This English version is a translation provided for your convenience. The German version is the legally binding one; if the two differ, the German text prevails.
These terms of use govern the use of the "Royal Food Club" platform – consisting of the website royal-food-club.com and the Royal Food Club app for iOS and Android. Please read the terms carefully. By registering or using the platform, you agree to them.
The provider and contracting party is Michael Wagner, sole trader, Hans Handl-Gasse 4/18, 3100 St. Pölten, Austria (hereinafter "we" or the "operator"; for details see the legal notice). These terms apply equally to the use of the website and of the app. Deviating terms of the user do not become part of the contract.
The language of the contract is German. Because the app is also offered outside the German-speaking countries, we provide this English translation. It is meant to help you understand the terms; if the versions differ, the German version prevails.
The combined word/figurative mark consisting of the chef/moustache emblem and the lettering "Royal Food Club" is registered with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as an EU trade mark (number 019239791). These terms of use do not transfer any rights in the trade mark.
Royal Food Club is a community platform on which users can discover, publish, rate, comment on and save cooking recipes and exchange ideas with others. Use is free of charge for you; there is no paywall.
The platform consists of two unequal parts, and that is intentional:
Operation is financed from two sources: the voluntary supporter subscription "Royal Sparkle Upgrade" (see Paid services) and a few clearly labelled advertising placements by curated partners (see Advertising and advertising partners). The platform starts without paid advertising; a placement appears only once a partner has booked it. Some of the features – such as searching recipes and viewing public profiles – can be used without an account. An account is required for your own contributions, ratings, comments, the download of recipe PDFs and the management of a profile. There is no entitlement to a particular range of features or to permanent availability.
When the app is first started, an anonymous device account is additionally created, with which you can read and browse without signing in. It carries no information provided by you and becomes the starting identity again when you sign out.
Anyone who is not yet of legal age may use the platform from the age of 14. For paid services (see Section 10), minors need the consent of their legal representatives in so far as, under the law applicable to them, they are not permitted to dispose of the money used for this themselves. If the law of the state in which you have your habitual residence provides for a higher minimum age for the use of such a service or for consent to data processing – in the European Union up to 16 years, depending on the Member State – you may use the platform below that age only with the consent of your parents or legal guardians. Further details can be found in the privacy policy.
Important: If an e-mail address provided at registration is not confirmed within 14 days, the account is anonymised and its recipes are set to private. This is equivalent to deleting the account and cannot be undone.
After a registration with e-mail address and password, we send you a confirmation link. As long as the address has not been confirmed, we send no further messages to it other than the confirmation e-mail itself – this protects persons whose address was entered by someone else, whether by mistake or on purpose.
Restoring the account or the content associated with it is not possible after anonymisation.
You can change your e-mail address in the account settings. The new address only takes effect after you have confirmed it via the confirmation link sent to it. Until then, your previous address remains the relevant one for signing in and for the sending of messages. The 14-day period mentioned above relates to the address provided at registration; a later change neither suspends it nor starts it anew.
For the processing in connection with the confirmation, see the privacy policy.
To ensure that the platform remains a safe and pleasant place, binding rules apply.
You warrant that your content complies with these rules and with applicable law.
The rights in your content (e.g. recipes, photos, texts) remain with you. So that we can display and make available your content within the platform, you grant us a simple (non-exclusive) right of use, free of charge and unrestricted in territory and in time for the duration of the provision, to store your content, to process it technically (e.g. format adjustment, preview images/BlurHash, conversion of quantities and temperatures into the system of units of the person reading), to translate it (see the privacy policy, section on DeepL), to output it as a PDF document and to make it publicly accessible within the platform (website and app). You can delete your content at any time; copies already created in technical caches are removed in the course of the usual processes.
If one of your recipes receives an award (see "King of the Week"), you additionally grant us the right to make the recipe title, the recipe image, your user name and a link to the recipe page publicly accessible also outside the platform, on our own social media channels and in our own promotion of the platform; for this purpose we may crop and scale the recipe image and embed it in an image card. Your profile picture is not covered by this, and no link to your profile is set. In all other respects this right is deliberately narrow: it applies only to content that you have made public anyway, and only to our own promotion. A sub-licence to advertising partners or other third parties, use in third-party advertising and a sale are excluded. The grant is free of charge, does not transfer any copyright and can be revoked by you at any time with effect for the future – most easily with the switch under Section 11. We remove posts that have already been published at your request.
