Feed 02 · Los Angeles + San Francisco · weekly
Every restaurant coming to your metro, months before it opens.
A restaurant announces itself long before the sign goes up: a change-of-use filing, a kitchen hood, a grease interceptor, a tenant improvement. Restaurant Signals reads LA and SF building-permit records weekly and hands you the buildouts that have not opened yet, back when they still need a POS, a kitchen line, a distributor, and an insurance policy.
Public city records only. Curated, not a firehose. Nothing charged until your first feed ships.
Why permits beat every other list
Most "new restaurant" data tells you about places that already opened. By then the POS is installed, the distributor is chosen, and the policy is bound. Permit records put you at the top of the ladder instead:
Building-permit application
The earliest public trace: change of use to restaurant, kitchen hood, commercial kitchen TI. Nobody has sold this restaurant anything yet.
Permit issued
Construction is funded and real. We track the application-to-issued transition as its own signal, so you see momentum, not just paperwork.
Health permit
Equipment is installed and vendors are locked in.
Business registration
This is where scraped "new business" lists live, along with everyone else calling.
What lands in your inbox
One CSV a week. Roughly twenty rows across both metros, each one a real buildout, tiered by confidence so you can spend calls where they count. Example rows, in the exact format of the real feed:
| Tier | Signal date | Metro | Address | Stage | Work description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HIGH | 2026-07-01 | Los Angeles | 1234 EXAMPLE BLVD | APPLICATION | Change of use to restaurant, new kitchen hood + grease interceptor |
| HIGH | 2026-06-30 | San Francisco | 567 SAMPLE ST | ISSUED | TI for food/beverage handling, was retail |
| HIGH | 2026-06-30 | Los Angeles | 890 SPECIMEN AVE | STAGE CHANGE | Application to issued: restaurant take-out buildout |
| BROAD | 2026-06-29 | San Francisco | 246 PLACEHOLDER WAY | APPLICATION | Commercial kitchen remodel, drive-thru lane |
| BROAD | 2026-06-28 | Los Angeles | 135 MODEL DR | APPLICATION | Restaurant interior TI, 2,400 sqft |
Full rows carry permit number, full address with geo, submitted and issued dates, declared valuation and square footage where the city publishes them, and the raw work description.
Built for the people who sell the buildout
POS resellers
Reach the owner while the counter is still framing lumber, not after a competitor's terminal is on it.
Food distributors
A new account opens in your delivery zone every week. Be the first rep whose number is taped to the walk-in.
Equipment dealers
Hood installs, kitchen TIs, and remodels, with square footage and valuation where the city publishes them. Quote while the layout is still changeable.
Restaurant insurance agents
Every one of these needs GL, property, and eventually workers comp bound before opening day. You know about them a quarter early.
Founding pricing
- Weekly CSV digest for your metro: LA, SF, or both
- High-confidence and broad tiers, clearly separated
- Stage-change tracking: you see applications become issued permits
- Public city records only: no scraped emails, no appended personal data
- Founding seats are limited per metro to keep the signal valuable
Reserving costs nothing today. We invoice when your first feed ships, and if it never ships you owe nothing and we tell you why.
See this week's buildouts
Tell us your metro and what you sell, and we will send a real sample cut from current permit records, usually within one business day.
Fair questions
Where does the data come from?
City of Los Angeles and City and County of San Francisco public building-permit records, published on the cities' own open-data portals. We read them weekly, filter for restaurant buildout markers, and keep the history so stage changes are visible. No scraping of private sources, ever.
Only about nine high-confidence rows a week?
Yes, and that is the point. These are metro-wide restaurant buildouts, not a padded list. Nine future restaurants a week that almost nobody else is calling yet is a different product from five hundred stale registrations everyone bought.
How much lead time do I really get?
Permit applications typically precede opening by months; issued permits by one to six months depending on the buildout. Each row carries the city's own submitted and issued dates so you can judge timing yourself. We do not guess opening dates.
Which areas are covered?
At launch: City of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Neighboring cities and more metros follow based on what founding subscribers ask for first.
What if it is not useful?
Cancel anytime, no contract, and the first invoice only goes out after your first real feed is delivered. If the sample does not convince you, that costs you nothing.