Terms of Service — Specialty Atlas mobile app

Last updated: 25 August 2026

1. General provisions

1.1. These Terms govern the use of the “Specialty Atlas” mobile application (the App) and related services provided electronically by the Provider.

1.2. Provider — the legal entity operating the Specialty Atlas service. Identification and contact details are published in the App (including Help) and on specialtyatlas.com.

1.3. User — any person using the App, including in guest mode without registration, and registered Users.

1.4. Installing or using the App means you accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the App.

1.5. The B2B portal for cafés and roasteries and the paid partner plans are governed separately by the B2B Terms of Service and the Website Terms of Use.

2. Scope of the service

2.1. The App provides, in particular:

• discovery of specialty cafés, roasteries, beans and events — map, lists, filters, search, public profiles;
• walking navigation to a selected place inside the App;
• the Coffee Passport — city and café stamps earned among others through QR check‑in at the venue, level stamps and badges;
• Coffee Miles — experience points and levels granted for activity in the App;
• the Lab — taste profile (“Coffee DNA”), preference quiz, bean and recipe recommendations, bean ratings, a catalogue of grinders and brew methods;
• recipes (brew guides) — creating them, logging brew sessions and sharing them as draft / private / friends / public;
• visit ratings for cafés with an optional comment and highlight chips;
• community features — discussions on café and roastery profiles (Buzz) with text posts, photos and @ mentions, comments, an activity feed, friends and a public user profile;
• a “Want to visit” list with optional reminders and notifications when a listed place is nearby;
• private notes about places, favourites, hidden places and user blocking;
• Edu Corner — educational material and a coffee glossary;
• Wrapped — a periodic recap of your own activity with shareable cards;
• notifications (push) and an in‑app notification inbox;
• reporting content, places and events, and suggesting changes to café data;
• paid features or subscriptions — if and once they are introduced.

2.2. Available features may differ depending on the App version, country, the plan held by the partner operating a given venue, and the system permissions you grant.

2.3. The Provider makes reasonable efforts to keep the App available but does not guarantee uninterrupted, error‑free operation. Maintenance, updates, third‑party outages or force majeure may affect availability.

2.4. Many features require internet access and a device matching the description in the App Store / Google Play.

3. Account, guest mode and security

3.1. Part of the App works in guest mode, without registration. Features that require an identity (passport, Coffee Miles, recipes, ratings, Buzz, friends, lists) require an account.

3.2. Registration requires providing accurate data in the required scope, protecting your password, and accepting these Terms and the Privacy Policy.

3.3. We support email/password sign‑in and — where enabled — authentication via Google or Apple, on the terms of those services. When you sign up via Google or Apple, acceptance of these Terms takes place when the account is created.

3.4. Your username (@username) is unique. After a change, the previous username stays reserved as an alias pointing to your profile, so that it cannot be taken over by someone else and older links keep working.

3.5. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and — to the extent permitted by law — for actions taken using your account.

3.6. We may refuse registration, suspend access or remove content in the event of a breach of these Terms, abuse, or a threat to other users or to the infrastructure — under the rules in section 12.

4. Technical requirements and updates

4.1. The App is developed continuously. We may release updates that improve performance, security or compatibility with operating systems.

4.2. For security and data‑consistency reasons we may set a minimum supported version of the App. Once set, continued use may require updating from the store; older versions may stop working.

4.3. We may temporarily disable, change or retire individual features. Where retiring a feature materially limits the service for a consumer, we will give reasonable notice in line with section 16.

5. Payments

5.1. Consumer use of the App is currently free of charge; we do not offer paid plans or in‑app purchases in it. If we introduce them, we will present the price, scope and duration before purchase, in line with consumer law.

5.2. Paid plans for cafés and roasteries are handled exclusively in the B2B portal on the website and are governed by the B2B Terms of Service.

5.3. Payments may be processed by Stripe and — should in‑app purchases be introduced — by mobile store operators (Apple App Store, Google Play); we do not store full card numbers on our own servers.

6. Passport, QR check‑in, Coffee Miles and badges

6.1. Check‑in. You earn a café stamp by scanning the QR code made available at the venue. One scan corresponds to one visit; cooldown limits and duplicate protection apply.

