Most of all
The district
More foot traffic and more spending at the independent shops, restaurants and services that give the Golden Triangle its character. A livelier district is good for everyone who works, lives or does business in it.
For employers in the Golden Triangle · Washington, DC
You work here.
Spend here.
At 6 p.m., downtown's workers head home, and their spending goes with them. Local Goods gives employees credits that only work at independent local businesses, so the district your company calls home gets livelier.
- Home
- Desk
- Farragut Grind local stop
- Home
A working prototype: payments run on Stripe in test mode, and every person and business in the demo is fictional.
The problem
The commute-desk-commute loop
Thousands of people work in the Golden Triangle every weekday. Most follow the same loop: commute in, sit at a desk, commute out. That isn't a failing of the people doing it; it's how office work is set up. But it means their spending, and the life they could bring to the streets around them, goes home with them.
How it works
Three steps from payroll perk to a busier block.
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Step 1: Your company buys credits
Fund a monthly allowance for each employee. One invoice, no cards to issue, nothing for staff to sign up for beyond an app.
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Step 2: Employees spend them nearby
Credits work only at independent restaurants, shops, salons and gyms inside the district. The phone is the card.
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Step 3: The money stays in the neighborhood
Every redemption is checked for abuse before a merchant is paid. Payments and merchant payouts run on Stripe in test mode: real Stripe transactions, no real money.
Why it matters
Everyone gains. The district gains most.
Employers
A benefit your staff actually use, because it shows up at lunch, not in a portal.
- A practical way to improve the streets around your own office.
- A livelier neighborhood can make an office easier to recruit to, easier to stay at and more worth coming in to; a pilot would measure how much.
- Participation and spending reports you can bring to leadership.
- No cards to issue: the employee's phone is the card.
For independents
Merchants
A large, steady workforce audience on your doorstep, and a reason for them to come back. No new hardware: customers show the app at the counter. Payments and merchant payouts run on Stripe in test mode: real Stripe transactions, no real money.
For staff
Employees
A perk that makes the workday better: lunch, coffee, errands. And a reason to discover the neighborhood you already spend most of your week in.
For the Golden Triangle
The BID
A measurable, privacy-respecting way to support the district's independent businesses. Spending and participation are counted from the ledger; employees are never named.
Estimate from an outside study, not measured by Local Goods
Money spent at independent local businesses tends to recirculate roughly 3x more in the local economy than money spent at chains, an effect often called the local multiplier.
In the study, independent retailers and restaurants recirculated 52.3% of their revenue locally, against 15.8% for chains: about 3.3 times as much. Local Goods has not measured this in the Golden Triangle. Real results will be measured in a pilot.
Source: Civic Economics, “Indie Impact Study Series: National Summary Report” (with the American Booksellers Association), data from 2011–2012, 134 businesses in 10 U.S. communities, none in DC. Read the Publishers Weekly report on the study.
Trust and AI
Every redemption is checked before anyone is paid.
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Redemption Fraud Detection scores every redemption for abuse, such as turning credits into cash, and explains its reasoning in plain language.
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It fails closed. If the AI check errors or gives an unusable answer, the redemption is held. It is never waved through.
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The AI assists; people decide. Redemption Fraud Detection and Merchant Eligibility Matching flag and explain. A held redemption is never approved automatically; it waits for review by the BID, and a person approves every new merchant.
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No names go to the AI. It sees only anonymous signals, like amount, time of day and visit history.
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Shops see initials, not names. A shop needs to know a payment is real, not who the person is.
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Held payments use neutral words. A held payment at a counter says it is held, with no fraud words, so nobody is accused.
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Honesty labels stay on phones. Demo data, test mode and "not affiliated" notices are never hidden on a small screen.
Measured, not promised
Caught 17 of 26 suspicious cases; 17 of 19 holds were suspicious.
Compared with a person's labels on hand-labeled test redemptions the AI had never seen.
Measured on 50 unseen cases, 26 of them labeled suspicious by a person, with the current prompt. 95% confidence intervals: catch rate 46.2–80.6%, hold precision 68.6–97.1%; overall agreement 78% (39 of 50, 64.8–87.2%).
The demo program so far
Demo data: all people and transactions are fictional.
Read live from the credit ledger: cleared redemptions only, since launch. Held and denied redemptions don't count.
- Spent at independent merchants
- $12,319.92
- Merchants reached
- 8
- Employees participating
- 40
- Employers participating
- 1
What one district program could add up to
Illustrative scenario
A worked example, not a result: suppose employers in the district enroll 2,000 employees at $50 a month.
That is $1.2M a year spent at independent district businesses, because credits can't be spent anywhere else.
See the impact projection for one district, DC and nationally
Request a demo
Online demo booking is coming soon. The working product is live: demo logins for an employee and a BID admin are available on request, and contest judges get a personal sign-in link with no password. Already have a login? Log in to redeem credits as an employee or review the AI fraud check from the BID's side.