About this app

Grass is a map of the independent businesses around you, anywhere in the United States. Coffee shops, restaurants, vets, dentists, bookstores, bike shops, hardware stores, gyms, salons, grocers. Grass shows the ones that are still locally owned, and tells you when a familiar name has quietly become part of a chain or been bought by a private equity firm. WHY IT EXISTS Ownership changed hands across America's main streets over the last decade, and most of it happened without a sign on the door. A vet clinic keeps its name after a rollup buys it. A bakery becomes one of forty. Prices go up, staff turn over, and the money leaves town. Grass puts that information back where you can see it: on a map, when you are deciding where to go. WHAT YOU GET • A map of independent businesses near you, with icons for each category, that reads like a normal map and gets richer as you zoom in • A card for every place: category, address, phone, website, and what we know about who owns it • A toggle to reveal chains and private-equity-owned businesses, marked so you can't miss them • Search that understands "taqueria", "dry cleaner", "boba", or a street name, and forgives typos • Top lists by category, ranked by distance from you • Report a mistake straight from a place card. A person reviews every report before the map changes HOW WE KNOW Grass combines OpenStreetMap with public research on business ownership, including partner datasets that track private equity acquisitions in veterinary care and other industries. Every card shows its source. When we don't know, the card says "independent, as far as we know" rather than pretending. MEMBERSHIP Grass is free to use. Members pay what they want, $5, $10 or $15 a year, to fund the ownership research and get recommendations first as each category is ready. No ads, no accounts sold, no tracking. PRIVACY Your location is used to center the map and rank places by distance. It stays on your phone. Read the full policy at cadrecorps.com/grass/privacy. COVERAGE Grass covers the United States. Every city and town with businesses in OpenStreetMap is on the map, and ownership research is ongoing. Reports from people who know their neighborhood are how each place gets more accurate. Grass is made by Cadre, an employee-owned product studio.