TL;DR
Restaurants pick most of their vendors in the weeks before opening. Watch liquor licence applications, permits, opening-team job posts and local food news, then reach the owner or opening manager before the soft opening.
Find restaurants near youOnce a restaurant is open, switching suppliers takes effort, and most owners are too busy to think about it. Before it opens, everything is still undecided: the food distributor, the POS system, the linen service, pest control, insurance, payroll, the coffee supplier. If you sell any of these, you want to know about a restaurant months before the "grand opening" sign goes up.
New restaurants leave a trail of public signals as they get ready to open. Most of them appear well before the doors do.
Signals that a restaurant is coming
Signal | Roughly when it appears | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
Liquor licence application | Often months before opening | State or local alcohol control boards, and public notices posted at the site |
Building or renovation permits | During the fit-out | City and county permit portals |
Health department plan review or permit | Before opening, once the kitchen is planned | Local health departments, where they publish it |
"Opening team" job posts | A few weeks before opening | Job boards, often "now hiring all positions" |
Local food news and "coming soon" posts | Anywhere from months to weeks before | Local food media, neighbourhood news |
New map listing | Around the opening | Map listings, often marked as opening soon |
Liquor licence applications are the best early signal in many places, because they're public, they name the business, and they're filed well ahead of opening. How they're published varies by state and city, so learn how your area does it.
What gets bought when
The order matters, because showing up after a decision is made is the same as not showing up.
Stage | What's being decided |
|---|---|
Early (lease signed, fit-out starting) | Kitchen equipment, build-out contractors, insurance, POS system |
Middle (kitchen built, menu being finalised) | Food and drink distributors, specialty suppliers, linen, waste, pest control |
Final weeks (hiring and training) | Staffing, payroll, reservations, delivery platforms, marketing |
Sell equipment or POS? Use the early signals. If you're a food supplier, the menu-planning window is yours, and that's when tastings and samples work best.
What a new restaurant decides at each stage before opening.
Who decides
At an independent restaurant, the owner, often a chef-owner, decides almost everything. Many openings also bring in an opening general manager who handles vendors and hiring. At restaurant groups, a director of operations or purchasing usually picks suppliers for all locations, so one relationship covers several openings.
How to approach them
Hospitality still runs on in-person visits, and a walk-in with samples during the fit-out is normal in this industry. Email works well alongside it, especially for scheduling:
Hi [Name], I saw [restaurant] is opening on [street] in [month]. Congratulations. We supply [what you sell] to [type of restaurants] around [area], including [a nearby restaurant, with permission]. I'd love to drop off samples or show you [product] while you're setting up. Would sometime next week work?
Things that help:
An opening offer. New restaurants are spending heavily before they earn anything, so better terms for the first months can matter.
Delivery that fits their schedule. Show you understand their operating hours.
Local proof. Naming restaurants nearby that use you, with permission, does more than any brochure.
Doing it with ManyPI
Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.
You can describe what you're looking for, for example "restaurants opening in Austin in the next three months, with the owner's or general manager's email", and the agent reads local news and listings live to build the list, noting where each lead came from. Map Search lets you draw your delivery area and pull the restaurants inside it. Save them once, then run the same area each month and filter to places not yet in your leads to see what's new.
A new restaurant search typed into the ManyPI agent.
Every email is checked before sending, and sequences go out from your own inbox and stop when someone replies. The local business leads page shows the workflow.
Expect some openings to slip. Fit-outs run late, and some restaurants never open at all. Keep the lead, note the expected date, and check back a month later rather than writing it off.
Written by
Ole Mai
Founder / ManyPI