Buy local
Independent shops, growers, makers and producers
Put in one place for your town, so choosing local is the easy option.
Find local businesses →The national editionLocal editions for towns across the UK
What’s on · Buy local · Markets · Groups & clubs · Classes
Understead
The independent and community life of every place, easier to find, use and join.
Know your place. Take part in it.
Free to list. Free to use. Built around towns.
Across the UK today
- 18,040+independent businesses
- 760+markets & food hubs
- 25,410+groups & clubs
- 9,060+teachers & studios
- 21,980+things on in the next 14 days
- 1,160+towns with a local edition
Your local edition
Choose your town
Start with a town and see the independent businesses, markets, groups, events and other local things gathered around it.
Each edition is a town and the places around it: what’s on this fortnight, its markets, its shops and makers, its groups and classes, on one page.
Browse every town → Add something local → Claim your listing →
Or search by distance
Search nearby
Enter a postcode or place, choose what you’re looking for and decide how far you want to search.
Find Local Vendors
Search vendors by category, postcode and radius.
The big picture
There’s more around you than you think.
Every town has more going on than its high street shows: growers selling from the farm gate, makers working from back rooms, market days, clubs and classes in village halls.
Most of it is hard to find. It lives on small websites, social media pages, noticeboards and word of mouth, while chains and national platforms have the scale to be seen everywhere.
Understead gathers the independent and community life of each place into its own local edition, so finding it, using it and joining in is as easy as anything else.
The making was never the hard part. Being found was.
In every edition
What you’ll find
Five sections, in every town’s edition.
Markets & food hubs
Market days and food hubs
The recurring local markets and food hubs, with their next dates. Free for markets, forever.
See markets →What’s on
Things worth leaving the house for
Classes, workshops, talks, market days and events near you, in date order for the next fortnight.
See what’s on →Groups & clubs
Find your people
Clubs, societies, community groups and volunteers, and how to join in.
Find groups near you →Classes & activities
Learn something locally
Teachers, studios and courses, from pottery to yoga to growing your own.
Find classes →How it works
Four steps, and the paper does the rest
Why towns?
Because that’s how people live locally. Each town’s edition gathers the town and the places around it, so a market ten minutes away counts as local too.
- 1
Find your place
Choose your town to open its local edition, or search around any postcode as far as you want to go.
Choose your town → - 2
Discover what’s actually there
Independent businesses, makers, markets, groups, classes and what’s on, gathered into one page per town instead of scattered across the internet.
What you’ll find → - 3
Follow, join, buy or get in touch
Follow the ones you like for their news, join a group, or contact them through their own details. We don’t sit in the middle and we never take a cut.
Stay close → - 4
Add or recommend what’s missing
Run something? Add it free. Know something that should be here? Recommend it. Every edition gets fuller the more people use it.
Run something local →
Buy local
Browse by category
From a punnet of microgreens to a hand-turned bowl. Pick one to see who makes it, across the UK or near you.
Food & Drink
- Fresh Produce & Growers 2,260
- Local Meat, Eggs & Seafood 986
- Honey & Bee Products 686
- Pantry Goods 476
- Baking 424
- Drinks, Brewing & Distilling 347
- Cheese & Dairy 333
Show all 12 categories
Makers & Crafts
Home, Garden & More
Classes & Activities
- Pilates 1,956
- Dance Classes 1,788
- Yoga 1,337
- Guitar Lessons 950
- Martial Arts 890
- Music Lessons 581
- Art Classes 318
Show all 30 categories
- Horse Riding Lessons 300
- Pottery Classes 293
- Drama Classes 248
- Fitness Classes 133
- Swimming Lessons 106
- Cookery Classes 79
- Zumba 52
- Sailing & Watersports 45
- Piano Lessons 38
- Tai Chi & Qigong 11
- Boxing 9
- Climbing & Bouldering 8
- Meditation & Mindfulness 7
- Paddleboarding & Kayaking 2
- Singing Lessons 1
- Baby & Toddler Classes
- Craft Workshops
- Floristry Workshops
- Foraging & Wild Food
- Gardening & Growing
- Gymnastics Classes
- Photography Courses
- Sewing & Textile Crafts
From the local editions
Independents worth discovering
Businesses that have claimed their free page. Choose your town and they come nearest first.