You warrant that you hold the necessary rights in the content you post and that you do not infringe any third-party rights. The same applies to content that you bring in via an import function – such as recipes from a Mealie archive or from the app's quick recipe import: import only what you have written yourself or are allowed to use.
Recipes and content on the platform serve exclusively for information and inspiration. They do not constitute medical, health or nutritional-science advice.
We give no guarantee as to the accuracy, completeness or suitability of recipes, quantities, preparation instructions or information on ingredients and allergens. This expressly also applies to automatically converted quantities and temperatures and to machine translations: both are generated without editorial review. The original values entered by the author can be displayed at any time in the app's settings. In particular in the case of allergies, intolerances, pregnancy or health restrictions, check every ingredient on your own responsibility and, if in doubt, seek expert advice. Preparation and consumption are at your own responsibility.
In designated places on the website and in the app, we show placements by advertising partners – in the form of individual campaigns in the feed and in the card slots designated for this purpose. These are always labelled as advertising and deliberately designed with restraint: no pop-ups over content, no videos that start by themselves, no formats that interfere with operation.
Start without paid advertising. Royal Food Club starts without paid partner placements. The spaces for them have been built; each one is filled individually, and only once we have selected a suitable partner. As long as no placement has been booked, you will not see any. From then on, what is stated in this section applies, and you will recognise every paid placement by the label "Anzeige" ("Advertisement"). The platform's own notices – such as the "King of the Week" – are not third-party advertising and do not carry this label.
A placement is not a recommendation in the legal sense. We assume no liability for the partners' offers, content, prices, availability or handling of contracts; contracts for partner offers are concluded exclusively between you and the respective partner. The ban on advertising in the community guidelines concerns user-generated content and does not cover our labelled placements.
Partner ingredients. The shared ingredient catalogue may contain ingredients bearing a manufacturer's brand name whose inclusion a partner pays for ("Magic Zutaten", magic ingredients). They go through the same review as any other new ingredient and are highlighted with ✨ in the recipe editor only. A public recipe that uses such an ingredient earns its author experience points once (see Royal ranks). In the recipe view, a partner ingredient appears like any other ingredient, without highlighting; it is not a placement within the meaning of this section. Whether you use a partner ingredient is entirely up to you. There is no entitlement to an ingredient remaining highlighted or continuing to earn experience points – for instance when the partnership ends; the ingredient then stays in your recipes, and experience points already credited are retained.
Accounts carry a royal title, which at the same time decides which features are open to them. The title is earned, namely with experience points that an account collects by taking part in the platform: through its own contributions and interactions (for instance publishing recipes, using partner ingredients, likes, comments, ratings and following other accounts) and through other users' interactions with its recipes and its profile. Each interaction counts only once per pair involved; interactions with the account's own recipes and interactions involving an account that is not registered do not count. An account's points total never decreases. Which interaction earns how many points, from which points total which rank is reached and what it unlocks follows from the table currently in force on the page Royal ranks (in German).
Each rank includes the features of the ranks below it. The number of social media links that can be stored in the profile grows with the rank.
In addition, the following applies:
There is no legal entitlement to a particular rank. We may adjust thresholds, point values, designations and the features linked to them, provided this is reasonable for users; ranks already attained and experience points already collected remain unaffected by this. Obtaining a rank or the rating entitlement by dishonest means, for instance through second accounts or pre-arranged mutual likes, is prohibited and may lead to the withdrawal of the entitlement under the section "Suspension, cancellation and deletion".
The Royal Sparkle Upgrade is a voluntary supporter subscription. Its purpose is to help sustain the development and operation of the platform – the content is, to a very large extent, also accessible and usable without an account and without a subscription. The scope of the service:
The subscription does not confer a rank. Title and form of address remain unchanged and continue to be based exclusively on the rank earned. When the subscription ends, the above features cease to apply; ranks and badges already earned, together with the features attached to them, are retained.
Guarantee of existing features: Features that were available free of charge at the time of the start of the subscription will not subsequently be moved behind the subscription. Searching and reading recipes and viewing public profiles remain accessible without an account and without a subscription. The download of recipe PDFs requires a registered account, but no subscription.
