About anti/corporate
Most business advice is written for businesses that don't look anything like yours.
It's built for companies with investors, growth targets, and exit strategies. It assumes you want to scale, franchise, or act like a chain someday. You don't. You want to build something real in a specific place, for specific people. That's a different goal, and it deserves different tools.
anti/corporate exists to close that gap.
What we believe
When people get a real choice, they choose local. They want the place that knows their name and the owner who actually gives a damn. The demand has never been the problem.
The problem is that local businesses are asked to compete with corporate playbooks, using corporate tools, built for corporate budgets. The chains have teams, research, and systems. You have a few hours after close and a lot on the line.
We're not anti-business. We're anti/sameness. anti/impersonal. anti/the idea that local businesses have to survive on grit alone while the big players get all the leverage.
Where this comes from
anti/corporate didn't start as a theory. It started with a food truck and a brand strategy practice, and the same conversations happening over and over with local owners. Same gaps, same questions, same good businesses fighting uphill with the wrong tools.
The people who make it tend to have something most owners never get: mentors who answer the dumb questions, share what they know, and steer them away from expensive mistakes. anti/corporate is that help, built to scale. The research big brands pay for, the frameworks the chains use, and the tools we wish we'd had, handed to the people actually doing the work.
On AI
The chains were always going to use AI. The question was whether you'd get access to the same thing, or get left further behind.
We build with AI, openly. It's how a small operation ships real tools, real research, and real resources without a corporate budget behind it. We use it to get things done, and we build it into what we make so you can too. AI isn't the enemy of local business. Used right, it's the closest thing you have to the team you can't afford to hire.
What's here
Field Notes is where we publish research, real stories, and practical strategy. Start with Field Notes.
Templates give you the frameworks without the agency fees. Tools help you make better decisions faster, without a team to run them. Community is where local owners find each other.
Everything here is pro local. By design.
Join us
If you own a restaurant, a shop, a studio, a service business, or anything else rooted in a place and a community, you're in the right spot. You don't need to be a marketer. You don't need a big budget. You need a clear head and the right resources.
That's what we're building. Come build with us. Join anti/corporate.
pro local.