6.2. Coffee Miles. Points and levels are granted automatically for activity (visits, ratings, brews, completing cities and similar). Earning rules, level thresholds and rewards are gamification mechanics and may change.

6.3. Coffee Miles, stamps and badges have no monetary value. They are not a means of payment, cannot be exchanged for money or other benefits, and are not transferable, sellable or inheritable between accounts.

6.4. We may adjust, revoke or reset points, stamps and badges obtained in breach of these Terms (for example scanning a code without visiting, automation, multiple accounts, sharing QR codes outside the venue) or as a result of a technical error.

6.5. We may change or discontinue the Coffee Miles programme. We will announce material changes under section 16; discontinuation does not create a claim for a cash equivalent.

6.6. Deleting your account means losing accumulated Coffee Miles, stamps and badges.

7. Visit ratings and reviews

7.1. A rating concerns a specific visit, not a general opinion about the venue. Only a signed‑in User who has a recorded visit (check‑in) may leave a rating, within the time window provided in the App.

7.2. How we verify reviews. Tying a rating to a visit confirmed by a QR scan at the venue is our primary mechanism for verifying that a review comes from someone who actually used the service. We do not individually verify the content of every review and do not confirm every transaction. Reviews are moderated reactively — based on reports and automated abuse signals.

7.3. How the venue score is calculated. The rating shown next to a café is an average of a limited number of the most recent visit ratings, so it reflects the venue’s current state. Ratings removed in moderation are excluded.

7.4. We do not accept payment for publishing or hiding individual reviews. Commissioning, offering or accepting benefits for a review, reviewing your own venue and posting false reviews are prohibited.

7.5. A venue owner may reply in discussions and report content that breaches these Terms, but may not demand removal of a review solely because it is negative.

8. Recommendations, ranking and sponsored content

8.1. Recommendations. The order and selection of content in the Lab (bean and recipe matching), on the Hub and in discovery lists are determined automatically. The main parameters are: fit with your taste profile and ratings, distance and location, availability and freshness of the offer, popularity and activity in the App, content recency, and signals that reduce repetition (including how often something was shown to you before). These are not decisions producing legal effects — see the Privacy Policy.

8.2. Effect of a partner plan. A B2B plan unlocks presentation features: a custom venue marker on the map, an extended gallery and description, “on bar” bean information, website and shop links, events and official recipes, and — on higher plans — the presence of a roastery’s beans in the Lab in additional countries. Presence in the catalogue, the ability to earn a stamp and the visibility of a venue’s basic data do not require a paid plan.

A plan does not change the order of café and roastery search results. It does affect the order of bean recommendations in the Lab: roasteries on the Pro and Enterprise plans receive a monthly allowance of the promotions described in 8.3.

8.3. Promotion affecting ranking (Lab Boost). A roastery may run a time‑limited promotion for one selected bean in the Lab, drawing on the monthly allowance that comes with its plan. While the promotion runs, that bean receives a fixed bonus to its match score (currently +15 points for 3 days), which may raise its position in your recommendation list. The promotion does not change your taste profile, does not remove other beans from the list and has no effect outside the Lab. Apart from that bonus, ordering follows the criteria in 8.1.

8.4. Advertising and sponsored content is labelled in the App (for example “Ad”) where it is displayed. “Editor’s Choice” is an editorial marker and is not for sale.

8.5. Partner content (descriptions, photos, offer, events) comes from cafés and roasteries. We do not verify it upfront for completeness or accuracy.

9. User Content: ownership, licence and responsibility

9.1. Content made available by the Provider in the App belongs to the Provider or its licensors. User Content includes: profile fields, username, bio, photos and avatars, visit ratings (score, text, highlight chips), bean ratings, recipes and brew sessions shared publicly or with friends, posts and replies in discussions (Buzz) together with photos and mentions, public passport and profile elements, moderation reports, change suggestions for café data and new‑place submissions, and material provided in connection with venue listings.

9.2. You retain ownership of the economic rights in your User Content (for example copyright or related rights) to the extent they are vested in you under applicable law. Specialty Atlas does not become the owner of your User Content merely because it is stored or displayed in the App; we obtain only the licences set out below and the right to operate the platform in line with these Terms.

