— for businesses —

A direct line to the people nearby.

Top Townie is a local-only app for the Mohawk Valley. You post your specials, events, and updates. Customers who follow you see them in a chronological feed — no algorithm in the middle, no ads on top, no national noise. The people who already love your business find out what's happening, while it's happening.

01 — What it isBuilt for owner-operators.

Top Townie is for the cafe, the deli, the salon, the bar, the bookstore — the businesses where the owner answers the phone. You make a post when you have something to say. Your followers get a notification if they asked for that kind of post. They walk in. That's the loop.

We're not a review site. We're not a directory. We're not a marketplace. There's no rating, no comment thread, no "verified partner" tier you can pay to climb. Your profile is yours. Your customers are yours. The post you wrote shows up the way you wrote it, when you said to.

02 — How it's differentWhere we don't fit in.

Three things owner-operators ask us about, and where we land:

vs. Yelp / Google
No reviews. No star ratings. We don't host opinions about your business; we host updates from your business.
vs. Instagram / Facebook
Chronological, not algorithmic. The post you publish at 11am is the post your follower sees at 11am. Notifications go to people who explicitly asked for that post type.
vs. Nextdoor
No neighborhood drama, no Ring camera threads, no "is anyone else hearing this." Top Townie is businesses posting to followers. That's it.

03 — What we won't doThe community contract.

These aren't roadmap items we haven't gotten to. They're decisions. They will not change in v2, v3, or after we raise money (we haven't and don't plan to).

  • No reviewsWe don't host customer ratings of your business. If a customer wants to vent, that's what Yelp is for. Your profile is for what you have to say.
  • No comment threadsPosts have no comment section. There is nothing to moderate, nothing to argue with, nothing to delete at 11pm.
  • No adsNot "no ads for now." No ads. Not in the feed, not on profiles, not in notifications. If we ever monetize, it will be a feature you pay for, not a slot we sell to someone else.
  • No selling your dataWe don't sell follower lists. We don't sell visit data. We don't share with third parties beyond what's required to run the app.
  • No algorithm tuning your reachIf a customer follows you, your post reaches them. We don't throttle organic reach to sell you boosts.
  • No anonymous posts about your businessTop Townie has no surface where someone else posts about you. The only posts about your business are the ones you publish.

04 — Who Top Townie is forAnd who it isn't.

For

Owner-operators in the Mohawk Valley. Coffee shops, delis, salons, bars, bakeries, restaurants, family-run retail, the studio above the pharmacy. Businesses where the person who runs the place is the person who'd write the posts.

Not for

Chains, franchises, regional or national brands, businesses with a marketing team, businesses that hire an agency to handle social. Top Townie is built around the assumption that the owner is in the room. If that assumption doesn't hold, the product doesn't fit.

05 — One market, on purposeMohawk Valley first.

Top Townie is launching in Utica, New Hartford, and Rome. That's it for now. The founders live here. The kits are packed here. The beta partners we work with will be ones we can drive to.

We'll move to the next market when this one works. "Works" means: businesses posting on a real cadence, customers checking the app on their own, the loyalty mechanic earning its place. Until then, we don't open a second city. The whole point is doing one place well.