Creator agreement

“We” and “us” means Merit Mana Limited, a New Zealand company (company number 9294004, NZBN 9429052461118). Toots & Trotsis our trading brand, not a separate company. “You” means you, as a creator in our programme. “Your contributions” means anything you send us or make in the Studio — recipes, posts, photos, video footage, your profile, and anything else you write.

Notices under this agreement — including if either of us is ending the arrangement, or you're asking us to take something down — go by email to hello@tootsandtrots.co.nz, and to the email address on your account.

This agreement sits on top of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Where this agreement and those terms disagree about your contributions, this one wins.

You keep the copyright in your contributions. Nothing here transfers ownership to us. If you leave the programme, you still own everything you wrote.

Images generated for you by the Studio's tools are yours to use for your contributions and your own channels. We may also use them, as set out below.

You give us a licence to use your contributions. In plain terms, that means you let us publish and promote them. Specifically, the licence is worldwide, royalty-free (we don't pay you a fee for it, and you don't pay us), non-exclusive, and one we can pass on to the platforms we post to. It lets us:

• publish your contributions on Toots & Trots;
• post them on our social channels — currently Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, X and Bluesky — and in our newsletter and other marketing;
• edit, crop, caption, subtitle, translate, re-cut and reformat them so they fit each place they appear, including turning your recipe into a video;
• keep showing them after the arrangement between us ends.

That last point is why this permission is described as continuing: once something has been published and shared, we can't reliably un-share it, so we need to be able to leave it up. The exception is the takedown right below, which we do honour.

Attribution.We'll credit you by the name on your profile wherever the format allows it, and link to your profile page on the site. Some social formats don't leave room for a byline — in those we'll credit you in the caption where we can.

You can publish the same recipe or post anywhere else you like — your own blog, your own social channels, another site. You don't need to ask us, and you don't need to wait until we've published it. We'd love a link back, but it's not a condition.

Living with a pouch means the honest version of a story often includes fairly personal detail about your own body. You might share something and later wish you hadn't.

So: you can ask us at any time to remove personal health details or personal-story content about yourself, and we'll do it within 14 days, on the site and on any of our channels we still control. This applies even though the permission above otherwise continues.

The functional part of a contribution — the recipe itself, the ingredients, the method — stays up unless we agree otherwise. If you want a whole piece taken down rather than edited, ask and we'll talk about it; we're not going to be difficult.

Some things are genuinely beyond us: reposts and screenshots by other people, search-engine caches, and anything a platform has already distributed. We'll do what we can.

When you send us a contribution, you're confirming that:

• you wrote it, and it's not copied from someone else's recipe or article;
• you have the right to give us any photos or footage in it, including permission from anyone else who appears in them;
• you're writing about your own experience rather than giving medical advice — no diagnosis, no treatment instructions, no cure claims;
• you'll tell us if a brand has paid you or given you product in connection with something you're writing about.

If a contribution turns out to breach one of these, we may take it down, and you agree to cover us for any loss that arises from it. We read everything before it goes up, but we can't independently verify authorship.

• Free access to the Studio and its tools for the period we've agreed with you — currently two years for our founding group.
• Your name and profile on everything of yours we publish, and a profile page linking to your own channels.
• We read everything before it goes up. We may suggest changes, mostly about wording and house style, and we may decline a piece. We won't publish something under your name that you haven't seen.
• Where we've offered to produce a video from your footage, we'll give you the finished file to use on your own channels.

We may change what the Studio can do, or what the monthly allowances are, as the tools change. We'll tell you if something you rely on is going away.

You can withdraw from the programme at any time, for any reason — just tell us. We can end it at any time too, for any reason, and we'll tell you when we do.

When it ends, either way:

• your Studio access stops, and your unpublished drafts stay available to you on request for 90 days;
• anything already published stays up, still credited to you, under the permission above;
• your profile page stays up unless you ask us to remove it;
• the takedown right above still applies — leaving the programme doesn't take it away.

If the free access period runs out and you don't continue, the same applies: your work stays up, credited to you.

There's no payment either way. What you get in exchange for your contributions is free access to the Studio and its tools for the agreed period, video production where we've offered it, and publication with your name on it.

You're not our employee or contractor, and this isn't a partnership. You're responsible for your own tax affairs. If we ever introduce a revenue share or paid commissions, that'll be a separate written arrangement.

If you write about your own health, you're choosing to make that public, and you're asking us to publish it. Health information is sensitive personal information under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, so we handle it accordingly — see our Privacy Policy. Please think about how much detail you want attached to your name, and remember you can use the takedown right above if you change your mind.

Toots & Trots is an informational tool, not medical advice, and the same limits in our Terms of Use apply here. Nothing in this agreement limits or excludes any rights you have that can't be excluded under New Zealand law, including the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and the Fair Trading Act 1986 where they apply.

If we change this agreement materially, we'll ask you to accept the new version next time you open the Studio, and we'll change the “last updated” date above. The version you accepted keeps applying to what you'd already contributed.

This agreement is governed by the laws of New Zealand, and the New Zealand courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute.