Terms of service

Mesa is a marketplace. We provide the website, the payments, and the rules our team sets up to decide who may sell, what may be listed, and how an order may reach a buyer. We are not the food producer. We don't cook, pack, or inspect kitchens, and we don't represent any health authority.

When you buy food on Mesa, your contract for that food is with the seller. Mesa is a party to the marketplace services (the listing, the checkout, the payment, and the records we keep), not to the making of the food.

You must be 18 or older to create an account or place an order. Keep your sign-in details to yourself. You're responsible for activity on your account until you tell us it has been compromised.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we reasonably believe is being used to harm someone, or that we are required to stop serving.

You can delete your account yourself, under Delete account in your account settings. It asks for your password, removes your name, contact details, photo, and saved addresses, and signs you out everywhere. Kitchens keep their records of orders you placed, and your reviews stay up without your name; the privacy policy lists what is kept. If you own a kitchen, have admin access, or have a paid order still in progress, that has to be settled first. To close a kitchen or hand it over, contact us.

Listings are offers from sellers. An order is placed when checkout succeeds. Most food is made after you order, so pickup and delivery times are a promise from the seller, not a guarantee from Mesa.

Food sold here is typically made in a home kitchen that hasn't been inspected by a health authority. Read the ingredients, the allergen information, and the home-kitchen note on every listing before you buy. If you have a serious allergy, you should not rely on this marketplace.

A single checkout can include several sellers. Each seller's part is its own order, with its own pickup or delivery and its own eligibility check.

If you sell on Mesa, you are the food producer. You're responsible for how the food is prepared, labeled, stored, and handed over, and for meeting the laws that apply to your business, including requirements we haven't asked about.

You may only list food that is eligible under the rules currently set up for your state. Eligibility on Mesa is not a legal determination and is not legal advice. See how eligibility works.

You agree that you will not:

• List food you didn't make, or that you aren't allowed to sell.
• Hide ingredients, allergens, or the fact that the food was made at home.
• Use another person's photos, name, or kitchen as if they were yours.
• Get around a hold, a review, or a rule that has blocked a listing or an order.

Customers pay Mesa once for the whole basket. We collect the money and pay each seller their share after the marketplace fee. Card details are handled by our payment provider; we don't store full card numbers.

Sellers pay a percentage plus a small fixed amount on each completed order, as shown on how selling works. There is no monthly fee. Payouts are created when an order is completed, when the food has changed hands, not when the card first clears. If a seller's payout account isn't ready, the payout is held until it is.

Where state law makes a marketplace responsible for sales tax on its sellers' sales, Mesa calculates it at checkout, collects it with your payment, and pays it to the state. The amount depends on what you buy and where you pick it up or have it delivered; many foods are exempt. Sellers don't charge sales tax on orders placed through Mesa, and it is never part of a seller's payout. When an order is refunded, the tax on the refunded amount is refunded too. If you buy for an organization that doesn't pay sales tax, you can add its exemption certificate to your account; once we've checked it, orders taxed in that state aren't charged tax when you apply it. Using a certificate for personal purchases isn't allowed.

• Unpaid checkouts. If a payment isn't completed, we hold the items for about 30 minutes, then cancel the order and release them. You're never charged for an order you didn't pay for.
• After you've paid. You can't cancel a paid order yourself. Most food is made to order, so message the kitchen from your order as soon as you can. Whether it can still cancel depends on how far along your food is.
• When a kitchen declines or cancels. If a kitchen declines your paid order or cancels it, for any reason, you're refunded in full automatically, including any delivery fee and sales tax. The same happens if a kitchen hasn't accepted your order by its pickup or delivery time, or within two days of payment when there's no set time. A seller receives no payout for a cancelled order.
• Problems with an order. If food never arrived, arrived unsafe, or doesn't match the listing, message the kitchen first. If that doesn't sort it out, contact us; we can cancel or refund it. Once food has been handed over, refunds are for problems with the order, not a change of mind.

Refunds go back to the card you paid with. They can take several business days to appear on your statement, depending on your bank.

Listings, photos, reviews, and messages must be accurate and yours to post. You give Mesa a non-exclusive license to host, display, and moderate that content so the marketplace can work. We may remove content that is misleading, unlawful, or harmful; we would rather take a listing down and look into it than leave it up.

Reviews should reflect a real order. Don't offer or accept payment for a review.

You may not use Mesa to:

• Break the law, or help someone else break it.
• Interfere with the site, other accounts, or our payment or eligibility systems.
• Scrape, harvest, or overload the service beyond ordinary browsing and selling.
• Impersonate another person or business.

Cottage food is different from restaurant food. Home kitchens share space with family life, pets, and other foods. Mesa doesn't inspect those kitchens and can't promise that any listing is safe for you. You buy with that understanding.

The marketplace is provided as-is. We work to keep listings, prices, and eligibility accurate, but we don't warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, that every listing is correct, or that food will be safe or fit for a particular purpose. Eligibility on Mesa reflects the rules our team has set up. It may not capture every requirement that applies to a seller.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Mesa is not liable for the food a seller makes, for an allergy or illness arising from an order, or for a seller's failure to meet a legal requirement. Our liability for the marketplace services is limited to the greater of the fees we actually received on the orders giving rise to the claim, or one hundred US dollars.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't let us exclude.

If you are a seller, you will defend and indemnify Mesa and its operators against claims arising from the food you make, your listings, or your failure to meet a requirement that applies to you, except to the extent a claim is caused by our own breach of these terms.

We may update these terms as the marketplace changes. The date at the top of this page is the effective date, and continued use after a change means you accept the new terms. If a change is material, we'll say so on this page.

Questions about these terms? Contact us, writing from the email on your account.