing Agreement with us if required by applicable law

We make Company available to execute a Data Processing Agreement (“DPA”) with any Customer Organization upon request. The DPA, when executed, supplements and prevails over any conflicting terms in these Terms.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree not to, and not to permit any Authorized User to:

• Use the Service in violation of any applicable law, including employment, labor, privacy, anti-discrimination, or data protection laws
• Create false or misleading Staff Records, including fabricating disciplinary documentation
• Use the Service to harass, discriminate against, or retaliate against any employee in violation of applicable law
• Attempt to access another Customer Organization’s data
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code of the Service
• Use the Service to develop a competing product
• Upload malware, conduct penetration testing without our written permission, or otherwise compromise the security of the Service
• Scrape, crawl, or use automated means to extract data beyond the features we provide
• Resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties not affiliated with your Customer Organization
• Use the Service in any manner that could reasonably be expected to damage, disable, overburden, or impair it

Violation of this Section 6 is grounds for immediate suspension or termination. See our full Acceptable Use Policy for additional detail.

7. AI Features and DevCoach Disclaimers

7.1 What DevCoach Is

DevCoach is an AI-assisted coaching tool that generates suggestions, reflections, and framing guidance based on user inputs. It is built using large language model technology.

All DevCoach frameworks, tools, methodologies, and coaching best practices are derived from the Chef Life coaching system developed by Chef Adam M. Lamb and Chef Life Media LLC. This includes the ZAK framework, progressive discipline guidance, the Successful Chef Leadership Bootcamp curriculum, and the broader library of hospitality leadership principles taught through The ChefLife Brigade. You can learn more about the underlying coaching methodology at cheflifecoaching.com and thecheflifebrigade.com.

7.2 What DevCoach Is Not

DevCoach is not:

• A substitute for professional HR, legal, or labor-relations advice
• A decision-maker for any employment action
• A source of guaranteed factual accuracy
• A licensed professional of any kind

DevCoach outputs may contain errors, inaccuracies, biases, or inappropriate suggestions. You are responsible for independently evaluating any DevCoach output before acting on it. Company expressly disclaims liability for employment decisions, disciplinary actions, or other consequential actions made in reliance on DevCoach outputs.

7.3 No Automated Employment Decisions

You agree not to use DevCoach or any other feature of the Service as an automated decision-making tool for hiring, firing, promotion, demotion, discipline, or other consequential employment actions where applicable law requires human review or disclosure of automated processing. Where applicable AI transparency laws apply (including but not limited to New York City Local Law 144, the Colorado AI Act, or the EU AI Act), you are responsible for compliance.

7.4 Voice Dictation

The voice dictation feature processes audio through a third-party speech recognition service (Deepgram, Inc.) under a zero-retention configuration. You are responsible for ensuring that any use of voice dictation complies with applicable recording, notice, and consent laws in your jurisdiction. If you operate in a jurisdiction with biometric information laws (Illinois BIPA, Texas CUBI, Washington, etc.), additional consent from your staff may be required before enabling voice dictation.

7.5 DevCoach Voice Output (Listen Feature)

Some DevCoach responses can be played aloud using a “Listen” button. The spoken audio is synthesized by a third-party text-to-speech service (ElevenLabs Inc.) using a licensed custom voice model of Chef Adam M. Lamb’s voice. The spoken output is AI-generated and does not constitute a real-time statement, opinion, or endorsement by Chef Lamb personally. The underlying coaching frameworks remain derived from the Chef Life coaching system as described in Section 7.1, but the audio you hear is machine-generated speech.

When you press Listen, only the text of the DevCoach response is transmitted to ElevenLabs for synthesis; your original question is not transmitted. Unlike voice dictation, the Listen feature does not operate under a zero-retention configuration: ElevenLabs may retain the submitted text and generated audio in operational logs under their standard retention policy. ElevenLabs does not use submitted content to train their models on our plan tier. A full description of the data flow is in our Privacy Policy.

8. Intellectual Property

8.1 Our IP

The Service, including all software, content (other than Customer Content), branding, the ZAK framework, The Successful Chef Leadership Bootcamp curriculum, documentation, and any derivative works, is owned by Chef Life Media LLC and protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws.

