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A personalised search for places and books
Describe what you want in plain English and get recommendations that fit, anywhere in the world.
Our missionBetter recommendations.
Better recommendations.
A clearer view of who you’re buying from.
Highstreett is a personalised search engine for places and books. Describe what you want in plain English and, once you're signed in, it remembers your taste, your saved dietary needs, allergies and religious requirements, and what you've liked before.
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It learns you
Signed in, it learns your taste from what you rate and like, remembers what it has recommended, and respects your saved dietary needs, allergies and religious requirements.
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It shows who owns what
In the UK, verified independents carry a badge checked against Companies House. Known chains appear after other results, and Shop Local hides chains.
Why show ownership at all? Because where your money goes after you spend it depends partly on who owns the place. The rest of this page is that argument, with its sources at the end.
What we are fighting
The current system rewards scale before value.
We do not think chains are winning purely because they are always better. They are winning because the infrastructure of discovery is stacked in their favour.
Distribution is concentrated
Chains become the default because they are easy to find, easy to remember, and backed by bigger budgets. Great local businesses often lose before a customer even knows they exist.
Spending leaks out of town
When the same national and multinational brands capture everyday spending, more value leaves the neighbourhood for distant headquarters, shareholders, and funds.
Place gets flattened
A town full of chains may be convenient, but it is also interchangeable. Character, risk-taking, and local ownership get replaced by the same safe formula everywhere.
The contrast
Two futures for the high street.
One is governed by remote scale and default convenience. The other is governed by local ownership, stronger circulation, and better discovery. Highstreett exists to help tip the balance.
The world under the status quo
The obvious option is usually the biggest brand, not the best local business.
Marketing scale beats local craft, care, and originality.
Capital compounds remotely while towns lose confidence in their own economy.
High streets become showrooms for businesses owned somewhere else.
The world we want to build
Independent businesses get the same discoverability that chains currently dominate.
People can intentionally move spending toward local owners, workers, and suppliers.
Local capital has a better chance to circulate, compound, and create new businesses.
Every town gets to feel more like itself, and less like a copy of everywhere else.
What Highstreett is building
A platform that helps local capital stay local.
We are building a platform that helps people find local businesses more easily and helps more spending stay in local towns and cities.
Chains win because they are easier to find and easier to trust. Local businesses need that same distribution. Highstreett should be the place people go to discover the best local businesses in any town or city and support the local economy while they do it.
A free market for local attention
local firstHighstreett exists to make local businesses visible. We want a better market for discovery, where independents are not buried under chain familiarity and ad spend.
Network effects for independents
local firstThe more people use the platform, the better the directory gets. Better discovery drives more visits, which strengthens more businesses, which makes the network more useful for everyone.
A garden for local capital
local firstThis is not about nostalgia. It is about building infrastructure that helps local ownership grow, seed by seed, until more spending stays close to home and more founders can thrive.
The loop we want
Make spending more intentional.
Every small redirect of spend can strengthen a local market. The point is not guilt. The point is giving people a real option they can act on.
Highstreett helps people move from "I wish I knew a good local place" to "I know exactly where I am going." That shift matters because demand is what turns values into outcomes.
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A resident discovers a brilliant local business they would have otherwise missed.
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That spend lands with a local owner, local staff, and local suppliers instead of remote capital.
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The business earns more confidence to hire, improve, invest, and stay independent.
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The town becomes richer in options, identity, and resilience, which attracts more local spending again.
Sources
The evidence behind it.
- Research for the Federation of Small Businesses found that each £1 a council spent with local small firms produced an extra 63p of benefit for the local economy, against 40p for large local firms. Local procurement: making the most of small businesses, one year on (figure as quoted in the FSB's written evidence to Parliament), Federation of Small Businesses with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2013.
- A 2004 study of one Chicago neighbourhood found that about $68 of every $100 spent at ten independents went back into the local economy, against about $43 at ten competing chains. The Andersonville Study of Retail Economics (summary by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance), Civic Economics, for the Andersonville Development Corporation, 2004.
Both studies are older (2013 and 2004) and measure different things: council procurement in the UK, and one Chicago neighbourhood.
Sources checked 13 October 2026.
Mission in motion
The future we want has to be easier to choose.
That is the job: make local discovery feel natural, useful, and powerful enough to redirect real spending at real scale.