MealShift Courier Agreement

Version 1.1, effective 6 October 2026. Replaces version 1.0, published 8 August 2026.

This is the agreement between you, a self-employed courier ("you"), and MealShift Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 12793366, registered office 410 Naylor Building West, Assam Street, London E1 7QL) ("MealShift", "we", "us").

It explains how you use the MealShift app to find and do work, how you get paid, and how MealShift works as your agent. Please read it before you accept it. By accepting it in the app you agree to it.

Words we use

These words have the same meaning here as in our Terms and Conditions for Clients:

“Platform” means the MealShift apps (including the MealShift-Driver app), the MealShift dashboard and the MealShift API.

“Client” means the business that books work on the Platform and that you do the work for, for example a restaurant, a shop or a delivery partner. Our agreements and terms with Clients may call them a merchant, a partner or simply "you". The people who receive the orders are not Clients.

“Delivery” means a single delivery a Client requests on the Platform (sometimes called pay per drop).

“Booking” means a Client booking a courier for a set number of hours (sometimes called a shift).

“Delivery Charge” means your charge for a Delivery.

“Hourly Charge” means your charge for a Booking.

“Cancellation Charge” means your charge when a Client cancels a Delivery or a Booking after you have accepted it, where the Client’s terms with us say a charge applies.

“Courier Charges” means Delivery Charges, Hourly Charges and Cancellation Charges. They are your charges, which we collect as your agent.

“commission” means our charge to you for our services as your agent (see section 4).

1. Your status: self-employed

1.1 You are self-employed and in business on your own account. You are not an employee or a worker of MealShift, and this agreement does not make you one.

1.2 You decide whether, when and how much to work. You are free to work for other people and other platforms, including our competitors. You use your own vehicle and your own equipment, and you decide how to carry out each job.

1.3 You look after your own income tax and National Insurance, and you are not entitled to employee benefits such as holiday pay or sick pay from us.

2. You do the work, we connect you to it

2.1 When you accept a Delivery or a Booking, you are doing that work for the Client. You supply the Delivery, or the hours of the Booking, to the Client. Your contract for that work is with the Client, not with MealShift.

2.2 MealShift does not buy your work from you and sell it on to the Client. We act as your disclosed agent. That means we find you work, agree the price for you, collect your Courier Charges for you, and handle the invoicing for you. The work itself is your supply to the Client.

3. The price: you let us set it for you

3.1 You authorise us to set and agree, on your behalf, both the Courier Charges the Client pays and our commission. We work the price out using our standard method, which looks at things like distance, the type of vehicle and how busy it is. For a Booking, the price is an hourly rate. Some Clients have rates set out in a signed agreement with us: we agree those rates for you, as your agent. Cancellation Charges are worked out under the Client’s terms with us.

3.2 We do this because a single, consistent price is fairer for everyone. It stops work being undersold and stops Clients being overcharged. While this authority is in place, the price we set is your price.

3.3 You can withdraw this pricing authority for future jobs by giving us notice in writing (a message in the app counts).

4. Your money and our commission

4.1 The Courier Charges are your money. They are your income for the work you do. We collect them from the Client for you.

4.2 Your Courier Charges are:

1. the Delivery Charge for each Delivery you complete;
2. the Hourly Charge for each Booking you work. This is your charge in exactly the same way as a Delivery Charge; and
3. a Cancellation Charge, where a Client cancels work you have accepted and the Client’s terms say a charge applies. We collect it from the Client and pass it on to you in the same way as a Delivery Charge. There is no Cancellation Charge when you or MealShift cancel.

4.3 Our commission is what you pay us for finding the work, agreeing the price, collecting your Courier Charges for you and handling your invoicing. We charge it on all your Courier Charges, including Hourly Charges and Cancellation Charges. The commission can be different from job to job and from Client to Client.

4.4 We take our commission out of the Courier Charges we collect, before we pass the rest on to you. Each week we pay the balance (the Courier Charges we collected for you, less our commission and anything else you have agreed we can deduct) into the bank account you give us. Section 4.7 explains what happens when we pay you before the Client has paid us.

4.5 We add VAT to our commission and to any Instant Payout fee where the law requires it, and we account for that VAT to HMRC. Our commission is our own charge to you for our services.

4.6 Payments from MealShift. If MealShift pays you anything from its own money, that payment is not a Courier Charge. We take no commission from it and it is not included in the invoices we issue in your name. It still counts as income of your business for your own tax.

4.7 Being paid before the Client pays us.

4.7.1 We often pay you before the Client has paid us. For example, the weekly payout can go out before the Client has paid its weekly invoice, and an Instant Payout can be earlier still. When this happens, we pay your Courier Charges to you early, as your agent, as an advance from our own money.

4.7.2 Once you have done the job and we have paid you for it, that money is yours to keep. We will not take it back from you if the Client pays late or does not pay. We chase the Client for payment ourselves, and when the Client pays for that job, that payment repays our advance. This does not change section 8.

4.7.3 Instant Payout. Instant Payout is optional. Where your bank account supports it, you can ask to be paid your available balance straight away (shown in the app as "Withdraw") instead of waiting for the weekly payout. If you use Instant Payout, we charge you a fee for it. The fee matches what our payment provider (currently Stripe) charges for an instant payment, and is shown in the app before you confirm and taken from the amount paid out.

5. Invoices: we issue them in your name

5.1 To keep things simple, we prepare and issue the invoices for your Courier Charges to the Client, in your name and on your behalf, as your agent.

