1.About these Terms#
These Creator Terms of Service ("Creator Terms") are an agreement between Forkfluence LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company ("Forkfluence," "we," "us," "our"), and you as a participant in the Forkfluence Creator Program ("you," "Creator").
They apply in addition to the general Terms of Service. Where the two conflict on a matter concerning the Creator Program, these Creator Terms control. The Privacy Policy and the Content and Media Rights Policy also apply.
By applying to the Creator Program or participating in it, you agree to these Creator Terms.
Section 15 contains a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver, with a 30-day opt-out.
2.Eligibility and approval#
To join the Creator Program you must:
- Be at least 18 years old. This is firm — commissions are paid through Stripe, which independently requires account holders to be adults.
- Be legally able to work as an independent contractor in the United States, and able to receive payment there
- Have at least one active public social media account that is genuinely yours
- Provide accurate information in your application
Approval is at our discretion. We review applications and consider the authenticity of your audience, the fit of your content, and whether your accounts are genuine. Applying does not entitle you to acceptance, and we may decline without giving detailed reasons.
Your referral code is chosen by you, subject to availability and our approval. We may reclaim a code that impersonates someone, infringes a trademark, or is offensive.
3.You are an independent contractor#
You are an independent contractor, not an employee of Forkfluence. Nothing in these Creator Terms creates an employment, partnership, joint venture, or agency relationship.
This is not a formality — it shapes the whole program:
- You decide what to post, when to post, and whether to post at all. There are no required deliverables, no minimum post count, no posting schedule, and no content quotas.
- We offer guidance, not instructions. We will share what tends to work — what kinds of content perform, how creators build relationships with restaurants — as suggestions you are free to ignore. Nothing we suggest is a requirement, and declining to follow it is not a breach of this agreement.
- You control your own methods, hours, equipment, and creative direction.
- You are not paid a wage. You earn commission on attributed orders, and nothing otherwise.
- You receive no employee benefits — no health insurance, no paid leave, no workers' compensation, no unemployment insurance.
- You are responsible for your own taxes. See section 6.
The standards in sections 7 through 10 are conditions of participating in a program that carries our name, and are the kind of terms any platform sets for who may use it. They are not direction or control over how you do your work.
4.How attribution works#
You earn commission when a diner's order is attributed to you. Attribution works in exactly one way, and it is worth being precise because it is the most common source of confusion:
- A commission is earned only when your referral code is typed at checkout. The code is resolved on our servers at the moment the order is placed.
- Your referral link sets a 30-day attribution cookie, which pre-fills your code for the diner. If the diner clears it, uses a different device, or removes the code at checkout, no commission is earned.
- Naming you elsewhere does not earn you anything. When a diner tells us in a signup survey, or in a catering request, that you referred them, we use that for planning where to grow. It creates no commission and is not a payment record.
- Commission is per order, not per diner. There is no ongoing claim to a diner you introduced once.
Your dashboard shows attributed orders and the commission on each. Tell us within 60 days if you think attribution is wrong.
5.Commission#
The current standard commission is 5% of the food value of each attributed order, before tax, tip, and delivery fee. Your actual rate is the one shown in your dashboard, which controls if it differs.
Commissions are approved 48 hours after the order is picked up or delivered. The delay exists so that refunds, cancellations, and disputes settle before money is committed.
Refunded and cancelled orders earn no commission. If an order is refunded after a commission is approved, the commission is reversed proportionately and offset against your balance.
We may change commission rates on notice under section 12. A change never applies retroactively to orders already placed.
Where a discount is attached to your code, whether it is funded by the restaurant or by Forkfluence is set when the code is created; it does not change what you earn unless your dashboard says otherwise.
6.Payouts and taxes#
Payouts are processed monthly, for approved commissions, subject to a $25 minimum balance. A balance below the minimum rolls forward.
To be paid you must complete payout onboarding, including the identity verification our payment processor requires. We cannot pay you until that is done, and unpaid commissions are held until it is.
Taxes are yours. As an independent contractor you are responsible for all federal, state, and local taxes on what you earn, including self-employment tax. Nothing is withheld from your payouts. Where required, we will issue an IRS Form 1099 for a calendar year in which your earnings meet the reporting threshold, so keep your tax information current.
We may withhold or offset a payout against reversed commissions, amounts you owe us, or where we are investigating suspected fraud or a breach of these Creator Terms. We will tell you when we do and why.
Unclaimed balances are handled under applicable unclaimed property law.
7.FTC disclosure#
You must clearly and conspicuously disclose that you earn money when people order through your code or link. This is your own legal obligation under the Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides, not merely a rule of ours — the FTC can act against an individual creator directly.
What that means in practice:
- Use a clear disclosure — #ad, #sponsored, or #partner — in the post itself
- Put it where people will actually see it: at the start of a caption, not buried after "more", not only in a bio, not only in a comment, and not lost in a block of hashtags
- Say it out loud in video, and put it on screen, long enough to read
- Disclose on every post that carries your code or link, not just the first one
- Disclose free meals, comped items, and gifts from a restaurant, whether or not money changed hands
Only endorse what you have genuinely tried. Your statements must reflect your honest experience and opinion.
If you fail to disclose, we may remove content, withhold commissions, and suspend or terminate your participation.
8.Content standards#
Your content is yours to make. When it carries your Forkfluence code or link, it must:
- Be honest about food, prices, and promotions. Do not state a price, discount, or offer that is not real and current.
- Represent restaurants fairly. Criticism is fine — invented claims about a restaurant's food, hygiene, or practices are not.
