No algorithm decides.
A person verifies.

The owner tells us their story — the shop, the street, the craft. We ask for one thing only: a photo of the storefront, taken today, sign visible, with a sheet of paper held in frame where "Tongraal" and the day's date are written by hand. That handwriting, on that date, in front of that door, is what no image generator can produce — which is how we keep invented shop fronts out. No identity document, no paperwork. No anonymous applications, no agencies applying for "brands".

We look up the address on Google Street View and match it against the photo. A real sign, on a real street, at the address given — and the handwritten date proves the shop was standing there this week, not in an old picture. If the door doesn't exist, the conversation ends there — politely, but firmly.

We look up the legal business name in the public business registry of the state the shop trades in — every US state keeps one, free and open to anyone — and check it is active and in the owner's name. Identity itself is verified by Stripe, which must know who a seller is before paying them a cent. The name must be the same in all three places: the application, the registry, the Stripe account. So we ask for no identity papers at all: we verify people, we don't collect them.

Decision within 3 business days, with a reason either way. Approved shops receive the verified badge, a Door Keeper number if they're among the first 100, and a profile page that tells their story the way it deserves to be told.