Critique a small side business idea

MailChimp and SendGrid are not competition. Not sure what you meant there.

This will not be a blind bulk-mail channel. For the business, they would be buying into a targeted local audience who are interested in deals, not a generic email list, or snail-mail network.

I could provide other value besides deals, like events calendar (generally can just be copied from the city government site which probably no one visits anyway).