Badge License Agreement

The four words this agreement keeps apart

They are used precisely throughout and they do not mean the same thing:

You never have to buy anything. The award and the certificate are yours on issue. Only the badge artwork carries a fee, only if you want to use it commercially, and only after you have already won.

1. What you are granted

If your business has been issued a CoffeeLab Award, CoffeeLabAdvisor (operated by ChooseToShop LLC, an Indiana limited liability company) grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to display the certificate and, on payment of the fee in section 7, the badge, for that specific award, in the formats we supply, subject to these terms.

The certificate licence costs nothing and is granted automatically on issue of the award. You do not need to ask, pay, or reply to anything to print it and display it in your premises.

The licence is granted to the named recipient for the named award only. It cannot be sub-licensed, resold, or assigned, and it does not transfer automatically on sale of the business.

If the business is sold, renamed, or reorganised, ask us and we will transfer or reissue the licence where the award still accurately describes the business, the location, or the product. We are not looking for a reason to refuse, and no further fee is charged on a transfer. Write to support@coffeelabadvisor.com quoting the certificate ID.

2. What the award covers — and what it does not

Every CoffeeLab Award names a specific recipient, a specific category, a specific year, and (for venue awards) a specific address. The badge may only be used to refer to that award.

Concretely, this means you may not use the badge to suggest that:

• other locations of your business hold the award, when the award names one address;
• a different product, category, or year is covered;
• CoffeeLabAdvisor endorses your business generally, rather than having made the specific evaluation the award records;
• the award is a certification, accreditation, safety approval, or guarantee of any kind. It is not.

An award reflects an editorial evaluation based on the evidence available and verified at the time of assessment. It is a point-in-time assessment, not a warranty of current quality. See our Terms and Conditions, section 4, and our published awards methodology.

3. Display rules

These are the same rules published on your award page, repeated here so the agreement and the page cannot disagree:

• Link the web badge to your award page on www.coffeelabadvisor.com.
• Do not modify badge colours, proportions, text, or tier designation.
• Do not use the badge for products or services other than the specific award named.
• Do not imply endorsement of products or services beyond the scope of that award.
• The badge may be displayed from the date of issue unless the award is withdrawn in writing.

Permitted placements include your website, social media profiles and posts, marketing e-mail, press materials, product listings for the awarded product, and printed display in the awarded premises. If you want to use it somewhere not listed here, contact us for written permission. We are not looking for reasons to refuse.

4. Ownership

The CoffeeLab Award name, the CoffeeLab Awards marks, the badge artwork, the certificate design, and the underlying evaluation methodology remain the property of ChooseToShop LLC. Nothing in this agreement transfers ownership of any of it. Trademark applications for the CoffeeLab Awards marks are pending; they are not yet registered, and we will say so here until that changes.

Nothing in this agreement transfers ownership of your business name, trademarks, premises, or materials. Displaying the badge gives us no rights in any of them, beyond naming you as a recipient in our own publications and announcements.

5. Accuracy, corrections, and your right of reply

If anything on your award page is inaccurate, tell us and we will correct it. That applies to factual matters — addresses, ownership, equipment, sourcing, opening status, quoted material — and we will correct those promptly and without argument once verified.

You may also dispute the evaluation itself. We will consider a documented response and publish a correction or clarification where one is warranted. We will not remove a published limitation or an honest description of what we could not verify simply because it is unflattering; if you can show it is wrong, that is a different matter and we will fix it.

Write to support@coffeelabadvisor.com, quoting your certificate ID.

6. Withdrawal and termination

We may withdraw an award, and with it this licence, in writing. In practice that happens when:

• the award was issued on information later found to be materially wrong;
• the awarded business, location, or product has closed, or has changed in a way that goes to what we actually evaluated — it no longer operates at the awarded address, no longer makes the awarded product, or no longer does the thing the award records. Ordinary change does not qualify: a new logo, a refit, a new menu, a different espresso machine, a change of coffee supplier or a change of staff will not cost you the award;
• the badge is used in a way these terms prohibit and the misuse is not corrected after notice;
• circumstances come to light that would have made the recipient ineligible under our published eligibility rules.

On withdrawal you must stop using the badge and certificate within 30 days and remove them from materials under your control. Printed matter already distributed does not need to be recalled.

You may stop using the badge at any time. You do not need our permission and you do not need to tell us, although we would rather know.

7. Badge licence fee — and what no payment can buy

Awards are not for sale. No payment, consideration, advertising spend, sponsorship, featured listing, reciprocal arrangement, or badge licence fee affects whether a business is evaluated, how it scores, whether it wins, or the outcome of any documentation review. The badge licence fee is charged only after an award has been decided and published, and it is refused if offered before. This is stated on every award page and it is a term of this agreement.

What the fee is for. It licenses our trademarked badge artwork for commercial display. It is not a processing charge, a membership, a listing fee, or a renewal on your award — the award itself does not expire and does not need to be renewed.

One fee per award, charged once, not annually. A business that wins in a later year licenses that award separately. We publish these figures rather than quoting privately, so that no two recipients are ever charged differently for the same thing.

We may revise these fees. The figures above apply to licences taken out while they are published here. We reserve the right to change them at any time, for future award years or for licences not yet issued, and the current figures are always the ones on this page.

A licence you have already paid for is fixed. A revised fee is never charged retroactively, never billed again on a licence already granted, and never applied to an award you have already licensed. If the price goes up, it goes up for licences issued after the change — not for yours.

How payment works. We raise a PayPal invoice from ChooseToShop LLC, or send bank details for direct remittance if you would rather pay that way. Prices are in US dollars. If we are required to charge sales tax on the licence, it is shown separately on the invoice and added to the figures above.

When the licence takes effect. On payment clearing. We send the badge files at the same time, normally within two business days. Nothing is owed until you ask for the licence, and asking for a copy of the invoice is not a commitment to pay it.

Refunds. If you change your mind within 30 days and have not yet published the badge anywhere, write to us and we will refund the fee in full. If we withdraw the award within 12 months of your payment for any reason that is not misuse of the badge by you, we refund the fee without being asked.

If you do not license the badge: keep your certificate, keep your award page, keep your verification record, and tell anyone you like that you won — in words, in press, on your menu. The licence governs the artwork, not the fact of the award. Nothing about the award is contingent on paying.

CoffeeLabAdvisor earns affiliate commission on home coffee equipment. It earns nothing from cafés, and professional café equipment is not sold through our affiliate programme. Our full affiliate disclosure is in the Terms and Conditions.

8. Warranties and liability

You are responsible for how you use the badge in your own marketing, including compliance with advertising rules that apply to you.

9. General

These terms may be updated; the version and effective date are shown at the top of this page, and material changes will be notified to recipients by e-mail where we hold an address. Continued display of the badge after a material change constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest continues in effect. This agreement is read together with our Terms and Conditions; where the two conflict on badge use, this agreement governs.

Questions and permitted-use requests: support@coffeelabadvisor.com