- Not be unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, threatening, or obscene
- Not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, publicity, or privacy rights — including music you do not have the rights to use
- Not include anyone identifiable who has not consented to appear
- Not misrepresent your relationship with Forkfluence. You are an independent creator in our program; you do not speak for Forkfluence and may not present yourself as an employee, spokesperson, or agent.
- Not depict alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, or other age-restricted products as available through Forkfluence, because they are not
You must also follow the terms of every platform you post on.
9.Content and media rights#
You own your content. Forkfluence claims no ownership of what you make.
By posting content on Forkfluence, or content that tags a restaurant on Forkfluence, you grant a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to Forkfluence and to the tagged restaurant to repost, share, edit for format, and use that content — including in paid advertising.
The corresponding right runs the other way: content a restaurant posts may be reused by you and by Forkfluence on the same terms. Neither side owns the other's work; posting on Forkfluence opens it for mutual use.
How long it lasts, what we may never do, watermarking, and how to raise a problem are all in the Content and Media Rights Policy, which forms part of these Creator Terms. Read it before you post — it is short, and it is the part creators most often want the detail on.
10.Prohibited conduct#
You must not:
- Use your own code for your own orders, or arrange for others to place orders solely to generate commission
- Use bots, scripts, click farms, automated traffic, or any artificial means to generate referrals or engagement
- Buy followers or engagement to misrepresent your reach
- Spam your code — unsolicited messages, comment spam, irrelevant forums, or misleading link placement
- Bid on Forkfluence trademarks in paid search, or run ads that imply you are Forkfluence
- Create multiple accounts to circumvent a suspension or to multiply commission
- Misrepresent a discount, or offer your code in a way that misleads about what a diner will pay
- Harass restaurants, diners, other creators, or Forkfluence staff
- Demand free food or preferential treatment on the basis of your Forkfluence participation
Violations may result in removal of content, reversal or withholding of commissions, and suspension or termination.
11.Working with restaurants#
You may build relationships with restaurants directly — visiting, agreeing content, being hosted or comped, or being paid by them.
Any arrangement between you and a restaurant is yours, not ours. Forkfluence is not a party to it, does not negotiate it, does not enforce it, and is not liable under it. Keep those arrangements off-platform and settle them between yourselves. Anything a restaurant gives you must still be disclosed under section 7.
If a dispute arises between you and a restaurant, either of you may ask us to help informally. We may decline, and anything we do is a courtesy — not an obligation, and not a determination of anyone's rights.
Restaurants may not require you to post anything as a condition of your participation in the Creator Program, and we will not ask them to.
12.Changes to the program#
The Creator Program is new and will change. We may modify commission rates, the payout schedule, the minimum threshold, attribution rules, and eligibility criteria.
For changes that reduce what you earn or make participation materially harder, we will give at least 30 days' written notice to the email on your account. Changes never apply retroactively to orders already placed or commissions already approved.
We may also discontinue the Creator Program on 30 days' notice, in which case we pay out approved commissions and any commissions that approve during the notice period.
13.Suspension and termination#
You may leave at any time by telling us at support@forkfluence.com. We pay approved commissions and any that approve in the following 48 hours, subject to the minimum threshold.
We may suspend your participation immediately where we suspect fraudulent referrals, a serious breach of these Creator Terms, or conduct that puts diners, restaurants, or the Service at risk. We will tell you why and give you a fair chance to respond.
We may terminate for material breach not cured within 14 days of written notice, or on 30 days' notice for convenience.
On termination: your code stops working, your profile comes down, and we pay commissions already approved less any proper offsets. Commissions not yet approved at termination for fraud-related reasons may be withheld. Sections 9 through 11 and 14 through 17 survive. Content already licensed under the Media Policy remains subject to that policy — see how long the license lasts.
14.Disclaimers and liability#
The service and the creator program are provided "as is" and "as available." Forkfluence LLC makes no representation or warranty about the amount of commission you will earn. Nothing in our marketing, our onboarding, or any conversation with our staff is a guarantee of earnings. Earnings depend on factors outside our control, including your audience and their purchasing decisions.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Forkfluence shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business opportunity. Our total aggregate liability for all claims in any 12-month period shall not exceed the total commission paid to you in that period, or one hundred U.S. dollars ($100), whichever is greater.
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Forkfluence LLC and its officers, members, employees, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, or expense — including reasonable attorneys' fees — arising out of your content, your breach of these Creator Terms, your failure to make required disclosures, your tax obligations, or any arrangement between you and a restaurant.
Nothing here limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.
15.Dispute resolution and arbitration#
Talk to us first. Send a written description of the dispute and what you want to support@forkfluence.com. If it is not resolved within 60 days, either of us may start arbitration.
Binding individual arbitration. Except as stated below, you and Forkfluence agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Creator Terms or the Creator Program will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina — or, at your election, by telephone, videoconference, or on written submissions. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this agreement.
You and Forkfluence agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding.
Exceptions. Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court, and either may seek injunctive relief in court to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property.
Opt out. You may opt out by emailing support@forkfluence.com with the subject "Arbitration Opt-Out", naming yourself and the email address on your account, within 30 days of first accepting these Creator Terms. Opting out costs you nothing and affects nothing else in this agreement.
Governing law. These Creator Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. For disputes not subject to arbitration, both parties consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
16.Changes to these Terms#
We may update these Creator Terms. The version and date at the top of this page identify the current version. For material changes we will give at least 30 days' notice to the email on your account. Continuing to participate after the effective date means you accept them.
17.Contact#
Entire agreement. These Creator Terms, with the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy, and the Media Policy, are the entire agreement between us about the Creator Program. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. You may not assign these Creator Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.