How it works Three steps, one favor
A recommendation with a name on it.
Favor does one thing. It carries a single place from someone who has been there to someone who hasn't, keeps track of what happens next, and makes sure both of them are better off for it. Here's every step of that, in order.
01 Send
You pass along a place you actually use.
Favor only lets you recommend places you've genuinely spent money at — it reads that from your own history, not from a list of advertisers. You pick one, write a line in your own words, and send it to one person.
- Only places with your own receipts behind them
- One recipient at a time — there is no broadcast button
- Your note is the whole pitch. No star rating, no template
- Nothing is published anywhere, ever
What Ben receives
Mara sent you Cafe Mira
“Ask for the corner table. The lamb is the whole reason to go.”
Your welcome$15 off
One card, one person, one voice. What Ben does not see: what it earns Mara.
02 Arrive
They turn up already welcome.
The business sees the referral land before the guest does — who sent them, and what was said. So the greeting is a real one, and the welcome the business set is already applied when the bill comes.
- The business knows the name attached to every new face
- The welcome is whatever they chose: a course, a discount, a slot that week
- No code to remember, no screenshot to show at the counter
- Redeemable once, on a first visit only
What the business sees
Ben Alvarez — first visit
Referred by Mara Castellanos. Table for two, 7:30.
Welcome to apply$15 off
Attribution happens at the point of sale, not by asking the guest how they heard about you.
03 Thanks
The thank-you finds its way back.
When the visit turns into real spend, the business pays a cut of it, and the majority of that cut goes to the person who made the introduction. It arrives quietly, days later, with no announcement to anybody.
- Paid on attributed spend only — no spend, no fee, no thank-you
- The recipient is never told what the sender earned
- Cash out, or leave it against your own next visit somewhere
- Nothing is owed if the referral never shows up
What Mara gets
Never announced, and never the reason she sent it. That order matters.
By design
What Favor deliberately doesn't have.
Most of the design work here went into leaving things out. Every feature below exists in something else already, and every one of them is why that something else stopped being useful.
No feed
Nothing to scroll, nothing ranked, no algorithm deciding which of your friends you hear from.
No stars
A number out of five tells you what a thousand strangers averaged. A sentence from Mara tells you what to order.
No ads
A business cannot buy its way into your recommendations. There is no placement to sell.
No strangers
Favors only travel between people who already know each other. That is the entire product.
Guardrails
The rules that keep it honest.
A referral market with no rules turns into spam within a week. These are the constraints we hold, and they cost us volume on purpose.
| Rule | Why it's there |
|---|---|
| You must have spent money there | Stops anybody recommending a place they've only heard of. Your own receipt is the qualification. |
| One recipient per favor | There is no way to send the same place to forty people. Volume is not a strategy on Favor. |
| First visits only | A welcome can be redeemed once. You cannot farm your regulars, and neither can a business. |
| The recipient never sees the thank-you | So the recommendation reads as a recommendation. The economics stay behind the curtain. |
| No self-referral, no circles | Sending to your own second account, or two people trading favors back and forth, pays nothing. |
| Businesses can't see your other favors | Cafe Mira learns that Mara sent Ben. It learns nothing about where else Mara eats. |
If a recommendation goes badly
Tell us and we'll look at it. Repeated bad referrals from the same person stop earning; repeated complaints about the same business get it removed. Neither of those is automated — a person reads it.
For businesses
The other side of the same favor.
If you run the place being recommended, this all looks different: a new guest with a name attached, a welcome you set yourself, and a bill you only ever pay against spend that actually happened.
Somebody you know has the good list.
Favor is invite-only while we grow city by city. Leave your email and we'll find who can vouch for you.