Terms of Use

1. Who this agreement is between

“Four Loons,” “we,” and “us” refer to the publication at fourloons.com, operated by Four Loons Media, an independent publication, a Minnesota organization. “You” means anyone who reads the site, creates an account, subscribes to the newsletter, or posts a comment. By using the site you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

2. Accounts and account security

You may read most of Four Loons without an account. To comment, you need a verified account: an email address, a password, and a display name. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for everything that happens under your account. If you believe your account has been used without your permission, tell us at privacy@fourloons.com and we will help you regain control of it.

We may suspend or close accounts that violate these Terms. We will tell you why, in writing, when we do.

3. Acceptable use

When you use Four Loons, you agree not to:

• Harass anyone — readers, reviewers, restaurant staff, or operators. Threats, slurs, doxxing, and targeted abuse are not permitted.
• Spam — including unsolicited promotion of a venue, repeated posting of the same content, link farms, or coordinated reputation campaigns.
• Impersonate anyone — an operator, employee, reviewer, or another reader. Display names are not required to be your legal name, but they must not be designed to deceive.
• Post material you do not have the right to post, including content that infringes copyright, trademark, publicity, or privacy rights.
• Circumvent moderation — for example, by creating duplicate accounts to evade a suspension, brigading the comment section, or using automated tools to post.
• Scrape or republish the site at scale without written permission. Quoting a review with a link back is welcome; mirroring the publication is not.
• Interfere with the service — probing for vulnerabilities, overloading the servers, or attempting to bypass authentication.

Good-faith security research is welcome. Email privacy@fourloons.com before testing and we will work with you.

4. Your comments and the license you grant us

You own what you write. When you post a comment, you grant Four Loons a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to display, store, archive, format, and quote your comment as part of the publication — including on the page where you posted it, in newsletters that summarize a discussion, and in editorial follow-ups. This license exists so that we can keep the discussion attached to the piece it belongs to, even years later. It does not transfer ownership. You remain free to publish your words anywhere else.

You confirm that what you post is yours to post and does not infringe anyone else’s rights. You can ask us to remove a specific comment of yours at any time by writing to editors@fourloons.com; we will remove it unless doing so would distort an ongoing legal or moderation matter, in which case we will explain.

All comments are moderated before publishing. We may decline to publish a comment, edit it for clarity (without changing its meaning), or remove it after the fact for cause. We are not obligated to host every comment we receive.

5. The publication’s own work

Reviews, essays, guides, photography, illustrations, the rating rubric, the visual design of the site, and the Four Loons name and marks are owned by the publication or licensed to it. You may quote short excerpts for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, or scholarship, consistent with fair use, with attribution and a link back. You may not reproduce full pieces, mirror the site, or use Four Loons content to train a machine learning model without written permission.

6. AI in our workflow

We use AI tools for tagging, search, layout assistance, and illustration — and we label the illustration where it appears. AI does not write reviews and does not assign ratings. Editorial judgment is human. The full statement is on our Ethics & Methodology page. These Terms are consistent with that statement; if anything ever conflicts, the Ethics page controls the editorial behavior and these Terms control the legal relationship.

7. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

If you believe content on Four Loons infringes a copyright you own or are authorized to act for, send a notice to dmca@fourloons.com that includes:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed.
• The URL (or a clear description) of the material on Four Loons you want removed.
• Your address, phone number, and email.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.

We will respond promptly and, where appropriate, remove the material and notify the person who posted it. If you posted the material and believe it was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice to the same address with the same components plus a statement consenting to jurisdiction in the federal district court for the District of Minnesota. Repeated infringers will lose access to their account.

8. Reviews are opinion

Our reviews, ratings, and editorial commentary are protected opinion based on documented visits and the rubric published on our Ethics & Methodology page. Where we state a fact — a price on a check, a date, an ingredient claim — we try to get it right and correct it openly when we don’t. Disagreement with a review is welcome; the comment section and editors@fourloons.com are the right places for it.

9. Not medical, dietary, or professional advice

Four Loons writes about food and drink. We are not your doctor, your dietitian, your allergist, or your lawyer. Menu descriptions, ingredient notes, and accessibility observations are written in good faith but may be incomplete or out of date. If you have a food allergy, a medical condition, or a dietary requirement, confirm directly with the venue. Cocktail content is written for adults of legal drinking age.

10. Third-party links and venues

We link to restaurants, bars, and other publications. We don’t control those sites, can’t guarantee their content, and don’t earn affiliate revenue from them. The presence of a link is not an endorsement of anything outside the linked review or essay itself.

11. Disclaimers

Four Loons is provided “as is”. To the fullest extent the law permits, we disclaim all warranties — express, implied, or statutory — including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that any specific venue described will meet your expectations on a given night.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law permits, Four Loons, its owners, editors, contributors, and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruption, arising out of your use of the site — even if we have been told such damages are possible. Our total liability for any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the site is limited to one hundred US dollars ($100). Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations; in those places the limitations apply only to the extent permitted.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Four Loons and its people from claims, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of content you post, your use of the site in violation of these Terms, or your violation of the rights of a third party. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control the defense, provided you do so with counsel acceptable to us and do not settle in a way that admits fault on our behalf without our consent.

14. Governing law and where disputes go

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Subject to Section 15 below, the state and federal courts located in Hennepin County, Minnesota are the exclusive venue for any dispute not subject to arbitration.

15. Arbitration and class-action waiver

We’d rather resolve disagreements by talking first — so please write to editors@fourloons.com before filing anything. If a dispute is not resolved within sixty (60) days of written notice, you and Four Loons agree to resolve it by final and binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. Arbitration will take place in Minnesota or by remote hearing at the consumer’s election. The arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could.

You and Four Loons each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class, collective, or representative action. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over a class proceeding. If the class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim alone proceeds in court and the rest stays in arbitration.

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending written notice to editors@fourloons.com with the subject line “Arbitration Opt-Out” within thirty (30) days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out does not change anything else in these Terms.

Nothing here prevents either party from seeking small-claims relief for a qualifying claim, or injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or stop ongoing misuse.

16. Severability and the rest

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing a provision once is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor that takes over the publication. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Ethics & Methodology page, are the whole agreement between us about the site.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we will update the “Effective” date at the top, post a note on /about, and — if you have an account — email you at least thirty (30) days before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the site after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. If you don’t, you can close your account before then.