Glow is the free CRM for independent bodegas and taquerias

Glow just shipped a point-of-sale app built specifically for mom-and-pop shops — the bodega, the taqueria, the nail salon. It runs on a phone. No register, no belt, no $3,000 setup fee. You tap an item, it logs the sale, and the owner gets a daily summary. It's free. The whole point is that it doesn't require a credit card or a sales call.

The real trick is the free tier: no subscription, no per-location fee, no upsell to a merchant account. Most POS systems are a wedge — get you into their payment processing and lock you in. Glow makes money by selling analytics to suppliers who want to know what sells in a neighborhood. The product is the bait. The data is the business.

Why this matters for us: the tools we use to run our shops shouldn't need a venture round to exist — this is a model that actually lets la gente keep their margins without getting sold to a payment processor.