Price, scope of service and term are clearly shown before the contract is concluded; the price displayed in the respective app store is decisive. It is a total price and includes the taxes payable by law. Billing is carried out via the respective app store – Apple App Store or Google Play – in accordance with their payment terms; it is not possible to take out the subscription via the website. The store announces price changes for current subscriptions in advance; depending on the store and the extent of the change, they only take effect with your consent. Only registered accounts can make purchases. Minors need the consent of their legal representatives (see Section 3). For the processing of billing data, see the privacy policy.
When taking out the subscription, consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal ("Rücktrittsrecht" under Section 11 of the Austrian Distance and Off-Premises Contracts Act (FAGG)).
Right of withdrawal
You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason. The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day of the conclusion of the contract.
To exercise the right of withdrawal, you must inform us (Michael Wagner, Hans Handl-Gasse 4/18, 3100 St. Pölten, Austria, e-mail: office@royal-food-club.com) of your decision to withdraw from this contract by an unequivocal statement (e.g. a letter sent by post or an e-mail). You may use the model withdrawal form below, but it is not obligatory.
To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.
Effects of withdrawal
If you withdraw from this contract, all payments made for this contract shall be reimbursed to you without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract. The reimbursement will be carried out using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.
In addition to this, because the payment runs via the store:
Model withdrawal form
(Complete and return this form only if you wish to withdraw from the contract.)
(*) Delete as appropriate.
Once a week we honour one recipe as "King of the Week". The award is free of charge, voluntary and open to all accounts with public recipes; no participation fee is charged and no purchase is required.
The determination runs fully automatically – every Saturday at 10:00 (time zone Europe/Vienna) – and without editorial selection. What is assessed is the activity of the past seven days, namely how many other people, in this period,
Each person counts at most once per recipe and kind; your own likes, ratings, marks and views never count for your recipe. Each kind enters the total with a fixed point value. The recipe with the highest score wins; in the event of a tie, the older recipe. If no recipe achieves a score above zero, the award is dropped for that week without replacement.
Classic. On the last Saturday of a month – from 31 October 2026 – a "classic" is crowned instead of the weekly ranking: what is then assessed is the entire lifetime of a recipe so far, and only recipes that are at least eight weeks old can take part. The weekly ranking on the Saturday after that covers two weeks.
A recipe is eligible to take part as long as
Each recipe can win at most once. You can win again with a different recipe. For this purpose we permanently keep a history of winners.
The award-winning recipe receives a highlighted placement on the website and in the app for a little over a week – until the end of the Sunday after next. In addition, we publish on our own social media channels – currently Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and X – a post with the recipe title, the recipe image, your user name, the counts of the assessment period (likes, ratings, times cooked) and a link to the recipe page. Your profile picture is not used for this, and no link to your profile is set. The grant of rights required for this is governed by Section 6; the data protection details are set out in Section 21 of the privacy policy.
You can switch off participation at any time. The switch for not taking part in the "King of the Week" programme is located in the app under Settings → Privacy and is available for every registered account – it is not tied to any paid service. If it is set, all your recipes no longer take part in the determination. It can equally be done informally by e-mail to office@royal-food-club.com.
The switch takes effect for the future. Posts that have already been published are not automatically removed as a result; at your request we delete them from our channels. We cannot undo further dissemination by third parties – such as shared posts or screenshots. If you flip the switch back, your account takes part again in future; however, a recipe that has already received the award cannot win a second time.
In addition to the weekly award, the platform automatically awards badges for milestones reached. There is no legal entitlement to these either; we may adjust designations and thresholds. Badges are independent of participation in the "King of the Week" – the switch above does not switch them off.
You decide for yourself how visible you are on the platform. In addition to the choice of whether a recipe or an ingredient is public or private, the following switches in particular are available to you in the settings:
Private recipes and ingredients. Private recipes can neither be found nor accessed publicly, do not appear in other people's cookbook collections and do not count towards public counts – nor towards the rank thresholds under Section 9. Private ingredients are no longer available for selection when a recipe is entered, but remain visible as normal on existing recipes.
You can deactivate your account at any time without deleting it. If you wish, all your recipes and ingredients are set to private at the same time. A deactivated account behaves as follows:
Deactivation is not deletion: your data remains stored so that reactivation is possible. For deletion, see Section 14.
