Terms of Service

Barista Gigs is a venue: a marketplace where cafés post one-off shifts (“gigs”) and independent baristas (“baristas”) apply to work them, and where cafés can also advertise employed positions. When a café and a barista agree to work together, they enter into a direct arrangement with each other. We are not a party to that arrangement. We are not an employer, not a temporary-work agency (entreprise de travail temporaire), not a staffing or placement agency, and we do not supply, lend, or second labour. We do not select baristas for cafés, assign anyone to a shift, set or cap pay, supervise work, or take any commission on what a barista earns. Cafés pay a flat subscription to post; the platform is free for baristas and always will be — French law prohibits charging a person for finding them work, and we don’t.

These terms are a contract between you and Barista Gigs [operator legal name, legal form, registered office, RCS number — to be completed]. By creating an account you agree to them and to our Privacy Policy. They are written for use in France; if you use the platform elsewhere, the local rules on work and hiring apply to you in addition to what is said here.

• You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to work (baristas) or hire (cafés) in France.
• Keep your account information accurate. One account per person or café; a barista account and a café team account must be separate accounts.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your password safe.
• A café owner can invite team members(the number of seats depends on the plan). Team members share the café’s workspace — gigs, applicants, planner, and messages — while billing, locations, and team management stay with the owner. The owner is responsible for their team members’ use of the workspace and can remove them at any time.

A gig is a short, defined service (prestation de service) that an independent barista performs for a café as a professional, not as an employee. That is only lawful if the barista really is independent, so:

• Baristas must be registered before working a gig — as a micro-entrepreneur or through a company — and hold a valid SIRET number. Working a gig without being registered is undeclared work (travail dissimulé) for both sides. If you are not registered, you can still apply to the employed positions in section 5, where the café hires you under an employment contract.
• The barista invoices the café for each gig and is responsible for declaring the income and paying their own social contributions and taxes. Payment is made directly between café and barista, by whatever method they agree; we do not hold, transfer, or guarantee any payment.
• Baristas arrange their own insurance. Professional liability cover (RC pro) is not compulsory for this activity but is strongly recommended, and some cafés will ask for it.
• Pay is set between the café and the barista.The rate on a listing is the café’s proposal; a barista is free to accept it, negotiate it, or pass. We do not fix, suggest, or cap rates, and we have no say in the terms of any gig.
• The café remains responsible for the safety of its premises and equipment for everyone working there, including independent baristas.

Under French law, what matters is not what an arrangement is called but how it works in practice. A freelance barista who works fixed hours for the same café week after week, takes instructions on how to work, and can be penalised for not complying, is an employee in disguise (salariat déguisé) — and a court can reclassify the relationship as an employment contract, with back-contributions and penalties falling mostly on the café. The platform is built to stay clear of that, and we ask you to use it the same way.

• Baristas are never obliged to accept a gig, to be available at any time, or to work a minimum number of gigs. Declining or ignoring a gig — including an SOS gig — has no consequence on the platform.
• No exclusivity. Baristas may work for anyone, through any channel, including directly with cafés they first met here, and cafés may hire baristas however they like. We charge nothing for working together off-platform and never will.
• We do not supervise anyone. We give no instructions on how a shift is to be done, we do not monitor working time or location, and we do not sanction baristas or cafés based on ratings, reliability records, or how often they use the platform. We only act on accounts for the conduct reasons in section 8.
• Cafés: use gigs for what they are. Cover, events, rushes, and other one-off or irregular needs. If you need someone on a fixed schedule every week, or someone who is part of your team under your direction, that is a job: post an employed position (section 5) or add them to your own staff (section 6) and hire them under an employment contract.
• Cafés: check who you are contracting with.Ask for the barista’s SIRET before the first gig. If your contracts with the same barista reach €5,000 excluding VAT in total, French law requires you to obtain their URSSAF attestation de vigilance and renew it every six months, or you can be held liable for their unpaid contributions.

Cafés can also advertise employed positions. These are job advertisements, nothing more: the café is the employer, the employment contract forms directly between the café and the person hired, on terms they agree themselves, and the café is solely responsible for every obligation that comes with hiring — the written contract, the pre-hire declaration (DPAE), payslips, minimum wage, working time, and everything else in the Code du travail and the applicable collective agreement (convention collective HCR for most cafés).

• Job advertisements for positions in France must be written in French. You may add an English version alongside.
• Advertisements must be accurate and dated, and must not mislead about the role, the pay, or the conditions.
• No discriminatory requirements: age, sex, origin, family situation, appearance, religion, health, or any other ground protected by law may not appear in a listing or be used in selection.
• Baristas and job seekers never pay anything to apply, to be put in contact, or to be hired. Any attempt to charge them is prohibited.
• We publish these listings on a public hiring page so that search engines and job aggregators can index them. Closing or deleting a listing removes it from that page at the next refresh.