Pantry Goods
Wren Lane Preserves
Wren Lane Preserves is a made-up business created to test Understead. Jo cooks in small batches using Devon fruit: Seville oranges in January, damsons…
Totnes
Why it matters
The places we live don’t stay distinctive by accident.
Independent shops, growers, makers, cafés, clubs, classes and markets survive when people can find them, use them and take part. Understead exists to make that easier.
Scattered, not scarce
Useful local things are everywhere, but spread across small websites, social media pages, noticeboards, market stalls and word of mouth. None of it adds up to one place you can look.
Built for scale
Chains, national platforms and big online retailers are built to be found everywhere at once. They have the technology and the budgets to be the first answer, even when the better one is round the corner.
Good at it, hard to see
A grower, a potter or a Tuesday choir rarely has a marketing department. Being good at the thing has never been the same as being found.
Easier, not harder
Nobody should have to try harder to shop or join in locally. Understead is shared local infrastructure: one page per town, one search, one follow button, so choosing local is as easy as anything else.
Spend here. Join here. Show up here.
More of the work, the relationships and the value stays rooted in your place, in the things that make one town different from another.
Stay close
Your local edition, by email
Hearabouts is the local paper by email: what’s new, what’s on and who’s just arrived near you. It’s a separate choice, never bundled into anything else.
Or follow a business, a market or a group and their updates come to you through Understead. No accounts to run, no feed to fight, and you can stop any time.
Your local paper
Hearabouts
Stay connected with your patch
A local paper for your patch, delivered by email. Who's just started up, what's in season, when the markets are on, what's on this month, and the odd story about how a place like yours keeps its money close to home.
Good news, mostly. There's enough of the other kind about.
Notices
Run something local?
Add a business, a market, a food hub, a group or an activity, and help people nearby find it.
Businesses
List your business
A free page with your own website and contacts on it, a Follow button for your regulars, and selling through the site if and when it suits you.
List it free →Already listed?
Claim your page
Find your business, open its page and claim it free, so you can keep it right and hear from the people who follow it.
Find your business →Markets
Add a market
A permanent page with your dates, place and trader information, and a Follow button for your regulars. Free forever: markets never pay.
List a market →Food hubs
Add a food hub
Put your hub, collection points and dates on the map for people nearby. Free forever: food hubs never pay.
List a food hub →Groups & clubs
Add a group
A page for what the group does, its activities and how to join in, and new members finding you by place. Free, always.
Add a group →Classes & activities
Add a class or activity
Teach something, run a course or host a regular session? Add it so people nearby can find it.
Add it →Know somebody?
Recommend something local
Know a business, market or group that should be here? Tell us about it and we’ll look into adding it.
Recommend it →For local businesses
Why list with Understead
Free to list, no commission on anything you sell, and your customers stay yours. See what a page does for a business.
How it works for businesses →Guides & resources
Guides for local businesses
Practical, no-fluff guides for people who grow, make and sell locally, written for the real needs of small producers, makers and traders. The library is growing.
- Compliance and business systems
- Selling, marketing and scaling
- How-to guides and training
- Packaging and labelling
- Tools and equipment
- Seeds and growing media
- Guides for particular crafts
Reader questions
Quick answers
Does Understead take a commission on sales?
No. Sellers keep everything they earn: money goes from the buyer to the seller through the seller’s own payment account and never passes through us. We make our money from small monthly plans instead.
What does it cost to list?
Nothing. A free listing gets a page, local search, your own contacts and website links, photos, reviews and a Follow button. Paid plans start at £5 a month and add a commission-free shop. Markets, food hubs and community groups are free forever.
Is Understead only for food?
No. Food and drink is where it started, but each town’s edition covers makers and crafts, homewares, health and beauty, garden, classes, groups and clubs, markets and what’s on.
How do I find things near me?
Choose your town at the top of this page to open its local edition, or use Search nearby with a postcode or place, what you’re looking for and how far you’re happy to go.
Can I contact businesses directly?
Yes. Pages show the contact details each business has made public: their own phone, email, website and social links. Nobody has to go through us, and we don’t sit in the middle of the conversation.
Do paid plans get a better position?
Not on town pages: nothing there is ordered by who pays, and adverts sit in their own marked spaces. Paying never puts a business into results it doesn’t belong in. In search, where several businesses match equally well, one on a paid plan can be listed above a free one.