Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing our website (ncmuse.co), using our mobile application, visiting our physical location at 311 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC 28310, creating an account, making a purchase, booking classes or events, using our WiFi network, or engaging with our AI chatbot assistant ("BaristaBot"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service.

2. Services Offered

Muse & Co operates as a hybrid creative space offering:

• Food & Beverage: Boba tea, coffee, specialty drinks, and food items with customizable options
• Art Classes & Workshops: Weekly classes (10 seated spots), drop-ins welcome, professional instruction
• Private Events & Space Rental: Art Space Only (12 people) or Entire Venue (34 people)
• Membership Programs: Basic ($25/mo), Premium ($45/mo), Elite ($105/mo)
• Gallery & Art Sales: Featured local artists and community display space
• Complimentary WiFi: Free high-speed internet for all customers
• AI Chatbot (BaristaBot): Menu recommendations and business inquiries

6. Health, Safety & Liability - KEY SECTIONS

6.1 CHOKING HAZARD - Tapioca Boba Pearls

6.2 Food Allergens & Dietary Restrictions

6.3 Art Materials & Paint Safety

6.4 Artwork Storage & Donation Policy

6.6 General Liability Waiver

7. Membership Terms

Auto-Renewal: Memberships automatically renew monthly. Cancel anytime; benefits continue until end of billing period.

Payment Failure: Membership ends immediately on the day of non-payment. No grace period. Update payment method and pay current month to reactivate.

Drop-Ins: Subject to seat availability; usage resets monthly.

Special Discounts: Military (20% off with valid ID), Student (15% off with valid ID)

7b. Muse Stars Loyalty Program Terms

7b.1 Program Overview

Muse Stars ("Loyal-Tea") is a free rewards program available to all customers. By participating, you agree to these terms.

7b.2 Earning Stars

• Base Rate: 10 Muse Stars per $1 spent on qualifying purchases
• Slow-Day Bonus: 2x Stars on Tuesdays and 3x Stars on Wednesdays for drinks, ice cream, Sit & Paint, and metal-cuff or bracelet workshops only. Food, recurring or prepaid classes, Paint & Boba, memberships, rentals, and other events earn the normal rate.
• Tier Multipliers: Tea Leaf (1x), Artist (1.25x), Muse (1.5x) applied to base rate
• Membership Bonus: Basic (+25%), Premium (+50%), Elite (+100%) applied to base rate
• Stars are earned on the pre-tax purchase amount
• Stars are credited after payment is successfully processed

7b.3 Redeeming Stars

• Stars are redeemed directly at checkout at 100 Stars per $1 of discount; there is no current named-rewards catalog
• Stars may be applied up to the eligible amount due after other benefits
• Stars may be used after an eligible membership benefit or other best single discount is applied
• Stars used on an order are deducted only once after the order is successfully completed
• Historical catalog redemption codes issued before the catalog retired remain subject to the expiration printed with that code

7b.4 Star Value & Restrictions

7b.5 Account Activity & Expiration

• Stars do not expire as long as your account remains active
• An account is considered inactive after 12 consecutive months with no earning or redemption activity
• Inactive accounts may have their Star balance reset to zero
• We will attempt to notify you via email before resetting an inactive account

7b.6 Tier Status

• Tea Leaf: 0-2,499 lifetime Stars ($0-$249 spent)
• Artist: 2,500-7,499 lifetime Stars ($250-$749 spent)
• Muse: 7,500+ lifetime Stars ($750+ spent)
• Tiers are based on lifetime Stars accumulated
• Lifetime status: Loyalty tiers are based on lifetime Stars and do not require annual requalification
• There is no annual tier downgrade or requalification grace period

7b.7 Program Changes & Termination

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or terminate the Muse Stars program at any time with reasonable notice. In the event of program termination, we will provide a reasonable period for members to redeem accumulated Stars.

7b.8 Abuse & Fraud

7c. Affiliate & Referral Program Terms

7c.1 Program Overview

The Muse & Co Affiliate/Referral Program allows approved participants ("Affiliates") to earn commissions by referring new customers to our services. By participating, you agree to these terms.

