These Terms govern your use of the Black Belt Chef websites and marketplace and your purchases and participation here — as a student, an instructor, a wholesaler, or a referrer. By creating an account, purchasing a course, redeeming a voucher, publishing content, or using our websites, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy and Cookie Policies. Certification is separate: CAIBOK is an independent certification body with its own terms, published at caibok.org/terms; nothing you buy or complete on Black Belt Chef is a CAIBOK credential.
Black Belt Chef is an online culinary training marketplace and publisher. Our courses are organized around the public CAIBOK competency framework, but Black Belt Chef trains and CAIBOK certifies — the two operate independently by design, under a published Commercial Firewall Policy. Completing a Black Belt Chef course does not grant, and is not required for, any CAIBOK credential, and CAIBOK does not endorse any training provider, including us.
You must give accurate, complete, and current information, and keep your account credentials secure; you are responsible for activity under your account. An account may be created for you automatically when you make a purchase with your email address. One account per person; accounts may not be shared or transferred.
You must be at least 16 to use Black Belt Chef. If you are 16 or 17, a parent or legal guardian must review and accept these Terms on your behalf and consent to your participation.
Prices are shown at the point of purchase and may vary by region. Payments are processed by our payment provider; we do not store full card numbers. Course purchases are refundable within 14 days of purchase. Refunds are issued to the original payment method; where a purchase was made by voucher, any refund due is made to the voucher’s pre-arranged payer (see Section 7). Purchased courses include ongoing access for as long as the course remains available on the platform.
Black Belt Chef operates an online training marketplace on which independent instructors publish and sell their own courses. Instructors are independent contractors, not our employees, and are responsible for their course content. Courses are reviewed before publication, but we do not warrant the completeness or fitness of any instructor’s content. Instructors receive a share of the revenue from sales of their courses, and the platform retains the remainder; the current rates are set out in our published schedules and the instructor agreement accepted during instructor onboarding. Instructors’ courses are training only — they are not CAIBOK certification, are not required for any credential, and are not endorsed by CAIBOK.
Registered users may be issued a personal referral link and coupon code. Where a qualifying Black Belt Chef training purchase is attributed to a referrer, the referrer may earn an attribution commission, funded from the platform’s own share of that sale. An explicitly entered code takes precedence over any passive referral attribution. Self-referral, misrepresentation, and other abuse may be disqualified. No commission, referral, or affiliate payment is ever earned on any CAIBOK certification, membership, examination, recertification, or credential-verification fee.
Approved wholesalers may create vouchers — codes that function as coupons tied to a pre-arranged payer. Creating a voucher does not itself transfer any money. When a voucher is redeemed, the pre-arranged payer’s payment method is charged at that time for the Black Belt Chef and/or CAIBOK items the voucher covers, and access is granted to the redeeming user. A voucher is not credit, is not a stored-value or gift instrument, carries no cash value, and is not refundable except as required by law. Unredeemed vouchers expire after a stated period (currently thirty days) and result in no charge. By arranging to be billed for a voucher batch, the payer authorizes us to charge their payment method for each redemption. Where a voucher covers both training and certification items, each is charged to the applicable Black Belt Chef or CAIBOK account, and a redemption is completed only if all covered charges succeed; if any charge fails, the redemption is declined and any charge already taken for that redemption is reversed. Where a redemption results in a charge to a pre-arranged payer, any refund due under Section 4 is made to that payer, whose payment method was charged, and not to the redeeming user. A redeeming user who did not pay us has no refund claim against us; their remedy, if any, lies with the party who provided the voucher. Wholesaler participation is governed by the wholesaler agreement accepted during wholesaler onboarding.
Any discount applied through a coupon or voucher is funded by Black Belt Chef and applies to training purchases; a discount is never funded from, and never reduces, any CAIBOK certification, membership, examination, recertification, or verification fee.
Consistent with the Commercial Firewall Policy, CAIBOK certification, assessment, and credential-verification decisions are made solely on the merits and are never influenced by any purchase, discount, commission, referral, voucher, or training on Black Belt Chef. Marketplace revenue share, referral commissions, and voucher arrangements apply to Black Belt Chef training only. If you choose to link your CAIBOK ID to your profile, we may report your course completions to CAIBOK for continuing-education purposes, as described in the Privacy Policy.
Course materials are licensed for your personal, non-commercial use only; you may not copy, record, redistribute, resell, or publicly share them, or share account access to them. Reviews must reflect your own genuine experience of a course you are enrolled in; fabricated, incentivized-without-disclosure, or abusive reviews may be removed. You may not use the platform to post unlawful, infringing, deceptive, or abusive content, to solicit off-platform payment for marketplace courses, or to harvest other users’ data. We may moderate, remove content, and suspend or close accounts for breach of these Terms.
The platform, our names, logos, and marks, and our own published content are our intellectual property. Instructor course content remains the instructor’s, licensed to us for hosting and sale under the instructor agreement, and licensed to enrolled students for personal, non-commercial use. You may not use our marks except as we permit.
Black Belt Chef provides training. Completing a course, including any certificate of completion, is not a CAIBOK credential, is not a government license, and may not satisfy any food-safety, health, licensing, or regulatory requirement imposed by any jurisdiction; you are solely responsible for identifying and meeting the legal and regulatory requirements that apply where you work. Training is not a guarantee of employment, income, or advancement. Except as expressly stated, we provide the platform, courses, content, and services “as is,” and disclaim all warranties to the maximum extent permitted by law, including any implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages. Our total aggregate liability arising out of your use of the platform, your purchases, or these Terms is limited to the amount of fees you paid to us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. This section does not limit liability that cannot be limited by law.