9.3. Licence to operate the service. You grant the Provider a free, non‑exclusive, worldwide licence, with the right to sublicense to processors and hosting providers, for as long as we store the content, to record, reproduce, adapt the format, machine‑translate where technically necessary, display, distribute within the service, moderate, meet legal obligations and develop the product.

9.4. Content contributed to shared catalogues. If you add data to shared resources — for example submitting a new café, suggesting a change to venue data, or adding a bean that is not yet in the catalogue — you grant us a licence to use that information in the Specialty Atlas database also after your account is deleted, to the extent necessary to keep the catalogue consistent. Factual data (address, opening hours, bean parameters) is not publicly attributed to you.

9.5. Marketing and social media. You additionally grant the Provider the right to use excerpts of User Content that has been made public in the App or on our website (for example public visit ratings, public recipes, profile elements marked as public, posts at cafés intended for other users) for promotional purposes, including posts or ads in social media and other marketing channels, unless you opt out in the way made available in the product or in writing and we are technically and organisationally able to honour the opt‑out. Where possible we will credit your nickname/display name; content may be shortened or cropped. The licence may survive account deletion only for material already used in ongoing campaigns or in archives required by law, for a reasonable wind‑down period.

9.6. Private content. We do not use for promotion any content you marked as private or friends‑only, nor your private notes about places.

9.7. Your responsibility. You alone are responsible for the User Content you post: for its legality, accuracy and respect for third‑party rights (copyright, trade marks, personal data, personality rights). When posting photos from a venue, take care of the rights of people visible in them. User Content does not represent the position of the Provider unless we explicitly mark it as ours.

9.8. Role of the Provider (hosting). The Provider only provides a hosting and dissemination service for User Content — in a role similar to that of large social platforms towards user‑generated content. To the extent permitted by law the Provider is not liable for User Content supplied by users or partners (including its errors, staleness or unlawfulness), except where mandatory law provides otherwise, including obligations under the Digital Services Act once we obtain actual knowledge of illegal content. This does not limit your claims against the person who posted the content.

9.9. You represent that you hold the rights needed to grant the above licences and that your content does not infringe third‑party rights.

9.10. The Specialty Atlas database. The catalogue of venues, roasteries, beans, events and related data is a database in which the Provider holds the sui generis database maker's rights under Directive 96/9/EC and the national laws implementing it. Without our prior written consent you may not extract or re‑utilise a substantial part — qualitatively or quantitatively — of that database, nor repeatedly and systematically extract or re‑utilise insubstantial parts in a way that conflicts with the normal exploitation of the database or unreasonably prejudices our legitimate interests. This protection applies independently of any copyright in the individual items and regardless of whether the data was obtained through the App, the Site, programmatic interfaces or otherwise.

9.11. Text and data mining reservation. The Provider expressly reserves the right of text and data mining over the content made available in the App and on the Site, including the database referred to in 9.10, in particular for training, validating or developing artificial‑intelligence models, unless separately agreed. The reservation is made under Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 and the laws implementing it, covers all reproductions, and is also expressed in machine‑readable form at https://specialtyatlas.com/.well-known/tdmrep.json, https://specialtyatlas.com/robots.txt and https://specialtyatlas.com/ai.txt. It does not restrict mining permitted by mandatory law, including research carried out by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions.

10. Friends, profile visibility and blocking

10.1. Friend requests require the other person’s acceptance. Friends can see content shared as “friends” and the elements of your activity you make available to them.

10.2. In Settings you control profile visibility and the visibility of individual sections (activity, collections, statistics and similar). Visibility settings apply going forward — content already made public may have been seen or saved by others earlier.

10.3. You may block another User and hide selected places. Blocking limits mutual interactions in the App.

10.4. A public profile may also be reachable outside the App (a link on the website) if you set it to public.

11. Prohibited conduct

11.1. Prohibited conduct includes in particular: unauthorised access, interfering with operation or security, overloading the infrastructure or scraping data without consent, harassment and hate speech, distributing malware, posting unlawful content, impersonation, running multiple accounts to circumvent limits, and bypassing technical limits.