The planner lets a café schedule its own employees alongside its gigs. It is a scheduling tool, not an HR or payroll system, and using it changes nothing about who employs whom: the people on your staff list are your employees, not ours.

• The café remains solely responsible for complying with working-time rules — daily and weekly maximums, rest periods, breaks, overtime, Sunday and night work, and the rules of its collective agreement. The planner does not enforce these and does not warn you when a schedule breaches them.
• The planner is not the legal record of hours worked. Keep whatever time records the law and your collective agreement require, independently of what is in the planner.
• Contracted weekly hours stored in the planner are a planning aid. They do not create, modify, or evidence an employment contract.
• A staff member can link their own account to their planner entry only by accepting an invitation. Once linked they can see their rota and mark days off; how those marks are handled — approved, refused, counted as leave — is between the café and its employee, under their contract and the law.
• Removing a staff member from the planner is not a dismissal and has no employment-law effect; it only removes them from the schedule.

Posting gigs and job listings requires a paid subscription (see current plans and prices on the billing page), billed monthly or yearly through Stripe. Plans differ in what they include — such as the number of gigs per month, café locations, and team seats — as described on the billing page at the time you subscribe. The fee is the same whether or not any gig gets filled, and never depends on how many baristas you work with or what you pay them. You can cancel any time and keep access until the end of the paid period. Prices may change with reasonable advance notice; changes never apply retroactively to a period you’ve already paid for. Except where the law requires otherwise, fees already paid are non-refundable.

• Café referrals: when a café that signed up through your referral link activates its first subscription, you receive a credit worth one month of your own plan, applied to your billing automatically.
• Barista referrals: when a café that signed up through your referral link activates its first subscription, you earn the cash bonus stated next to your referral link at the time the café subscribes. We pay it out manually to the payment details on your profile; keeping those details accurate is your responsibility. The bonus is a marketing reward from us for introducing a customer — it is not payment for work, and it creates no working relationship between you and us.
• One reward per referred café, granted on its first subscription only. Self-referrals, fake accounts, and other abuse void the reward.
• We may change or end a referral program at any time; rewards already earned are honoured.
• Referral rewards are income: declaring them, and invoicing us for them if your status requires it, is your responsibility.

• Be honest: no fake profiles, gigs, recommendations, reviews, or credentials.
• Reviews must reflect a genuine experience from the shift being reviewed. No paid, traded, or retaliatory reviews.
• No discrimination in hiring or applying on grounds protected by law.
• No harassment, spam, or abusive messages.
• Don't use the platform to arrange undeclared work: no gigs for unregistered baristas, no cash-in-hand arrangements to avoid contributions.
• Only upload content you have the right to share; no illegal content.
• Don't scrape the platform or misuse other users' data — contact details and payment details shared with you may be used only for the gig at hand.

We may remove content, suspend, or close accounts that break these rules or the law, with notice where practicable. We never suspend or restrict an account because of ratings, reliability statistics, or declined gigs.

You keep ownership of what you post and grant us the license needed to display it to other users as part of the service.

• After a gig ends, the café records whether an accepted barista worked the shift or didn’t show up. These confirmations come from the café, not from us, and feed the reliability statistics (confirmed shifts, show-up rate) shown on barista profiles. They are a factual record kept by the café, not a sanction, and we attach no consequence to them. If a record is wrong, contact us and we will ask the café to correct it.
• Once a shift is confirmed as worked, café and barista can each leave one reviewof the other. Only the two parties to a confirmed shift can review it, which is the only verification we perform. Reviews are shown in date order, newest first, with their date. They reflect their author’s opinion, not ours. We don’t edit reviews, but we may remove ones that break section 9 or the law.
• Recommendations can only be given by cafés that actually accepted a barista for a gig; they reflect that café’s opinion, not ours.
• If you choose a username, your Barista Passport— a public page with your name, photos, and the cafés you’ve worked at — becomes reachable by anyone with the link, beyond your city. You can take it offline by removing your username.

We provide the platform “as is” and work to keep it available and accurate, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted service, that gigs will be filled, or that any user is who they claim to be (see our Disclaimers). We do not verify anyone’s registration, insurance, right to work, or compliance with the obligations described in sections 3 to 6; those obligations are yours. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, our liability is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for intent, gross negligence, or personal injury.

You can delete your account at any time. We can terminate accounts as described in section 9, or discontinue the service with reasonable notice, in which case any prepaid subscription period after the shutdown date is refunded.

These terms are governed by French law. Cafés and baristas use the platform as professionals; any dispute that cannot be settled amicably goes to the competent courts of Paris. If, exceptionally, you use the platform as a consumer, the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live still apply, and you may use the European Commission’s online dispute resolution platform.