You will indemnify us against claims and reasonable costs arising from content you publish, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of law.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Nevada, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Except as provided below, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms is resolved by final and binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (or, where you are outside the United States, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution), before a single arbitrator, seated in Clark County, Nevada, conducted in English. To the extent permitted by law, you and we waive any right to a jury trial and any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, or representative action. We may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect our content, intellectual property, or marks.
We may update our published schedules, fees, and these Terms. Material changes take effect on notice; your continued use after the effective date is acceptance.
The following are referenced in these Terms and are published at stable locations:
Electronic acceptance is valid and enforceable under the U.S. E-SIGN Act, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the EU eIDAS Regulation, as applicable. We may assign or transfer these Terms to a successor or affiliate, including any entity to which Black Belt Chef is transferred or that is established for our operations within or outside the United States; you may not assign. If any provision is unenforceable, it is narrowed or severed and the rest remains in effect. These Terms, together with our published schedules and the Privacy and Cookie Policies, are the entire agreement on this subject.
This policy explains how we collect and use personal data on the Black Belt Chef websites and marketplace. It applies to students, instructors, wholesalers, referrers, voucher payers, and site visitors. CAIBOK, the independent certification body, has its own privacy policy at caibok.org/terms covering certification data.
Depending on how you interact with us: identity and contact details (name, date of birth, email, phone, and — only if you choose to give them — an identification document type and number); account data; purchase and order records (card payments are handled by our payment provider; we do not store full card numbers); course enrolment, progress, and completion data; content you post (reviews, questions, discussion posts); referral and attribution data (referral codes, campaign links); for instructors, affiliates, and wholesalers, payout details, tax documentation (W-9 or W-8), and sales records; for voucher payers, billing contact and payment-method references; technical and usage data (IP address, device and browser information, cookies); and communication and marketing preferences.
We ask for your date of birth when you claim a certificate. It lets us tell you apart from another holder with the same name when an employer verifies your card, and it lets us match your identity document if verification is ever required. It is not printed on your card and is never shown publicly.
We invite you to record an identification document type and number when you claim a certificate. It is optional and you may skip it: we ask once. Some countries require an identification number to appear on a training record, and holding it lets us produce a record that satisfies those rules. It is held privately — it is never printed on your wallet card, never shown to anyone verifying your card, and never shared with instructors. You can add, change or remove it at any time in your profile.
To provide courses and track your progress; to process payments, refunds, revenue shares, commissions, and voucher billing; to operate the referral and voucher programs; to moderate content and keep the marketplace safe; to communicate with you and provide support; to send marketing where permitted (every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, and opting out never affects transactional messages); to improve our services; and to comply with law, prevent fraud, and protect our rights.
Instructors see aggregate sales and course statistics and can answer your questions through the platform’s own course forums. We do not give instructors your email address or other contact details, and all instructor–student messaging is platform-mediated.
Black Belt Chef and CAIBOK operate independently. If you choose to link your CAIBOK ID to your Black Belt Chef profile, we report your course completions to CAIBOK for continuing-education credit, and, where you request a credential wallet card, we confirm your identity to CAIBOK for that purpose. If you do not link your CAIBOK ID, we do not report your activity to CAIBOK. Purchases made by voucher that include CAIBOK items result in the necessary billing information being processed on CAIBOK’s payment account, as described in the Terms.
Where the EU or UK GDPR applies, we rely on performance of a contract; our legitimate interests (operating the marketplace, paying instructors and partners, preventing fraud, and running our business), balanced against your rights; legal obligation (such as tax and record-keeping); and consent (for certain marketing and the CAIBOK reporting described above).
We use cookies and similar technologies as described in the Cookie Policy, including first-party cookies that remember your language, referral attribution, and campaign source.
We share personal data with service providers who process it on our behalf under data processing agreements (hosting, payment, email delivery, marketing, and analytics providers); with CAIBOK as described in Section 4; with legal and regulatory authorities where required; with a buyer or successor in a sale or reorganization; and among entities affiliated with us, including any entity to which Black Belt Chef is transferred. We do not sell your personal data for money. Some U.S. state privacy laws define “sharing” broadly to include the use of advertising cookies; where we use such cookies (see the Cookie Policy), you can opt out as described in “Your rights” below.
We operate globally, and your personal data may be transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries whose laws may differ from those where you live. For transfers from the EEA or UK, we use appropriate safeguards, such as the Standard Contractual Clauses, and you may request information about them.
Where we no longer need personal data, we delete or anonymize it.
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal data. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal data; to restrict or object to certain processing; to withdraw consent; and to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal data or limit the use of sensitive personal data. You will not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. To make a request, contact us using the details in the Company & Contact Information section above; we may need to verify your identity, and an authorized agent may submit a request for you. If the EU or UK GDPR applies to you, you may also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority.
Our services are intended for individuals aged 16 and over, and you must be at least 16 to register. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16; if we learn we have, we will delete it. Anyone aged 16 or 17 may use our services only if a parent or guardian reviews and accepts our Terms on their behalf and consents to their participation.
We may update this policy. We will post the updated version with a new effective date and, where required, notify you of material changes.
Course purchases are refundable within 14 days of purchase. Refunds are issued to the original payment method; where a purchase was made by voucher, the refund is issued to the voucher's pre-arranged payer, not to the person who redeemed it.