Shop local. Earn rewards.
Get your town thriving.

Why My Local First? It all started with a cup of coffee.

A little while ago, I read a story that said Costa had 25 outlets in Hastings, including machines in petrol stations and supermarkets. What caught my attention wasn’t just the number. It was their loyalty scheme.

Customers could buy coffees from machines and collect rewards through the app. After ten coffees, they could get a free one — but the clever part was that the free coffee had to be redeemed in a Costa store.

As a small independent café, how on earth could we compete with that? We can’t have outlets all over town or the marketing budget of a national chain.

At the time, I was building a loyalty scheme for The Grumpy Cook. And I thought: what if independent businesses could work together and share one loyalty scheme?

The café, the butcher, the bookshop, the hairdresser and lots of other independent businesses — all part of the same network. Rather than each trying to compete on our own, we’d be working together.

That’s where My Local First came from.

So what have we built?

One shared loyalty scheme. Customers join free, discover participating independent businesses and collect points when they shop locally.

But it doesn’t stop there. Every participating business can choose its own rewards and offers. A café might offer a coffee. A hairdresser might offer a treatment discount. A butcher or florist might do something completely different. That’s up to them.

We’re providing the platform, not telling independent businesses how to run their businesses.

How it works

Discover: Find participating local businesses.
Shop: Spend with those businesses.
Earn: Collect one point for every £1 spent.
Get rewarded: 100 points earns a £2.50 voucher, subject to scheme rules.

You can use the app or a physical membership card.

And what does it cost?

For customers, joining is completely free.

For businesses, our standard membership is £10 per month, with no percentage commission on transactions. The first 50 businesses can join free until February 2027.

We want even the smallest independent business to be able to take part.

It’s about more than points.

I’m not suggesting that people stop shopping at supermarkets or using national chains. We all use them, myself included.

But imagine if we could encourage people to spend just a little more with independent businesses. A coffee here, a birthday present there, a haircut or a meal out.

Individually those purchases may not seem like much. Collectively they could make an enormous difference — more customers, more money circulating locally and more reasons for businesses to open, grow and employ people.

We can’t compete with the big chains on their terms. But by working together, perhaps we don’t have to.