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The Ownership Promise

Buy it once, own it forever.

Ownership is not a slogan. Here is what it means in practice: what you buy, what you can never lose again, and what happens to your system if HappyChef were ever to stop.

Read the promise See the pricing

Six things we put in writing

Every point below is an article in our terms. Not a promise on a marketing page, but an agreement you can hold us to.

  1. Pay once

    You buy the licence one time. For the right of use itself, a monthly invoice never arrives.

  2. Your licence stays

    Stop your hosting, your support or your AI services and your licence remains. It is not ours to take away.

  3. It goes with the sale

    Sell your restaurant and the licence transfers to the new owner free of charge. It sits on your balance sheet as an asset, not as a cost.

  4. Even after an acquisition

    If we are ever acquired, the new owner is bound by this promise. That is a condition of any acquisition.

  5. The source code is secured

    If we stop, the source code is released from an independent custodian — to every owner, or publicly under a free licence.

  6. Your guests are yours

    Your guest data is your data. You export it in one click, including when you leave us.

And if HappyChef is no longer there?

A perpetual licence to software that only runs on our servers is worth exactly as much as the certainty that someone can keep it running. That is why the source code sits with an independent custodian.

  1. The deposit

    The complete source code, the build scripts and the documentation are held by an independent escrow agent. Updated every quarter, with no passwords and no guest data.

  2. The verification

    Once a year the agent builds and boots the deposit in a clean environment, and the certificate is published. A deposit nobody can run is not protection.

  3. The release

    On bankruptcy, discontinuation, or an acquirer shutting the system down, the deposit is released to every owner — or we publish the source under a free licence.

What it says legally

The promise is a separate chapter in our terms: a perpetual, irrevocable and transferable licence, with a third-party stipulation that gives every owner their own direct right to the release of the source code. The Dutch text is the binding version.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if I stop paying?

You pay for the right of use only once, so there is nothing there to stop. Cancel your hosting, your support or an AI service and that service ends — your licence and your data stay.

Does the licence transfer when I sell my restaurant?

Yes, free of charge. You notify the transfer within thirty days; that is a formality, not a condition. The buyer takes over your HappyChef the way they take over the rest of the business.

What if HappyChef is acquired?

The promise binds every successor. We impose this chapter as a condition of any acquisition, and if a buyer were to discontinue the system within two years, the source code is released.

Who can request the source code?

Every owner individually. That right sits in your own agreement, so you need no association or representative for it. The escrow agent handles the release in a single procedure for all owners together.

Become an owner, not a tenant.

Start free, or see what becoming an owner costs. No subscription, no notice period, no surprises.

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