A local-discovery platform for Tampa Bay, built by a security professional who got tired of not being able to find out what's actually happening at the local venues nearby.
My Treat is a discovery app for Tampa Bay. People open it to find out what's happening at local venues near them — the hours, the specials, the events, the things that big chain-aggregator apps either miss or hide behind ad placement. We're built for and by people who care about local businesses, and we're trying to be the discovery layer those businesses deserve.
We are pre-launch. The app is built, we're enrolled with both major app stores, and we're working with a small group of founding Local Partners — small breweries, coffee shops, casual restaurants, neighborhood bars, live-music venues — before opening up to the wider Tampa Bay area.
Two threads twisted into one.
The first is practical: Tampa Bay is full of local venues doing interesting things, and there is no reliable way to find out what they're doing tonight. Big national platforms optimize for the chains that can afford ad budgets. Social media is a stream you have to be following the right accounts to catch. Search engines surface the venues with the best SEO, not the best happy hour. Real local discovery has been a missing layer for a long time.
The second is professional: a discovery app for local businesses ends up handling sensitive things — business identity, billing relationships, customer accounts, location data. Most consumer apps treat security as something to add later. We don't have that option, because the platform we want to build only works if the businesses and the customers actually trust it. That trust has to be designed in from the first commit, not stapled on after launch.
We have the unusual luxury of being built by someone who has done security engineering for a living for years before founding a consumer product company. That doesn't make us perfect — nothing does — but it does shape every architectural decision we make. We publish our security posture openly for that reason: if our customers and partners are going to trust us, they should be able to verify how.
Local Partners pay a flat monthly fee for featured placement. No per-transaction commissions, no skimming customer relationships.
No selling user data to advertisers or brokers. No tracking pixels on our authentication or billing surfaces. Privacy posture is published.
No fake-urgency timers, no "23 people are looking at this" theater, no fake scarcity. Real venues, real listings.
If a customer and a business disagree, we forward the issue. We don't side, arbitrate, or hold leverage over either party.
Local Partners can leave anytime with 30 days' notice. No lock-ins, no penalty clauses. If the platform isn't working for you, it isn't working.
Defense in depth, phishing-resistant authentication, immutable audit logs, transparent posture. See our security page.
Founder · Managing Member
Joseph is a cybersecurity engineer and cloud architect with years of experience delivering enterprise security and automation solutions for Fortune 500 organizations across healthcare, banking, life sciences, and technology. He holds a B.S. in Cybersecurity and a B.B.A. in Business Administration. He built My Treat after running into the same problem too many times — no reliable way to find out what local local venues in Tampa Bay were actually doing — and decided to build the discovery tool he kept wishing existed.
Joseph is the Managing Member of both entities and the point of contact for product, technical, and contractual questions.
Reach Joseph at: joseph@mytreat.club
Small Business Outreach Advisor
Todd brings years of experience across customer service, retail management, and property management to My Treat. He has deep knowledge of the Tampa Bay local market and an extensive network built through hands-on operations, small-business outreach, and customer-relationship work. Todd joined My Treat to put that network to work connecting local venues with the discovery platform he believes they've been missing.
Todd's role is documented under a written Advisor Agreement. He is a volunteer advisor, not a member or employee of either entity. His lane is sponsor outreach, demo preparation, and small-business relationships.
Reach Todd at: todd@mytreat.club
We are headquartered in Ruskin, Florida — a Tampa Bay community we live in and build from. We are not a remote-team-from-anywhere company that happens to launch in Tampa Bay first. Tampa Bay is the platform's home, and we believe a local-discovery product can only be built by people who actually walk into the venues they're trying to feature.
My Treat runs on Google Cloud Platform. Today's production stack includes Firebase Hosting (web), Firestore (database), Firebase Authentication (identity), Cloud Functions (event handlers), and Cloud Storage (assets). As we deploy the operations console and analytics warehouse pre-launch, we are adding Cloud Run, BigQuery, Cloud IAP, Cloud Armor, Secret Manager, and Cloud Logging.
Choosing Google Cloud lets us inherit the platform's encryption defaults, security certifications, and global reliability rather than re-implement them in-house at a stage when our focus should be on the product. For our detailed control posture, see our Security page.
We are not VC-funded. We are not chasing a hyper-growth metric. We are deliberately small, intentionally focused, and committed to building something that works for the businesses we feature and the people who use the app. That shows up in how we handle pricing (flat fee, not commissions), how we handle data (we don't sell it), and how we handle disagreements (talk it through; 30-day notice and you're out, no penalty).
If that's the kind of platform partner you want, we'd love to talk. If you're looking for a deep-discount-blast platform or a high-volume ad network, we're not it — and we'll happily point you to someone who is.
If you operate a local business in the Tampa Bay area — a coffee shop, a brewery, a casual restaurant, a neighborhood bar, a live-music space — we'd love to talk. Reach Todd at todd@mytreat.club.
If you'd like to discuss the platform itself, partnership beyond Local Partner enrollment, security or compliance questions, or press, reach Joseph at joseph@mytreat.club.
For responsible disclosure of any security issue, please see our security page or write to security@mytreat.club.