Terms of service

Effective January 12, 2027.

Who we are

Doughdate is software that lets home bakers take pre-orders online. In these terms, “Doughdate,” “we” and “us” mean Epik LLC, a Michigan limited liability company, doing business as Anchor Apps, which runs Doughdate.

A “bakery” is a business or person that runs a shop on Doughdate. A “customer” is someone who orders from a bakery’s shop. “You” means whoever is using Doughdate, whether you’re a bakery, a member of a bakery’s team, a customer or a visitor to this site.

By using Doughdate you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Doughdate. Doughdate is offered in the United States only.

What Doughdate is, and what it isn’t

Doughdate provides the tools: the shop page, the order form, the calendar, the bake list and the emails. Each bakery decides what it sells, its prices, its bake days and how much it can make.

Doughdate is not the seller. When a customer orders, the agreement is between the customer and the bakery. We don’t bake, package, deliver or inspect anything, and we don’t hold the money for orders. Customers pay the bakery directly, in the ways the bakery offers: by card, cash or Zelle. Card payments are processed by Stripe and go to the bakery’s own Stripe account.

Bakery accounts

• Joining is by invitation. To open a shop you must be at least 18 and able to enter a contract.
• The person who sets up the shop is its owner. The owner can invite team members, and is responsible for what they do in the shop.
• We sign you in with a code or link sent to your email, not a password. Keep your email account secure, and tell us right away if you think someone else has gotten into your shop.
• Give us accurate information, and keep your contact details and shop details up to date.

What bakeries are responsible for

If you run a shop on Doughdate, you are responsible for your business, including:

• The food you sell: its safety, ingredients, allergen information, labels and storage.
• Following the laws that apply to you, including your state’s cottage food rules, local health and business rules, and any sales tax or income tax on what you sell.
• Your prices, descriptions and photos, and making sure they’re accurate.
• Filling the orders you accept, and your own policies on refunds, changes and cancellations.
• Collecting payment from your customers on cash and Zelle orders, including the service fee (see below).
• If you accept cards, Stripe’s processing fees on your card payments, including any processing fee Stripe keeps when a card order is refunded.
• If you accept cards, your own agreement with Stripe, which you accept when you connect your Stripe account, and keeping that account in good standing.
• Treating your customers’ information with care, using it only to run your business and in line with the law and our privacy policy.

Doughdate’s tools, guides and settings can help, but they aren’t legal, tax or food safety advice. Check the rules for your state and county yourself.

Ordering from a bakery

• You don’t need an account to order. We confirm your email with a 6-digit code. On the device you used, we remember the confirmed email for that bakery for up to 90 days so you don’t need a new code each time.
• Sending an order is a request. The bakery can confirm it or decline it. Your order isn’t accepted until the bakery confirms it.
• You pay the bakery directly, in the ways it offers. If you pay by card, you pay the full amount, including the service fee, when you place your order. Card payments are processed by Stripe and go to the bakery’s own Stripe account. If you pay cash or Zelle, you pay at pickup or delivery. Doughdate isn’t the seller and doesn’t hold your payment.
• If a card order is cancelled or declined, you get a full refund, including the service fee.
• Each bakery sets its own rules for changes and cancellations. Where the bakery allows it, you can cancel from your order page up to the time shown there.
• Questions about an order, its contents, allergens, quality, refunds or a missed pickup go to the bakery. Replying to an order email usually reaches them.
• Your order page has a private link. Anyone with the link can see the order, so don’t share it with people you don’t want to see it.
• You should be at least 13 to place an order. If you’re under 18, please order with a parent or guardian’s permission.

The service fee

Bakeries don’t pay a subscription. Instead, each order placed online carries a service fee that the customer pays: 4% of the order total plus 30¢, never more than $5. The order total includes items, any short-notice fee and any delivery fee. The fee shows as its own line at checkout, before the customer sends the order.

• On card orders, the service fee is collected as part of the card payment.
• On cash and Zelle orders, the bakery collects the service fee from the customer together with the order, and passes it on to Doughdate.
• There’s no service fee on orders the bakery enters itself, or on orders that are cancelled, declined or marked as a no-show.
• New bakeries start with a fee-free period, shown when you sign up. During it, no service fee is added to orders. Early-access sign-ups get 60 fee-free days.

Early access

Signing up for early access is free and doesn’t commit you to anything. You don’t have to open a shop, and you can leave the list at any time. It doesn’t commit us either: we may change the opening date, how invites go out, or the early-access perks, or decide not to open Doughdate to the public at all. Perks such as fee-free days apply only if you open a shop on Doughdate. If our plans change, we’ll email everyone on the list.

