My Local Loop

Independent local businesses increasingly compete against major chains, conglomerates and online retailers with marketing budgets they cannot realistically match.

Traditional coupon systems don't solve this well. Most local businesses still lean on in-store promotions, social media, flyers, manually distributed coupons and printed coupon books.

My business partner and I had both watched independent “Mom & Pop” businesses struggle as consumer spending moved toward major chains, conglomerates and online retailers.

We wanted something that could help local businesses generate traffic and repeat customers without another advertising expense. So the model was intentionally inverted. Consumers fund the platform through a subscription — $9.99 CAD a month today, planned to move to $14.99.

No side is paying the other in the usual sense. Partners contribute value, Locals contribute a subscription, and each completed redemption feeds the reason for the next one — which is what keeps the loop turning.

My Local Loop is effectively two connected applications running against one marketplace: the Local, and the Partner. They mirror each other in structure and share almost nothing in permission.

Once onboarded, the Local enters a portal built to make value effortless to find. It leads with the number that matters to a subscriber — what they've saved — and surrounds it with active deals, nearby businesses, high-traffic hours and the newest offers.

A coffee shop owner, a photographer, a fitness studio, a retailer, a shopper — none should need experience with complex SaaS to understand the platform. The interface prioritises clear navigation, few steps, readable information, large targets and obvious primary actions.

It deliberately moves away from the stereotypical dark SaaS aesthetic. Forest green, cream, warm gold, soft sage and white give it an identity that reads local and approachable rather than clinical — and the responsive site behaves close to an app while the dedicated app is in development.

The Local Pass is where the digital marketplace meets the physical business. Every Local carries a unique QR code and a unique manual customer code.

At checkout the Local presents the QR for the Partner to scan. If the Partner is on a desktop or can't scan, the manual code is entered by hand instead. Either way the system validates the Local and the coupon rules before the redemption is accepted.

Giving every Local a platform-controlled identity means a Partner can confirm membership and coupon eligibility through My Local Loop itself, with no integration into their payment system.

The Local and Partner experiences are connected but carry completely different permissions and workflows. A Partner should never reach Local-only systems; a Local should never enter Partner administration. Authentication alone wasn't enough — the product needed role-aware authorization throughout.

The second challenge was redemption. Integrating into every business's payment or POS system would be an enormous burden, especially in beta. So My Local Loop owns the redemption layer instead.

By giving every Local a platform-controlled identity through their QR and manual code, Partners validate membership and coupon eligibility through My Local Loop — keeping redemption independent of whatever system already sits on their counter.

Once a Local redeems an offer, the Partner side becomes the operational view of that activity — redemptions, repeat customers, active coupons and how each offer is performing.

Offers are created by the Partner, not by us. A Partner sets the title, description, imagery and category; picks a discount type and amount; schedules a start and expiry (or marks it non-expiring); and sets a per-customer limit or allows unlimited redemptions.

Partners can read redemptions, revenue attributed to redemptions, unique customers, average savings, redemption trends, discount mix, and new versus returning customers. What a Partner creates becomes inventory the Local discovers — and what the Local redeems becomes the signal that shapes the next offer.

My Local Loop is built with Next.js, React and TypeScript on Tailwind, with PostgreSQL on Neon through Prisma, Clerk for authentication, Stripe for subscriptions, Upstash Redis, Zod and react-markdown. Database migrations are applied manually through Neon, and it's hosted on Vercel.

My Local Loop is operating in a closed beta. These are validation numbers, not growth metrics: real businesses and real consumers are on the platform and redeeming offers.

Feedback from participating businesses has been positive, and the beta keeps surfacing bugs, mobile improvements, onboarding refinements and operational requirements — all being addressed before broader expansion.

Building this showed me how different a two-sided marketplace is from a single-user SaaS product. Every decision affects two groups. A great Local experience means little if Partners find offer creation hard; a powerful Partner dashboard means little if Locals don't see enough value to subscribe. The loop only moves when both sides get enough.

Security mattered more than I expected. Authentication alone wasn't enough — the application needed authorization that understood who the user is and what they're permitted to do.

My Local Loop remains in active development. Kamloops is the core market, additional cities are applying, and expansion is being introduced gradually. The dedicated consumer app is in development.

My business partner had seen products I'd built before and trusted me to take the idea behind My Local Loop and turn it into a working platform. That trust let me own the product from concept through implementation.

I also care about the problem. Independent businesses increasingly compete with companies whose resources they can't match. My Local Loop is a chance to build technology that helps them attract customers without adding another marketing expense — an idea between two partners that's now a working marketplace being used by real businesses and consumers.