“The StaffApp™,” “DevCoach,” “ZAK framework™,” “Stay Tall & Frosty,” “Lead from the Heart,” “Less Oak, More Bamboo,” and “Stop Training Replacements. Start Building a Team.” are trademarks of Chef Life Media LLC.

8.2 Feedback

If you provide feedback, suggestions, or ideas about the Service, you grant Company a royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license to use that feedback without obligation.

9. Third-Party Services

The Service integrates with or depends on third-party services, including but not limited to Supabase (database and authentication), Vercel (hosting), Resend (email delivery), Deepgram (speech recognition), ElevenLabs (text-to-speech synthesis), and Anthropic (AI model provider). These third parties have their own terms and privacy policies. Company is not responsible for third-party services, but we select subprocessors with reasonable care and disclose them in our Privacy Policy.

10. Confidentiality

Each party agrees to protect the other’s Confidential Information using at least the same degree of care it uses to protect its own similar Confidential Information, but in no case less than reasonable care. “Confidential Information” means non-public information disclosed by one party to the other, including Customer Content, pricing, product roadmap, and any information marked or reasonably understood to be confidential.

11. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

11.1 Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR FREE OF HARMFUL COMPONENTS, OR THAT ANY CONTENT, INCLUDING DEVCOACH OUTPUTS, WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE.

11.2 Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL COMPANY, ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUES, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

COMPANY’S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO COMPANY IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).

11.3 Employment Decisions

COMPANY IS NOT A PARTY TO THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR STAFF. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS, INCLUDING HIRING, DISCIPLINE, TERMINATION, AND COMPLIANCE WITH APPLICABLE EMPLOYMENT LAW. COMPANY DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITY FOR CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS MADE BY YOU OR YOUR AUTHORIZED USERS, WHETHER OR NOT INFORMED BY THE SERVICE.

12. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Company, its affiliates, officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims, damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to:

• Your use of the Service in violation of these Terms or applicable law
• Your Customer Content, including claims by your employees or former employees
• Employment decisions made by you or your Authorized Users
• Your breach of Section 5.4 (data controller responsibilities)
• Claims brought under biometric information laws related to voice dictation you enabled

13. Term, Termination, and Data Lifecycle

13.1 Term

These Terms remain in effect while you have an account with the Service.

13.2 Termination by You

You may cancel your subscription at any time through the Service settings or by contacting support@thestaffdevapp.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. There are no early termination fees, cancellation fees, or minimum commitment periods.

13.3 Termination by Us

We may suspend or terminate your account with notice for material breach of these Terms, for non-payment per Section 4.6, or if required by law. We may terminate for convenience on 60 days’ notice, with a prorated refund of any pre-paid fees covering the post-termination period.

13.4 Data Export and Retention

The full data lifecycle — including the 30-day Export Grace Period (Days 1–30), Dormant Retention window (Days 31–90), permanent deletion on Day 91, and backup purge timing — is governed by our Subscription & Data Lifecycle Terms. In summary:

• You retain read-only access and in-app export for 30 days after cancellation, at no cost.
• From Day 31 through Day 90, Customer Content is held in secured dormant storage; reactivation and export requests may be made in writing to support@thestaffdevapp.com.
• On Day 91, Customer Content is permanently deleted from active systems; rolling backups purge within approximately 35 days thereafter.

Certain records may be retained as required by law, or for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims. You may request a legal hold on specific data by contacting legal@thestaffdevapp.com before the Day 91 deletion, as described in the Subscription Terms.

14. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, we will notify you by email to the Account Owner and in-app at least 30 days before the changes take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the effective date.

15. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict of laws principles.

15.1 Informal Resolution First

Before filing any formal claim, the parties agree to first attempt to resolve the dispute informally by contacting support@thestaffdevapp.com. The parties will confer in good faith for at least 60 days.

15.2 Venue

Exclusive venue for any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms lies in the state or federal courts located in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Each party consents to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

16. General Provisions

16.1 Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Subscription & Data Lifecycle Terms, Privacy Policy,