Billing for bakeries

Once Doughdate starts billing, this is how it works:

• Each month we send the bakery an invoice for the service fees its customers paid on cash and Zelle orders that month. The invoice lists the orders it covers. Service fees on card orders are already collected with the payment, so they aren’t invoiced.
• We charge the card you keep on file. Card payments are handled by Stripe; Doughdate doesn’t store your full card number.
• If an invoice is still unpaid 14 days after it’s due, your shop stops taking new cash and Zelle orders until it’s paid. The same happens if there’s still no card on file 7 days after your fee-free days end, until you add one. Card orders keep working, orders you’ve already accepted stay in place, and you can still sign in and see everything.
• We never delete your shop or your data because of an unpaid invoice.
• If you think an invoice is wrong, tell us within 60 days of the invoice date and we’ll look into it with you. Invoices are in US dollars.
• We may change the service fee or how billing works. We’ll tell bakeries by email at least 30 days before a change takes effect.

Your content

Your menu, photos, descriptions, logo and shop settings belong to you. You give Doughdate permission to store, copy, resize and show them as needed to run your shop: on your shop page, in emails, in link previews, and in the menu feed and snippets you choose to put on your own website. That permission ends when your content is removed from Doughdate, except for copies kept for a limited time in backups.

Only upload content you have the right to use. Don’t upload photos you took from someone else’s page without permission.

Acceptable use

Don’t use Doughdate to:

• Sell anything illegal, or food you aren’t allowed to sell where you are.
• Mislead customers, pretend to be someone else, or place fake orders.
• Send spam, or use customer email addresses for anything other than their orders without their permission.
• Break or overload the service, get around its limits or security checks, scrape it, or try to get into another bakery’s data.
• Upload anything harmful, hateful, sexually explicit, or that infringes someone else’s rights.

Emails we send for bakeries

Order emails come from Doughdate’s address and carry the bakery’s name, for example “Your Bakery via Doughdate.” Replies go to the reply address the bakery sets. These emails are about orders: codes, confirmations, changes, reminders and the “tell me” alerts a customer asked for. Bakeries may not use Doughdate to send marketing emails.

Your data, and leaving

A bakery can export its menu from its admin at any time, and can ask us for an export of the rest of its shop data, such as orders and customers. A bakery can close its shop at any time by contacting us. When a shop closes we delete its data as described in our privacy policy, except what we must keep by law, such as billing records.

Suspending or closing a shop

We may pause a shop, or stop it taking orders, if it breaks these terms, puts customers at risk, or exposes Doughdate to legal trouble. Where we can, we’ll tell you first and give you a chance to fix things. Unpaid invoices are handled as described under billing, not by closing your shop.

Changes to Doughdate

We improve Doughdate all the time, which means features change. We work to keep it running, but we can’t promise it will always be available or free of mistakes. If we ever shut Doughdate down, we’ll give bakeries at least 60 days’ notice and a way to export their data.

Disclaimers

Doughdate is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the extent the law allows, we make no promises beyond those in these terms, including any implied promise that it’s fit for a particular purpose. We aren’t responsible for the food a bakery sells, for whether a bakery fills an order, or for payments between customers and bakeries.

Limits on our liability

To the extent the law allows, Doughdate isn’t liable for lost profits, lost sales, lost data, or indirect, special or consequential damages. Our total liability for any claim about Doughdate is limited to the greater of $100 or the service fees paid to us for your shop in the 12 months before the claim. Some states don’t allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

If a claim is about your shop

If someone makes a claim against Doughdate because of a bakery’s food, business, content or breach of these terms, the bakery agrees to cover Doughdate’s reasonable costs and losses from that claim, including legal fees.

Disputes

If you have a problem with Doughdate, please contact us first; most things can be sorted out quickly. If we can’t sort it out within 60 days, these are the rules.

Arbitration

You and we agree to settle any dispute about Doughdate or these terms by binding individual arbitration, not in court. The arbitration is run by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules (or its Commercial Arbitration Rules for disputes with a bakery), by a single arbitrator, and can happen by video or phone. The arbitrator can award the same relief a court could, but only to the person bringing the claim.

• No class actions: disputes are brought only on an individual basis, never as a class, collective or representative action, and no arbitrator can combine claims from different people.
• Either of us can still bring an individual claim in small claims court, if it qualifies.
• Either of us can ask a court to stop someone misusing our name, content or software.
• You can opt out of arbitration by emailing us within 30 days of first agreeing to these terms. Opting out doesn’t change anything else in them.

Law and courts

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, without regard to its conflict of law rules, and by the Federal Arbitration Act for the arbitration agreement. Anything that isn’t arbitrated is brought in the state or federal courts located in Michigan, and you and we agree to those courts’ jurisdiction.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change is significant, we’ll email bakeries and post a notice on this site before it takes effect. If you keep using Doughdate after a change takes effect, the new terms apply.

Everything else

These terms and our privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Doughdate about the service. If part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a part right away, we haven’t given it up. You can’t transfer your account to someone else without our agreement. We may transfer these terms if Doughdate is sold or merged.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Email [email protected]. We answer within 30 days.