Terms & Conditions

These General Terms and Conditions govern every contract between Food-Stock — owner Jewgeni Kazatchkov, Sybelstrasse 67, 10629 Berlin, Germany (“Food-Stock”, “we”, “us”) and the customer (“you”) concluded through the Food-Stock marketplace, by e-mail or by telephone.

We contract exclusively with entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 BGB, legal entities under public law and special funds under public law. We do not sell to consumers. By registering you confirm that you are acting in the exercise of your commercial or independent professional activity.

Your own general terms and conditions do not become part of the contract, even if we do not expressly object to them, unless we have agreed to them in writing.

Registration requires complete and correct company data. Inside the EU a valid VAT identification number is required; we verify it against the official VIES registry of the European Commission and may repeat that check at any time.

Accounts are approved manually. We may refuse approval, limit access to parts of the marketplace or withdraw approval at any time; there is no entitlement to an account. You keep your login details confidential and are responsible for everything done through your account. Tell us immediately if you suspect misuse.

You keep your master data (address, VAT ID, invoice address, contact person) up to date.

Products, prices, quantities and best-before dates shown in the shop, in offer mailings or in a quotation are non-binding and are an invitation to you to send a request. Surplus stock is by nature limited and fast-moving: quantity, best-before date and availability can change at any time before a deal is confirmed.

Quantities are allocated in the order in which deals are confirmed, not in the order in which requests arrive. Where several customers ask for the same lot, we may reduce or refuse a quantity that is no longer available.

Sending a request through the shop, by e-mail or by phone is your invitation to us; it does not conclude a contract and does not reserve goods.

The contract comes into existence when we send you a written order confirmation (e-mail is sufficient) stating the goods, quantity, unit price, best-before date and the pickup or delivery arrangement, or when we start performing the order. Anything agreed by phone needs that written confirmation to take effect.

Amendments after confirmation — quantity, price, dates — are only valid if we confirm them in writing.

All prices are net prices in euro, ex works (EXW, Incoterms® 2020) from the warehouse named in the confirmation, excluding transport, insurance, customs duties and packaging beyond the standard pallet, unless expressly agreed otherwise.

Value added tax is charged according to your country and VAT ID:

• Customers in Germany: the applicable German VAT rate for the goods (food is normally 7 %).
• Customers in another EU member state with a valid VAT ID: 0 % — intra-Community supply, reverse charge, you are liable for the VAT (§ 13b UStG, Art. 196 Directive 2006/112/EC).
• Customers in the EU without a valid VAT ID: German VAT is charged.
• Customers outside the EU: 0 % — export supply (§ 4 No. 1a UStG). Customs and import duties are yours.

Payment is due in advance (prepayment) unless we have agreed otherwise in writing. Goods are only released for loading or dispatch once the full invoice amount has been credited to our account. If a payment term has been agreed in writing and you miss it, we may charge default interest of 9 percentage points above the base rate (§ 288 (2) BGB) and a flat fee of € 40.

You may only set off against claims that are undisputed or have been established by a final court decision, and you may only exercise a right of retention arising from the same contractual relationship.

Goods are sold ex works. If you collect the goods, you do so within the loading window stated in the confirmation and observe the rules of the warehouse. If we arrange transport at your request, we do so on your behalf and at your cost; we are not a carrier.

The risk of accidental loss and deterioration passes to you when the goods are handed over to you, your driver or the carrier. Loading dates are estimates that depend on warehouse capacity; a delay of a few working days does not entitle you to withdraw from the contract.

Pallets, deposit crates and similar returnable packaging are exchanged one-for-one at loading unless agreed otherwise.

We trade surplus, short-dated and close-to-date food and non-food articles. The best-before date (BBD) stated in the order confirmation is the agreed quality; goods with that date are not defective because the date is close. Batch, packaging design, label languages and secondary packaging may deviate from a product photo.

You are responsible for checking, before you buy, that the goods may be sold in your market — label languages, ingredients, national food law, any sales restrictions communicated with the offer — and for complying with the food law of every country in which you resell.

Goods must be stored and transported at the temperature stated in the offer. Any resale restriction shown with an offer (for example “not to be sold in country X”) is part of the contract.

You inspect the goods immediately on receipt (§ 377 HGB). Obvious defects, transport damage, wrong articles and quantity shortfalls must be reported to us in writing, with photographs and the pallet/batch numbers, without undue delay and at the latest within three working days of receipt, and before the goods are resold, repacked or processed. Hidden defects must be reported without undue delay after discovery.

Where a complaint is justified we will, at our choice, replace the goods, take them back against a credit note, or reduce the price. Surplus goods are otherwise excluded from return. Do not return goods without our written agreement.

Claims for defects become time-barred twelve months after delivery, except in the cases of section 10.

The goods remain our property until all claims arising from the business relationship have been paid in full. You may resell the goods in the ordinary course of business; you already now assign to us the claims arising from that resale up to the amount of our invoice, and we accept that assignment. You remain entitled to collect those claims as long as you meet your payment obligations.

We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the Product Liability Act and where we have given a guarantee.

In cases of slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of an essential contractual obligation (an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose fulfilment you may regularly rely), and in that case only for the foreseeable damage typical of this kind of contract. Any further liability is excluded.

The marketplace is provided as it is; we do not warrant uninterrupted availability of the website and may change or discontinue functions.

Prices, sources, quantities and the identity of the other side of a deal are confidential business information. Food-Stock buys and resells in its own name: the platform deliberately does not disclose the seller to the buyer or the buyer to the seller, and you will not attempt to identify or circumvent us in respect of goods offered to you through Food-Stock.

You will not scrape, copy or republish listings, photos or price information, and you will not use the marketplace to advertise to other users.

We process your data as described in our Privacy Policy. Communication with us — e-mail, chat and the messages in your account — is stored so that the team can answer it and document the business relationship.

German law applies to the exclusion of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). Place of performance for both sides is Berlin.

The exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from the business relationship with merchants, legal entities under public law or special funds under public law is Berlin, Germany. We may also sue you at your general place of jurisdiction.

Should a provision of these terms be or become invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions is not affected. The English text is the version we use in international trade.