11.2. Manipulating gamification and ratings is prohibited: fake check‑ins or scanning QR codes without visiting the venue, sharing QR codes outside the venue, automating activity, posting or commissioning false reviews, and artificially inflating a venue’s statistics.

11.3. Reporting tools must be used in good faith; systematically unfounded reports may result in losing access to those tools.

12. Reporting content, moderation and appeals

12.1. Reporting. Anyone may report content, a profile, an event or a place they consider illegal or contrary to these Terms — through the reporting feature in the App or through Help. Please indicate where the content is and give a short justification; that lets us assess the report without a detailed legal analysis.

12.2. Handling. We handle reports in a timely and non‑arbitrary manner. We may: leave the content up, limit its visibility, remove it, restrict account features, suspend or delete the account and, in justified cases, notify the competent authorities.

12.3. Statement of reasons. If we remove your content or restrict your account, we will inform you and state the reason and the basis (a legal provision or a clause of these Terms), unless the law provides otherwise.

12.4. Appeal. You may appeal our decision through Help within 6 months of receiving it. Appeals are reviewed by a person who did not take the original decision, where organisationally possible. Moderation decisions are not taken on a solely automated basis.

12.5. Urgent measures. Content that threatens user safety may be removed immediately, before an appeal is decided.

12.6. The above does not limit your right to pursue claims in court or to use out‑of‑court dispute resolution.

13. Map, location and device permissions

13.1. Subject to your system permission, the App uses location (map, “nearby”, walking navigation, notifications when a place from your “Want to visit” list is nearby), the camera (QR scanning, photos), the photo library (avatar, posts, recipes), the calendar (adding an event), notifications, and sound and haptics.

13.2. Nearby notifications work while the App is in use; we do not run continuous background tracking. Processing details are in the Privacy Policy.

13.3. Refusing or withdrawing a permission disables the related features but does not block the rest of the App. You can change permissions in your system settings and notification and sound preferences in App Settings.

13.4. Walking navigation is an aid only. You are responsible for moving safely and complying with traffic rules; do not use the screen in a way that endangers safety.

14. Personal data

Personal data processing is described in the Privacy Policy. In Settings → Your data you can export your account data, clear local data and delete your account. Consents (location, notification categories and similar) can be withdrawn in App or system settings.

15. Liability

15.1. To the extent permitted by mandatory law, the Provider is not liable for indirect damage, lost profits or third‑party outages (network, map tiles, payments, app stores).

15.2. Information about cafés, roasteries, beans, opening hours and events is auxiliary and may come from partners or users. It is worth verifying key details at the source before a visit.

15.3. Educational material and recipes are not health or dietary advice.

15.4. The above limitations do not exclude liability for wilful misconduct, gross negligence, harm to life or health, or any liability that cannot be excluded by law — including consumer rights relating to a lack of conformity of digital services with the contract.

16. Changes to these Terms

16.1. We may change these Terms for valid reasons — changes in law, changes to or retirement of features, security considerations, or a change in how the service is delivered.

16.2. We will announce material changes in advance (an in‑App message or email). If you do not accept the changes, you may stop using the service and delete your account before they take effect. Continued use after they take effect means acceptance, to the extent permitted by law.

17. Term and termination

17.1. The contract is concluded for an indefinite period. You may stop using the service and delete your account in Settings at any time.

17.2. We may suspend or delete an account in the event of serious or repeated breaches — subject to section 12.

17.3. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (the scope of the licence for promotional material already published and for entries in shared catalogues, liability to the extent permitted, and dispute provisions) remain in force.

18. Governing law and disputes

18.1. Unless mandatory provisions of the consumer’s country of residence provide otherwise, Polish law applies; jurisdiction follows general rules and the special provisions protecting consumers.

18.2. Complaints are accepted through Help; we reply within the statutory deadline, as a rule within 14 days.

18.3. Consumers may use out‑of‑court dispute resolution (in Poland: the Trade Inspection, permanent consumer arbitration courts, the district or municipal consumer ombudsman, and information published by UOKiK).

19. Contact

Questions: Help in the App or the channels listed on specialtyatlas.com.