Local for Customers

What Is Local?

Local is a food delivery app owned by the restaurants and drivers that use it. No greedy extraction, no corporation skimming profit from every order.

It works like any other delivery app: you browse restaurants, order food, and track your delivery in real time. The difference is where the money goes. Because Local is run as a cooperative, the fees are a fraction of what the big platforms charge. That saving goes to you as lower prices and to drivers as fair wages.

Local launched in Malta and is expanding to other regions. The model is the same everywhere: a locally owned cooperative, run by your neighbours, for your neighbourhood.

Getting Started

Download Local One from the App Store or Google Play. Open it and you're in: no email, no password, no signup form.

Your account is secured by a public and private key rather than a traditional login. We recommend enabling biometrics (Face ID or fingerprint) to keep things safe.

During the current beta, you will need an invitation code to access the app. These are available from participating restaurants or directly from Local.

Why Prices Are Lower

The big delivery platforms charge restaurants between 25% and 40% commission on every order. Restaurants have no choice but to inflate their menu prices to cover it. You end up paying more, and the restaurant still barely breaks even.

Local's commission is under 10%. That is not a promotional rate or a temporary discount: it is the structural cost of running a cooperative without a corporation in the middle.

During the investment period, a small percentage of operating costs goes to the investors who funded the buildout of the network. Once that capital is repaid, that stops forever. After that, every cent of the commission stays within the cooperative structure. There are no shareholders sitting around taking a cut in perpetuity.

What this means at checkout

Restaurants on Local can afford to price their menus 20 to 30 per cent lower than the same items on other platforms. The food is the same. The kitchen is the same. The only thing missing is the corporation in the middle taking a cut.

No hidden fees

There are no service fees, no 'small order' surcharges, and no marketing levies buried in the total. You see the food price, a delivery fee, and a fair driver contribution. That is it.

Why it stays this way

Because the restaurants own the platform, they set the rules. There is no board of directors who will raise fees next quarter to hit a profit target. The cooperative exists to serve its members, not to extract from them. If anything, fees will go lower over time as the network grows.

No Ads, No Manipulation

Open any of the big delivery apps and what you see is shaped by who pays the most. Restaurants bid for top placement. Promoted listings are mixed in with real results. The app is not showing you the best option: it is showing you the most profitable one.

Local does not do this.

What you see is real

Listings are based on relevance and availability. No restaurant can pay to appear above another. When you search for something, the results reflect what is actually good and actually nearby, not who spent the most on advertising.

No behavioural nudges

The big platforms use your order history, browsing patterns, and location data to manipulate what you see and when you see it. They optimise for their revenue, not your preferences. Local has no reason to do this because there is no advertising revenue to chase.

No sponsored content

There are no banners, no 'featured' restaurants, and no brand takeovers. The app exists to help you find food, not to sell your attention to the highest bidder.

Your Data Stays Yours

Tech companies rarely speak plainly about data. Here is our promise, stated directly.

Most delivery platforms collect everything: what you order, when you order, where you live, how you browse, what you almost ordered but didn't. That data is profiled, packaged, and sold to brokers. You are the product.

Local collects only what is needed to get your order from A to B: your phone number and your delivery address. That information is shared with the merchant preparing your food and the driver delivering it, and it stays in that tight circle. We will never sell it, profile it, or hand it to a third party. Our technology locks it as tight as is technically possible.

Who sees what

Any data that exists on the network is limited to the parties that need it: you, the merchant, the driver, and the cooperative. Nobody else.

Your phone number and delivery address are shared with the driver who needs them and the restaurant preparing your order. They are not sold to a third party and not used for anything beyond that order. None of it leaves that tight circle.

You are identified on the network by your public key, not by personal details. There is no central database of customer profiles and no browsing history.

No profiles, no tracking

There is no location tracking beyond what is needed to deliver your food. When the order is done, so is the data exchange. If there are recommendations, they are computed on your device to serve your interests. There is no corporation deciding what you see or storing your habits in a database somewhere.

What data will the public have?

The public gets aggregate data only. An example might be market data for a region (e.g. three million in sales in City A) or sales information summarised by the cooperatives (e.g. 1,000 restaurants, 4,000 drivers). Never something like "Merchant XYZ made two million euros", or "Customer Bob bought a burger from XYZ".

We open-source and share this data with everyone for the benefit of society. Everyone gets equal access, so businesses and customers alike can use it to understand what people want and how the market works.

What data will the cooperatives have?

