Terms

What you are buying

A one-time engagement, not a subscription. Three of them:

• Starter, $499 — five dishes costed on food cost, each at your portion and at 20% over. No prices set and no tool access. About one week.
• Full menu, $999 — up to fifteen dishes and all their sub-recipes, on food and labor, priced against a target we set with you and checked against comparable businesses nearby. Written recipes, a portion rule for each dish, a year of access to the tool with your data in it, and a check-in thirty days after delivery.
• Full restaurant — sixteen dishes and up, or more than one concept. Everything in the full menu plus the first year of quarterly reviews. Scoped and priced on a call.

Scope, and what happens when you are over it

If your menu does not fit inside fifteen dishes, we tell you on the first call and show you the rate before you pay anything further. We do not start work and then invoice you for the overage.

The thirty-day check-in covers up to ten ingredient changes and five dish changes. Past that we agree the extra work separately.

If you buy Starter and move to Full menu within thirty days, the $499 comes off the price.

What we need from you

Your dish list, roughly a month of vendor invoices or receipts, and honest answers about portions and batch sizes. One call of about an hour, plus one round of written answers.

Our numbers can only be as good as yours. If a portion you give us is not the portion your kitchen actually serves, the cost we calculate will be wrong, and that is not a defect in the work.

Timing

The clock starts when your completed list reaches us, not when you pay. Full menu engagements run about four weeks from the call. We hold a paid engagement open for ninety days, so you can pay now and start when your kitchen has room.

Payment

In US dollars, in full, up front, through Stripe. Their terms cover the payment itself. Custom engagements may be split, and we will say so in writing before you pay anything.

The guarantee

On the Full menu engagement only. If the changes we recommend do not add up to more than $999 of impact over a year, we refund the fee in full.

"Impact over a year" means the annualised effect of the recommendations in your delivered engagement — repricing, portion rules, and vendor or purchasing changes — measured against your current costs and prices as we recorded them at the start. We show that arithmetic in the deliverable, so you can see the figure before you decide whether to claim.

Claim it by writing to [email protected] within thirty days of delivery. You do not have to have implemented anything. There is no guarantee on the Starter engagement, and the quarterly reviews are not covered.

Refunds outside the guarantee

Before we have started, a full refund. After the call but before delivery, we refund what we have not yet earned. After delivery, the guarantee above is the remedy.

The tool

Full menu and Full restaurant engagements include one year of access to the Costcina application with your data loaded. You can export your data at any time and it stays yours when the year ends.

The tool is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be available without interruption, and it is not a system of record — keep your own copies of anything you rely on.

Who owns what

Your recipes, your costs, your prices and the delivered engagement document are yours. Use them however you like.

The methods, templates, and the software behind them stay ours. Nothing here licenses you to resell the engagement or the tool.

This is not financial, legal or tax advice

We are analysts, not licensed financial advisors, accountants or attorneys. What we deliver is analysis and a set of recommendations about pricing and portioning. Decisions about your business — including what to charge — are yours, and you should take professional advice where that matters.

What we do not promise

We do not promise that your revenue or your profit will rise. Too much of that depends on things neither of us controls: what you buy, who you hire, what your neighbours charge, and whether the rules get followed on a Friday night. The refund above is the remedy we offer instead of a promise we cannot keep.

Confidentiality

We treat your recipes, costs and vendor pricing as confidential and we do not show them to anyone else. Any sample or public example uses a fictional business. We will not use your name as a reference or a testimonial without asking first.

Liability

To the extent the law allows, our total liability for anything arising out of an engagement is limited to the fees you paid for it. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits.

Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited.

Changes to these terms

We may update these. The terms that apply to your engagement are the ones published on the day you bought it, and we keep a copy.

Governing law

California law governs these terms, and the state and federal courts in San Mateo County, California have exclusive jurisdiction.

Contact

Joapo Group LLC, California. [email protected].