About boostsmall
A review site for the family-owned places that anchor a neighborhood.
We started boostsmall because the corner taqueria, the family dentist, the one-person record store, and the regional plumbing crew that's been around three generations all deserve their own front page — not page 14 of a site dominated by national chains optimizing for ad spend.
148
Family-owned listings
80
Chains kept out
Houston
Currently serving
The rule
Family-owned, not publicly-traded.
A business is welcome on boostsmall if it's independently held, not publicly traded, and not majority-owned by a publicly-traded parent. That's it. We specifically don't use a hard cap on number of locations — a 16-location regional family-owned dental group is exactly what this platform is for.
Every submission goes through a chain blocklist (the obvious chains — McDonald's, Starbucks, etc., 80+ entries and counting), then a fuzzy-match check, then a human moderator. Multi-location submissions go to a real person before they're published.
Examples of what gets in: a single-location Vietnamese spot, a 2-store local coffee roaster, a one-person record store, a family-run plumbing business, a 3-location regional taqueria.
Examples of what gets rejected: any McDonald's, any Chipotle, any Sweetgreen, and the rest of the publicly-traded restaurant world.
How it works
Three things, kept simple.
Discover
Search by category, neighborhood, or just browse. Maps land on the actual rooftop. Photos come from owners themselves whenever possible.
Review (coming soon)
Reviews are written by people in the neighborhood — accounts under 24 hours old can't post, copy-pasted text gets flagged. Quality over volume.
Owners can speak
Verified owners can claim their listing, edit info, upload photos, and respond to reviews — without paying to be ranked. Verification is by email-domain match or a document a moderator reviews.
Know a place we're missing?
Add it. We review every submission to keep the platform honest.