A local host welcoming a traveler into their home and neighbourhood
Looking for founding locals

We are looking for people who love where they live.

You've travelled. You know what it feels like when someone opens a door. Now you live somewhere — and that door is yours. Before Terroir exists as a place travelers can visit, it exists as founding locals who decided to be the beginning.

§ 01 — Six kinds of encounters

What a local can offer. What a traveler can experience.

A local and traveler sharing a home-cooked meal at a kitchen table
01 · Shared meal

Share a meal

Open your table. Cook your typical meals. Whether it's in your kitchen or you favorite local restaurant, the traveler eats what you want them to discover.

Two people in conversation, practising each other's languages
02 · Language exchange

Exchange languages

You're learning from someone who actually lives there, not from a curriculum. The conversation goes where no lesson plan would.

Hands working together on a traditional craft
03 · Craft session

Learn a craft

A craft, a practice. Pottery, photography, music, macrame. Whatever you create with your hands. Pass a little of it on.

Two people exercising together in a local neighbourhood
04 · sport session

Move together

A morning run around local neighborhoods, a yoga practice in the park, a martial arts session. Two people sharing a work out. Not as instructor and student, but as equals.

Friends out together at night in the city
05 · Evening

Share the night

The bar you go to. The friends you'd be seeing anyway. The city the way it breathes after dark. An evening that happens to include an unknown person.

A welcoming guest room in a private home
06 · A room

Stay a while

A bed, a couch, a morning coffee, a conversation. Offered the way a place has always been offered between humans — because one person decided to open their door.

§ 02 — what you should know

Five principles to the local reading this.

01 · It is free. You decide.

02 · You are not a service provider.

03 · You decide everything.

04 · We grow slowly on purpose.

05 · You can leave any time.

§ 03 — The questions most locals ask first

FAQ

What if I only want to host once?
That's fine. Once is a real encounter. We would rather have ten locals who host once meaningfully than one who hosts forty times. You set the rhythm.
I don't speak English well. Does that matter?
No. Terroir launches in French, Spanish, and English, and we have a context card system that translates the small things that matter — a menu, a neighbourhood note, the name of the dish you're making — ahead of time. We will never turn a local away for not speaking a traveler's language. Most of the best encounters happen around that gap, not despite it.
What if I have a bad guest?
A person reads every traveler request before it reaches you. You can decline without explanation. If something goes wrong during an encounter, there is a human on call in your city, and the consequence system on the safety page is real, short, and enforced. We would rather lose travelers than locals.
What does a typical week look like for a founding local?
You write your listing with us. You tell us your rhythm. You wait. When travelers open, the first few requests come to you from people we have briefed personally. You decide which ones you want to meet. There is no inbox to maintain, no dashboard to feed.
§ 05 — A note

If you got to the bottom of this page and you are still reading, you are probably the right person. We would rather hear from ten of you than ten thousand of the wrong ones. Write back. We read everything.

— Yann & Irene

Taste, see and live a place through its locals. A community-first platform, free, always.

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