7c.2 Eligibility & Enrollment

• Must be at least 18 years old to participate
• Must have an active Muse & Co account in good standing
• Application approval is at our sole discretion
• Employees, owners, and immediate family members may have different program terms

7c.3 Referral Rewards

• Referrer Bonus: 200 Muse Stars per qualified referral
• New Customer Bonus: Referred customer receives 100 bonus Stars on signup
• A "qualified referral" is a new customer who creates an account and completes their first purchase using your referral link
• Referrals must be genuine new customers (not existing customers creating new accounts)
• Self-referrals are prohibited

7c.4 Referral Link Usage

• You may share your unique referral link via social media, email, word of mouth, or personal websites
• You may NOT use paid advertising (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) to promote your referral link without prior written approval
• You may NOT use spam, unsolicited messages, or deceptive practices
• You may NOT misrepresent yourself as an employee or official representative of Muse & Co
• You may NOT use our trademarks, logos, or copyrighted materials without permission

7c.5 Commission Payments

• Referral Stars are credited to your account within 7 days of a qualified referral completing their first purchase
• Stars have no cash value and are subject to all Muse Stars program terms
• We reserve the right to withhold, reverse, or reclaim Stars for fraudulent or invalid referrals

7c.6 Prohibited Activities

7c.7 Program Modifications & Termination

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or terminate the Affiliate Program at any time. We may also terminate individual affiliates for any reason, including violation of these terms. Upon termination, any unredeemed Stars earned through the program may be forfeited.

7d. Special Benefits Program Terms

7d.1 Program Overview

Muse & Co may, at its sole discretion, grant special benefits to certain individuals ("Benefit Recipients") including but not limited to: family members, friends, community partners, downtown business neighbors, military personnel, and other designated groups. By accepting and using these benefits, you agree to these terms.

7d.2 Benefit Categories

Special benefits are assigned by category. Current categories include:

• Family: Immediate family members of Muse & Co ownership - typically includes the highest discount rates
• Friends: Close personal friends of ownership - includes meaningful discounts on drinks, classes, and rentals
• IrregularChat: Members of the IrregularChat community - includes community-specific discounts
• Downtown Shop: Owners and employees of neighboring downtown Fayetteville businesses - good neighbor pricing
• Military: Active duty military, veterans, and their immediate families - thank you for your service discounts

Note: Discount percentages and usage limits vary by category and may change over time. Current benefits are displayed in your account when logged in.

7d.3 Eligibility & Assignment

• Benefits are assigned by Muse & Co management at their sole discretion
• Benefits are non-transferable and are linked to a specific email address
• You must create a Muse & Co account using the email address associated with your benefits
• Benefits activate automatically when you log in with the registered email
• Discounts apply to eligible purchases only (drinks, classes, space rentals as applicable)

7d.4 Usage & Limitations

• Benefits may include weekly or monthly usage limits depending on your category
• Usage limits reset at the start of each week (Sunday) or month
• Benefits cannot be combined with other promotions, coupons, or membership discounts unless explicitly stated
• Benefits apply only to direct orders placed through ncmuse.co - third-party platforms (Uber Eats, etc.) are excluded
• Benefits are for personal use only and may not be used for commercial purposes or resale

7d.5 Verification Requirements

Depending on your benefit category, we may require periodic verification:

• Military: Valid military ID, veteran card, or DD-214 may be requested
• Downtown Shop: Proof of employment at a neighboring business may be requested
• All Categories: We reserve the right to verify eligibility at any time

7d.6 Modification & Revocation

7d.7 Prohibited Activities

The following activities will result in immediate benefit revocation:

• Sharing your account or benefits with others
• Creating multiple accounts to circumvent usage limits
• Using benefits for commercial purposes or resale
• Providing false information to obtain or maintain benefits
• Abusing or attempting to manipulate the benefits system
• Any activity that violates these Terms of Service

7d.8 No Guarantee of Continuation

Benefits are provided as a courtesy and do not constitute a contractual obligation. The existence of a benefit category or your assignment to it does not guarantee future availability. You should not rely on the continuation of any benefits when making purchasing decisions.

7e. Menu Bingo Terms

Menu Bingo is a free, bingo-style card for trying our drink menu. It has a seasonal card and a permanent Menu Passport. By joining, you agree to these terms.