Cooperatives store order data solely to resolve hiccups, bound by strict rules: if they sell it, they are out, and will be legally pursued if needs be. Customer information is linked to public keys rather than personal profiles. No data moves unless strictly required for business operations.

On the technical side, day-to-day, technicians can monitor network activity to fix glitches or failures. If they need specific data to debug a serious issue they will ask directly from you or your cooperative, and you can always check what has been asked for.

Why?

The whole point of this project is to hand power back to society rather than profiteering from private information. Corporate platforms harvest data because their business model depends on it: advertising, targeting, and resale are revenue streams. Local has none of these. The cooperative makes money from a small commission on orders, and that is the entire model. There is simply no incentive to collect your information.

If you have any questions, we encourage you to ask them.

Fair for Drivers

On the big platforms, drivers are squeezed. Pay is low, conditions are opaque, and the algorithm decides who gets work and who doesn't. Drivers have no voice, no ownership, and no recourse.

Local works differently.

Fair driver price

Every order on Local includes a fair driver contribution. This is a fixed fee, visible at checkout, that goes directly towards ensuring drivers are paid properly. It is not a tip and it is not optional: it is built into how the system works.

Drivers have a seat at the table

Local's delivery drivers are organised through their own cooperative (the DSP cooperative). They are not gig workers managed by an algorithm: they are co-owners of the infrastructure they depend on. They have a say in how things run.

Why this matters to you

When you order through the big apps, someone is absorbing the cost of that cheap delivery. Usually it is the driver. On Local, the economics are transparent and honest. Your order is not being subsidised by someone earning much less than they should be.

You get your food. The restaurant keeps its margin. The driver earns a fair wage. Nobody is being squeezed to make a shareholder richer.

Owned by Your Neighbours

Local is not a tech startup. There is no CEO in Silicon Valley deciding how much your local pizzeria pays in fees this month.

Local is a cooperative, owned and governed by the restaurants and drivers in your area. The people who make your food and deliver it to your door are the same people who run the platform.

What a cooperative actually means

A cooperative is a business owned by the people who use it. In Local's case, that means the restaurants and delivery drivers. They vote on decisions, they see the books, and they control the fees. Investors help fund the initial buildout, but once repaid, no outside party takes a cut.

Why this matters to you as a customer

Because incentives are aligned. A corporation's job is to maximise profit for its shareholders, which means charging restaurants more and paying drivers less, year after year. A cooperative's job is to serve its members. Lower fees, better conditions, and honest pricing are not marketing slogans: they are structural outcomes of the ownership model.

Local people, local decisions

Each region's cooperative is independent. The people running Local in Malta are in Malta. They understand the market, the restaurants, and the community because they are part of it. This is not a foreign company with a local office: it is a local business with a shared technology platform.

Support From Real People

When something goes wrong with an order on a big platform, you contact a support centre that could be anywhere in the world. The person on the other end has no connection to your area, no relationship with the restaurant, and limited ability to actually fix the problem.

Local's support comes from the cooperative in your region. These are people in your neighbourhood, working for a business that your local restaurants own. If you need to, you can actually go and meet them.

How to get help

Support is available directly through the app and via WhatsApp. Contact details are on the app and on the-local.one. If the issue involves a specific restaurant, the cooperative works with that restaurant directly to resolve it.

Accountability is built in

Because the cooperative is owned by the businesses in your area, there is a real incentive to get things right. A faceless corporation can afford to lose a customer. A local cooperative cannot.

What Happens Next

Local is live in Malta as a private beta, with an official launch planned for early 2026. During the beta, you will need an invitation code to access the app.

From Malta to everywhere

Malta is the proving ground. The cooperative model, the technology, and the economics are all being tested here with real restaurants, real drivers, and real customers. Once proven, the same model can be replicated in any region.

Each new market gets its own independent cooperative, owned by local businesses. The technology is shared, but the ownership and governance stay local. There is no central company expanding into new territories: there are new cooperatives choosing to join a network.

How you can help

Use the app. Tell your friends. Order from your favourite restaurants through Local instead of the big platforms. Every order that goes through Local is money that stays in your community rather than leaving it.

If your favourite restaurant is not on Local yet, let them know it exists. The more businesses that join, the better the platform becomes for everyone.

The bigger picture

The delivery platforms as they exist today take billions out of local economies and send it to corporate headquarters abroad. Local reverses that flow. It is not a protest or a campaign: it is a working alternative that puts the money back where it belongs.