5.2 By accepting this agreement you agree to this arrangement, you agree not to raise your own invoices for this work, and you agree we can do this for as long as this agreement lasts.

5.3 Each week we give you a statement. It shows your Courier Charges by type, our commission, any Instant Payout fees and any other deductions.

5.4 Tell us straight away if you register for VAT, or if your VAT details change, so that the invoices we prepare for you are correct.

6. Your tax and VAT

6.1 You are responsible for your own tax, including income tax, National Insurance and VAT.

6.2 Because you supply the whole of the work to the Client, the amount that counts as your turnover for VAT is the full Courier Charges, not the amount left after our commission. Payments from MealShift (section 4.6) are separate from your Courier Charges. If your total turnover goes over the VAT registration threshold, you must register for VAT and tell us.

6.3 We do not give tax advice. If you are unsure, please get your own advice.

7. Licence, insurance and right to work

7.1 You must hold, and keep, a valid driving licence, the right insurance for paid delivery work, and the legal right to work in the United Kingdom. You must show us proof of these if we ask. You carry each delivery at your own risk and on your own insurance.

8. If something goes wrong with a delivery

8.1 Because the work is yours, if goods are lost or damaged because of something you did, that is a matter between you and the Client. MealShift is not a party to it.

8.2 We may choose to help sort out a problem or a goodwill payment to a Client. Where the problem was your fault, we may recover what we paid from you, up to the limits we publish in our Terms and Conditions.

9. Our app and brand

9.1 The MealShift apps, software, brand and logos belong to us. While this agreement is in place you may use them to find and do work, and for nothing else. You get no other rights in them.

10. Your information

10.1 MealShift Ltd looks after the personal information we hold about you, and we handle it in line with UK data protection law.

10.2 What we hold about you. To sign you up and run your deliveries we process your name and contact details, your date of birth, your right-to-work and identity documents, your driving licence, insurance and vehicle details, your bank and payment details, your location while you are on shift, and a record of the deliveries you do, your ratings, and your messages with us.

10.3 Why we hold it, and our legal grounds. We use it to set up and run your account, to offer you work and pay you, to keep you, Clients and the people receiving orders safe, to prevent fraud, to meet our legal duties (such as checking your right to work and keeping tax records), and to improve our service. We rely on our agreement with you, on our legal obligations, and on our legitimate interest in running a safe and reliable platform. Where we ever rely on your consent, for example to send you marketing, you can withdraw it at any time.

10.4 Who we share it with. We share only what is needed. The Client you do the work for, and the person receiving the order, see the delivery and courier information needed to complete the job. Our payment provider processes your payouts. We also use trusted service providers for things like hosting, email and messaging, customer support, phone calls, and error reporting and analytics, and we share information with HMRC and other authorities where the law requires it. We do not sell your personal data.

10.5 The delivery details you receive. When you accept a job we give you the customer’s name, address and contact details so you can complete the delivery. You may use these only to carry out that delivery. You must keep them confidential, must not keep them after the delivery is done, and must not use them for anything else. You must follow our reasonable instructions on handling this information.

10.6 How long we keep it. We keep your information only as long as we need it. We keep your account records while your account is active and for up to 7 years afterwards to meet our legal and tax duties, and we keep or delete everything else in line with the retention periods set out in our Privacy Policy. We keep your right-to-work record for no longer than 2 years after your last job, and copies of background-check (DBS) certificates for no more than 6 months from issue. If you ask us to delete your account, we remove your personal details, but we keep what the law requires us to keep, such as your pay and tax records and, where the law requires it, your right-to-work record.

10.7 Your rights. You have rights over your information, including to ask for a copy of it, to have it corrected, to object to how we use it, and in some cases to have it deleted. To use any of these, or if you have a question about your data, email [email protected] with "Data subject request" in the subject line. You can also complain to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

10.8 More detail. Our full Privacy Policy explains all of this in more detail, including everything we collect, the legal grounds we rely on, who we share data with, and how long we keep it. You can read it at mealshift.co.uk/privacy-policy/.

11. Starting, changing and ending this agreement

11.1 This agreement starts when you accept it in the app and runs until it ends. Either of us can end it by giving notice. We can suspend or end it straight away if you break it, if you lose a licence, insurance or the right to work, or if you act unlawfully.

11.2 We may update this agreement from time to time. If we do, we will show you the new version in the app to accept, and the app will record which version you accepted. You will not be able to carry on using the app until you accept it. Ending this agreement does not affect Courier Charges you have already earned or commission already due.

12. General

12.1 This agreement (with anything it refers to in the app) is the whole agreement between us on this subject. It is governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

12.2 Our Terms and Conditions at mealshift.co.uk/terms-conditions/ set out the terms between us and our Clients. If they and this agreement say different things about you as a courier, this agreement applies.

Accepting this agreement

When you tick to accept in the app, you are agreeing to the following:

I agree to the MealShift Courier Agreement (v1.1). I understand that I do each Delivery and Booking for the Client as a self-employed courier, and that MealShift acts as my agent to set my charges and its commission for me, to collect my charges for me and to issue invoices for them in my name. I also agree to the Privacy Policy.

Previous versions: version 1.0 (published 8 August 2026) is at mealshift.co.uk/courier-agreement-v1-0/. If you have not yet accepted version 1.1 in the app, version 1.0 still applies to you until you do.