You can report to us content that is unlawful or violates these terms – via the report function in the app or by e-mail to office@royal-food-club.com. We review incoming reports and take measures where necessary. We inform the persons concerned of material decisions – in so far as provided for under Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act) – stating the reasons. The aforementioned e-mail address serves as the central point of contact for reports; you can write to us in German or English (see also the point of contact in the legal notice).
Moderation decisions are made by people. Every report is reviewed by a person from our team, and every measure is taken by a person and documented together with its reasons. We do not use automated procedures that detect, assess or remove content. Only the time limits expressly described in these terms (for instance under Section 4) and technical protective measures against abuse, such as request limits, run automatically.
The following measures in particular may be considered:
You can lodge a complaint against a measure informally by e-mail. We then review the decision again and inform you of the result. Your statutory rights, in particular recourse to the courts and out-of-court dispute settlement procedures under the Digital Services Act, remain unaffected.
You can end your account at any time via the app or via the page Delete account (in German). We are entitled to remove content and to warn accounts, suspend them temporarily or close them permanently if a user repeatedly or seriously violates these terms or applicable law. In the case of serious violations, immediate suspension is possible. Statutory rights remain unaffected.
Deletion cannot be undone. Your personal data is anonymised and your profile picture is deleted; afterwards your profile shows only "Deleted user" ("Gelöschter Benutzer") – without name, picture and profile texts. Your published recipes remain publicly in place – without being attributed to you as a person; likewise your comments, ratings and Food Snaps remain in place under this designation. If you choose the option "Set my recipes to private" when deleting, all your recipes and ingredients are set to private beforehand and are thus no longer publicly accessible.
A running Royal Sparkle Upgrade does not end with the account. Cancel it beforehand in the store's subscription settings; otherwise the store continues to bill (see Section 10).
Back up your data beforehand. In the app under Settings → Account → Data export – or on the website under Import & Export (in German) – you can request and download a machine-readable archive of all data stored for your account. When your account is deleted, an existing archive is deleted as well; so request it before the deletion. Details are set out in Section 26 of the privacy policy.
For security reasons, deletion requires you to confirm your identity again – depending on the sign-in method, by your password or a fresh sign-in with Google or Apple. If you only want to withdraw temporarily, deactivation is the milder route. Unconfirmed e-mail addresses lead automatically to anonymisation under Section 4.
We endeavour to achieve the highest possible availability, but cannot guarantee uninterrupted accessibility (e.g. because of maintenance, technical faults or force majeure). We may develop the range of features further, restrict it or discontinue individual features, provided this is reasonable for users. This also applies to the differing range of features of the app and the website under Section 2.
We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence. In the case of slight negligence, we are liable only for the breach of a material contractual obligation – that is, an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely – and limited in amount to the foreseeable damage typical for the contract. Liability for personal injury and any mandatory statutory liability, in particular under the Austrian Product Liability Act, remain unaffected. We assume no liability for user-generated content of third parties; however, we will remove such content after becoming aware of unlawful content. For offers and content of advertising partners, the section "Advertising and advertising partners" applies. In relation to consumers, the mandatory statutory warranty rights apply.
The app is made available via the Apple App Store and Google Play. The terms of the respective store additionally apply to obtaining and installing it. The contract for the use of the platform is concluded exclusively between you and us; Apple and Google respectively are not a party to these terms of use. For the duration of this contract, we grant you the simple, non-transferable right to use the app on devices that you own or control, within the scope of these terms and the usage rules of the store.
For apps obtained via Apple, the minimum terms for end-user licence agreements specified by Apple apply in addition:
We may adapt these terms of use if this is necessary for legal or technical reasons or because of a further development of the platform. The version published on this page, with the version date stated there, applies in each case.
Austrian law applies, to the exclusion of the conflict-of-law rules of private international law and of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Mandatory consumer protection provisions of the state in which a consumer has his or her habitual residence remain unaffected. In relation to consumers, no deviating place of jurisdiction applies; the statutory rules on jurisdiction apply, in particular under the Austrian Consumer Protection Act (KSchG).
Should individual provisions of these terms of use be invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected. Please address questions and complaints to office@royal-food-club.com; the full provider details are set out in the legal notice. Information on the processing of your data can be found in our privacy policy.
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