• What counts: only drinks ordered online at ncmuse.co while you are logged in stamp a card, including orders placed from your phone inside the shop. Purchases rung up at the register or the staff point of sale, tastings and complimentary drinks never count.
• Season dates: each season card runs for the dates shown on the card. A stamp is dated by the Eastern-time date of its order.
• Daily limit: a season card accepts a limited number of new squares per customer per Eastern-time day, shown on the card. The Menu Passport has no daily limit.
• Refunds: refunded or cancelled orders reverse their stamps. Stars paid for a milestone that is reversed may be removed if they have not been spent. Larger rewards are held for 72 hours before they are released.
• Earned rewards: rewards you have already earned are always honored.
• Changes: we give at least 30 days' notice before changing these terms or the rewards, and changes are never retroactive.
• Stars: Stars earned through Menu Bingo follow the Muse Stars Loyalty Program Terms above.
• No chance element: every reward is fixed and published in advance. There are no drawings, random prizes, numbered squares or callers.
• One card per account: cards are personal and cannot be transferred or combined.

11. AI Chatbot (BaristaBot) Terms

BaristaBot is an AI-powered assistant using OpenAI GPT-4o-mini. Responses are informational only and may contain errors or inaccuracies. Always verify critical information with staff. We are not liable for decisions made based on BaristaBot responses.

Chat Logging: Conversations logged for service improvement and security. Do not share personally identifiable information in chat.

11b. Community Drawing Gallery & Community-Submitted Artwork

Muse & Co operates a public Community Drawing Gallery at ncmuse.co/gallery where anyone — with or without a Muse & Co account — may submit a drawing they created using our in-browser canvas tool. This section governs those submissions. By submitting a drawing, you agree to the terms in this section in addition to the rest of these Terms.

11b.1 License Grant to Muse & Co

You retain authorship of any drawing you submit. By submitting a drawing to the Community Drawing Gallery, you grant Muse & Co a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, and fully sublicensable license to:

• use, host, store, cache, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works of your submission, in any media now known or later developed;
• incorporate your submission into marketing materials, social media posts, physical displays inside our venue, printed merchandise, community-art collections, fundraising materials, and any other use related to the operation, promotion, or community building of Muse & Co;
• credit you (by the artist name and/or Instagram handle you provided), or display the submission without attribution if no name was provided;
• use or not use your submission in any manner and at any time, with no obligation to compensate you and no obligation to publish or continue displaying your submission.

This license is irrevocable except as expressly provided in section 11b.5 (Removal Requests). The license survives any removal of your submission from public view.

11b.2 Community Dedication — Open & Not for Sale

The Community Drawing Gallery is a community project. Muse & Co commits that we will not sell individual community drawings as standalone artworks. Submitted drawings may, however, appear on merchandise, in printed collections, on our website, in our venue, in marketing, and in any other use described in section 11b.1, including uses that involve commerce (for example, a coffee mug printed with a collage of community drawings sold as a community fundraiser).

In addition to the license you grant Muse & Co, by submitting a drawing you also dedicate that drawing to the public under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This means anyone — not only Muse & Co — may use, remix, share, and build on your submission for any purpose, including commercial purposes, without asking permission. We do this to honor the open, community spirit of the gallery.

11b.3 Your Representations & Warranties

By submitting a drawing, you represent and warrant to Muse & Co that:

• you created the drawing yourself, in our in-browser canvas, during a single session — you did not paste, upload, trace, or otherwise reproduce someone else's work;
• you have all rights necessary to grant the license in section 11b.1 and to make the dedication in section 11b.2;
• your submission does not infringe any copyright, trademark, right of publicity, right of privacy, or any other right of any third party;
• your submission does not violate any law, contains no sexual content involving minors, no doxxing, no threats, no targeted harassment, and no hate speech;
• you are at least 13 years old, or you have your parent or guardian's permission to submit;
• your submission is voluntary; no one is forcing you, and you understand the license you are granting and the public dedication you are making.

11b.4 Your Indemnification of Muse & Co

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Muse & Co, its owners, employees, contractors, and partners from any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and fees (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to your submission, including but not limited to claims that your submission infringes a third party's intellectual property, privacy, or publicity rights, or violates any law. This obligation survives the termination of these Terms and the removal of your submission.

