Terms of Service

These terms are between you and WhatsChow Technologies Ltd. (“WhatsChow”, “we”, “us”), a company based in Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. They cover the website at whatschow.com, our WhatsApp ordering number and the vendor and admin dashboards.

You accept them by ordering food through WhatsChow, or by registering a kitchen. If you do not accept them, do not place an order — no account exists to close, because customers do not need one.

Read them alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains what we do with your data.

WhatsChow is a marketplace. We connect customers to independent kitchens, take the order, collect payment and pass everything to the kitchen. We do not cook. We do not own, run or staff any of the kitchens listed.

Every kitchen is a separate, independent business. Kitchens are not our employees, partners, agents or franchisees, and we are not theirs. The contract for the food itself is between you and the kitchen — we are the rail it travels on, and we act as the kitchen’s agent for collecting payment.

We review every kitchen before it is listed and verify the identity of the person behind it. That is a real check, not a guarantee: it tells you the kitchen is run by an identifiable person who agreed to these terms, not that every meal will be perfect.

You order by messaging our WhatsApp number. The assistant helps you find a kitchen, build a basket and confirm a delivery address, then shows you a summary with the items, the delivery fee and the total.

Check that summary before you pay. Your message confirming it is your offer to buy. The order is only accepted — and a contract with the kitchen only formed — once payment succeeds and the kitchen accepts it. Until then either we or the kitchen may decline, for example if the kitchen is closed, an item has run out, the address is outside its delivery radius, or the order looks fraudulent. If we decline after you have paid, you get a full refund.

You must be 18 or over to order, and the delivery address and phone number you give must be accurate and reachable.

The WhatsApp assistant is software. It handles English and Pidgin, reads voice notes and photos, and is right most of the time — but it can misread an address, misjudge a quantity or pick the wrong dish.

The order summary shown before payment is the authoritative version of what you are buying. If it is wrong, say so in the chat instead of paying, or ask for a human. Nothing the assistant says overrides these terms, and a price it quotes in error does not bind us if the correct price is obviously different.

All prices are in Nigerian naira and are set by the kitchen. The total shown before you pay includes the delivery fee for your address. WhatsChow earns a commission on each order, which is taken out of what we settle to the kitchen — it is not added on top of your total.

Orders are paid up front, before the kitchen starts cooking. Payment is taken through a checkout page hosted by a licensed third-party payment processor. Your card, bank or transfer details go to that processor, never to WhatsChow — we only receive confirmation that a payment succeeded or failed. See section 06 of the Privacy Policy.

If a payment fails, is reversed or is charged back without cause, we may cancel the order and suspend further ordering from that number.

Preparation and delivery times quoted in the chat are estimates based on the kitchen’s stated preparation time and the distance to you. Traffic, weather, network outages and how busy the kitchen is all move them. We cannot promise a specific arrival time.

Somebody needs to be reachable at the address. If the rider cannot reach you or access the address after reasonable attempts, the order may be treated as delivered and no refund will be due. If you gave the wrong address, tell us immediately — before the kitchen starts, we can usually fix it.

Food is perishable and cooking starts quickly, so timing decides the outcome:

• Before the kitchen accepts the order — cancel in the chat and you get a full refund, including the delivery fee.
• After the kitchen has started cooking — the order generally cannot be cancelled, because the food has already been made for you.
• If the kitchen cancels, or nothing arrives — you are refunded in full.
• If the order is wrong, incomplete, or the food arrives in an unacceptable condition — tell us within 24 hours of delivery, with photos if you can. We will look into it with the kitchen and arrange a refund, a partial refund or a replacement depending on what happened.

Refunds go back to the payment method you used. We start them as soon as the decision is made, but how quickly the money lands depends on the payment processor and your bank, and is outside our control.

Nothing in this section limits any right to a refund that Nigerian consumer protection law gives you.

The kitchen that cooks your food is responsible for it. That means its quality, its hygiene, how it is stored, cooked and packaged, the accuracy of its menu descriptions, and its compliance with Nigerian food safety and public health requirements, including holding whatever licences its local authority requires.

WhatsChow does not prepare, handle or inspect food. Verifying a kitchen’s identity before listing it is not a food safety inspection and must not be read as one.

