Plainspoken

We rewrite the words on small shops, so they sound like the people behind the counter.

Two café owners in aprons standing with their arms crossed in front of their counter, smiling.

It usually starts with a menu. The one you wrote in a hurry the week you opened, with "artisanal" on it twice and a typo in the soup. Or the website your nephew made. Or the sign on the door that says what you are not instead of what you are.

We are Hana and Dev. Hana wrote for a newspaper for eleven years; Dev wrote instructions for washing machines, which is harder. We spend a morning in your shop listening to how you talk to customers, then write it down.

We only work with shops, cafés and workshops with fewer than ten people. We never use the words "passionate", "curated" or "journey", and neither will you.

What we write (and write well)

A smiling man in a blue apron checking his phone behind a counter.
Menus and price lists that fit on one board and can be read from the queue.
An old wooden roll-top desk with a typewriter and a wooden chair.
Websites of five pages or fewer, and the "about us" nobody wants to write.
A woman in black leaning on a white counter in a small bright shop, smiling.

Don't worry about sounding professional. Sound like you.

Customers do not trust shops that sound like banks. They trust the one that says the bread runs out at two and the card machine is slow on Mondays. We keep your sentences, cut the ones that are not yours, and fix the spelling.

A shop window with 'Thank you for supporting local' painted on the glass. A butcher in a white coat standing with his arms crossed in his shop doorway.

Small jobs, done properly

The menu

Every dish in one line. Prices where eyes land.

The window

Opening hours, what you do, one sentence of why.

The website

Home, about, prices, find us. Nothing else.

The small print

Returns, allergens, deposits, card minimums — kindly.

A wooden desk by a sunny window with a laptop, plants and a shelf of books.

Before we write anything

Seen from above, a man working at a wooden table with a laptop, notebook and breakfast.

What we need from you

Every word you already have, even the ones you hate, and one ordinary morning when we can sit in the corner and listen.

A woman in a blue jumper writing by hand in a notebook next to a pot of pencils.

What you get

New text within a week, as a plain document. Two rounds of changes. After that, a fixed rate per hour, agreed before we start.

A cream-coloured portable typewriter with a sheet of paper on a round table.

What it costs

Written down on the first day, not after the second meeting.

Menu £180 · window £120 · website £650

Book a morning

A stack of old books, a jar of pencils and a pair of glasses on a white desk.

Plainspoken

Two writers, one desk above the
hardware shop on Corn Street

+44 7700 900 176
Mon–Thu, 09:00–16:00

Plainspoken is a fictional example. Hana and Dev, the shops, the prices and the promises do not exist. Photographs are stock images and do not show clients of this studio.