11b.5 Removal Requests from the Submitter

Once submitted, a drawing becomes part of the Community Drawing Gallery and the license and dedication in sections 11b.1 and 11b.2 apply. We will, however, consider removal of a drawing from our public gallery in two situations:

• Logged-in account claim. If you were signed in to a Muse & Co account when you submitted the drawing, the drawing is automatically associated with your account. You may request removal of any drawing in your account from the public gallery at any time via your customer dashboard. Removal from the public gallery does not revoke the license or the CC0 dedication; copies already distributed remain in the public domain, and any third-party uses already in progress are not affected.
• Instagram handle verification. If you submitted anonymously but left an Instagram handle, you may request removal by emailing [email protected] with the subject line "Muse Gallery Removal" and a link to a post on the Instagram account matching the handle you submitted. That Instagram post must contain the exact same drawing image and must be publicly visible at the time we review your request. We will verify that the Instagram account exists, that the post is public, and that the image in the post matches the submission. Verification is at our sole discretion. We aim to respond within 14 days but make no guarantee of response time.

We do not accept removal requests from the original submitter through any channel other than the two listed above. We will not remove a drawing because someone claims to be the submitter without one of the two proofs above.

Approved removals take the drawing down from ncmuse.co. They do not require Muse & Co to retract, withdraw, or destroy copies of the drawing already distributed, printed, displayed, or used in any context, including merchandise produced before the removal request. The CC0 dedication in section 11b.2 remains in effect for all copies released before removal.

11b.6 Copyright Infringement Claims (DMCA)

Muse & Co complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512. If you are a copyright owner (or the owner's authorized agent) and you believe that a drawing in our Community Drawing Gallery infringes your copyright, you may submit a written takedown notice that includes:

• a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or the person authorized to act on their behalf;
• identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed (or a representative list if many);
• the URL of the specific drawing on ncmuse.co you claim is infringing;
• your name, address, telephone number, and email address;
• a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

Send notices to our Designated Agent at [email protected] with the subject line "DMCA Notice — Community Drawing Gallery", or by mail to Muse & Co, Attn: DMCA Agent, 311 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC 28310.

Upon receiving a complete, valid notice, we will remove or disable access to the identified drawing and notify the submitter where reasonably possible. We may retain the takedown notice and any supporting communications. Incomplete notices will not be acted on; we will reply with what is missing.

11b.7 Counter-Notice Procedure

If your drawing was removed in response to a DMCA notice and you believe the removal was a mistake or misidentification, you may submit a counter-notice that includes:

• your physical or electronic signature;
• identification of the drawing that was removed and the URL where it appeared before removal;
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the drawing was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification;
• your name, address, and telephone number, plus a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district in which you live (or the Eastern District of North Carolina if you are outside the United States), and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided the original DMCA notice or that person's agent.

Send counter-notices to [email protected] with the subject line "DMCA Counter-Notice". We will forward valid counter-notices to the original complainant. If the complainant does not file a lawsuit seeking a court order against the alleged infringer within 10–14 business days, we may, at our discretion, restore the drawing.

11b.8 Repeat Infringer Policy

Muse & Co will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts and submission privileges of users who are repeat infringers. We may also block IP addresses, devices, and Instagram handles associated with repeat infringement. Submitting a drawing that is the subject of a valid, sustained DMCA takedown counts as one strike; three strikes within twelve months results in a permanent ban from submitting to the Community Drawing Gallery.

11b.9 No Pre-Screening; Sole Discretion to Remove

Muse & Co does not review or pre-screen drawings before they appear in the public gallery. We rely on automated filters, community reporting, and the warranties in section 11b.3 to keep the gallery safe. We reserve the absolute right, at our sole discretion and at any time, to remove, hide, or restrict any drawing for any reason or no reason, including violation of community standards. We have no obligation to provide a reason or advance notice when we remove a drawing. Our removal of a drawing is not an admission that the drawing was infringing or violated these Terms.

11b.10 Abusive Reports & False Removal Requests

The Community Drawing Gallery survives because people respect each other's art. We will block IP addresses, accounts, and Instagram handles associated with abusive reporting — including mass false reports, malicious flagging of legitimate art, and reports submitted in bad faith — and we will pursue 512(f) damages against bad-faith DMCA notice senders. False removal requests under section 11b.5 (Instagram or account claim impersonating someone else) may be referred to law enforcement.

15. Limitation of Liability

21. Acknowledgment & Agreement