Allergies. If you have a food allergy or intolerance, ask the kitchen directly before ordering and put the requirement in the order notes. Do not rely on the automated assistant or on a menu description to decide whether a dish is safe for you. Many kitchens are small and cannot guarantee that a dish is free of cross-contamination.

If something you were sent makes you unwell, tell us at support@whatschow.com straight away. We will act on it, including delisting a kitchen where that is warranted.

If you list a kitchen on WhatsChow, you agree to:

• Give true information about your business, and keep your menu, prices, opening hours and delivery radius current.
• Hold, and keep valid, every registration, permit or licence Nigerian law requires for preparing and selling food where you operate.
• Meet food hygiene and handling standards, and describe dishes accurately — including ingredients a customer might react to.
• Accept or decline orders promptly, and cook and hand over what was accepted.
• Use only photographs you own or have permission to use, showing food you actually sell.
• Give accurate bank details in your own name or your registered business name, and keep them up to date.
• Never list anything illegal, unsafe, or anything you are not licensed to sell.
• Treat customers and our staff decently.

Repeated cancellations, late handovers, complaints about food safety, or misrepresenting who you are can lead to suspension or removal from the marketplace.

Registration is reviewed by a person. We may approve or reject an application, and a rejection comes with a reason. Approval is not permanent — we can suspend or delist a kitchen that stops meeting section 09.

You are responsible for your dashboard credentials and everything done with them. Do not share them. Tell us immediately if you think someone else has access.

Payment for an order is collected from the customer up front and settled to the bank account on your vendor profile, less our commission and any refunds or chargebacks properly attributable to your kitchen. If you give us wrong bank details, we are not liable for a payment that lands somewhere else. You are responsible for your own taxes on what you earn.

You agree not to:

• Place orders you do not intend to pay for, or use a payment method that is not yours.
• Abuse, threaten or harass a kitchen, a rider, another customer or our staff — in the chat or at the door.
• Try to break, overload, scrape or reverse-engineer the service, or probe it for weaknesses without our written permission.
• Impersonate someone else, or register a kitchen using another person’s identity or bank details.
• Use the assistant for anything other than ordering food and getting support with an order.

The WhatsChow name, logo, software, site design and copy belong to us. Nothing in these terms gives you a licence to use them beyond using the service as intended.

Photographs, menus and business names uploaded by a kitchen remain that kitchen’s property. By uploading them you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to display and reproduce them to market your kitchen and run the marketplace, for as long as you are listed and for a reasonable period afterwards in archived records.

We run WhatsChow with care, but we provide it as it is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, that a particular kitchen will be available, or that a delivery estimate will be met.

Because the food contract is between you and the kitchen, we are not liable for the acts or omissions of a kitchen or a rider — including food that is poorly prepared, unsafe, late or not what was described. Your claim in that case is against the kitchen, though we will help you pursue it and will act on our own account against kitchens that fail customers.

To the fullest extent Nigerian law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of data, or wasted time. Where we are found liable in connection with an order, our total liability for that order is limited to the amount you paid for it.

Nothing in this section excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any right Nigerian consumer protection law gives you that cannot be contracted out of.

We may suspend or withdraw access — a customer’s number or a vendor account — where these terms are broken, where fraud or abuse is suspected, or where we are required to by law. Where the circumstances allow it, we give notice and a reason.

A vendor may stop trading with us at any time by taking the kitchen offline and telling us. Outstanding settlements for orders already delivered are still paid, and obligations that by their nature survive — refunds, taxes, liability for past orders — continue after the account closes.

We may update these terms as the service changes, and the legal review noted at the top of this page will itself produce changes. The current version is always the one here, with the “Last updated” date above. Material changes affecting vendors will be notified to them directly. Continuing to use WhatsChow after a change means you accept the updated terms; the terms in force when you placed an order govern that order.

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them or out of your use of WhatsChow, are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Start with an email. Write to support@whatschow.com setting out the problem, and we will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. Most complaints are settled this way and neither of us needs a lawyer.

If that fails, the courts of Lagos State, Nigeria have jurisdiction — without affecting any right you have under Nigerian consumer law to bring a claim elsewhere.

Orders, complaints and anything general: support@whatschow.com.

Vendors: vendors@whatschow.com. Privacy and legal: privacy@whatschow.com.

WhatsChow Technologies Ltd., Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria.