Selling to restaurants: who buys, when to call and where to find new openings

This guide is for companies that sell to restaurants: food and beverage producers, kitchen equipment and repair, point-of-sale and ordering software, linen, pest control and cleaning services, staffing, insurance and marketing. (If you're selling a restaurant business, this isn't that guide.) It covers how many restaurants there are, how each type buys, the rules that shape supplier deals, where to find restaurants before they open, and a worked example.

How many restaurants there are

County Business Patterns counted these eating and drinking places with paid employees in 2023:

Restaurants paid $276.9 billion in wages in 2023. Nonemployer Statistics adds 148,626 restaurants with no employees, such as food trucks and owner-run cafes. California has the most restaurant establishments (79,696), followed by Texas (53,166), New York (44,870) and Florida (39,213).

Most are small businesses, though bigger than you might expect:

County Business Patterns counts locations, not companies, and doesn't say which ones are franchised or part of a chain. A 40-person restaurant could be an independent or one of 2,000 franchised units, and they buy completely differently.

How restaurants buy and who decides

Some patterns hold across all four:

• The chef buys food; the owner buys everything else. Menu ingredients go through the chef or kitchen manager. Software, services and equipment go to the owner or general manager.
• Food usually arrives through a distributor. Restaurants typically order from a broadline distributor plus specialists for produce, meat or coffee. If you make a food product, being in the distributors' catalogs makes it easy to buy; selling direct works for local, premium or specialty products.
• Food must come from an approved source. The FDA Food Code, the model that state and local health codes adopt, requires that food be obtained from sources that comply with law. Bring your licenses and inspection records to the first meeting.
• Decisions are fast at independents and slow at chains. An owner can say yes on the spot. A chain may need a test in a few locations, a supplier approval and a distribution setup.

Franchise rules: read Item 8 first

A franchisee may love your product and still be unable to buy it. The FTC Franchise Rule requires every franchisor to disclose, in Item 8 of its Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD):

• which goods and services franchisees must buy from the franchisor, its designee or approved suppliers;
• how the franchisor approves alternative suppliers, including its criteria, fees and how long approval takes;
• whether the franchisor earns revenue from franchisees' required purchases, and how much;
• whether purchasing or distribution cooperatives exist; and
• what share of a franchisee's purchases are required purchases.

That tells you whether to sell to the franchisee, the franchisor's supply chain team or the purchasing cooperative. Many franchisors' FDDs are filed with state regulators in registration states, and some states let you search them online.

Other rules that shape restaurant deals

This is general information, not legal advice.

• Alcohol has its own rules. Under the federal tied-house provisions, a beer, wine or spirits supplier can't induce a retailer, which includes a restaurant with a liquor license, by furnishing equipment, fixtures, signs, supplies, money, services or anything else of value, except as Treasury rules allow. Most states also require alcohol to move through a licensed wholesaler, known as the three-tier system.
• Email rules apply to business email. Under CAN-SPAM, every commercial email to a restaurant needs an honest subject line, your postal address and an opt-out you honor.

Where to find restaurants, including new openings

The public data is better than most sellers realize. New York City's restaurant inspection dataset lists 31,369 active restaurants and college cafeterias (data pulled 23 October 2026). Of those, 3,917 have applied for a permit and haven't yet had their first inspection, which the city marks with an inspection date of 1 January 1900. Those are restaurants about to open. Texas publishes pending applications for new alcohol licenses every day: 957 on 25 October 2026, covering bars and restaurants as well as stores.

These sources give you businesses, not people. Finding the owner, general manager or director of operations for each one is the slow part at volume, and Bebop finds those contacts and researches each account in the list. The guide to building a prospect list covers the general method.

Segment before you reach out

• Service style. Full-service, limited-service, coffee and snack, bars. A walk-in cooler service suits full-service kitchens; a mobile ordering app suits quick service.
• Ownership. Independent, independent group, franchisee or corporate chain.
• Stage. About to open, newly open, established, or changing hands. Opening and new ownership are when restaurants choose suppliers.
• Size. Employee band, seats or locations.
• Signals. A new liquor license, a permit for a second location, a menu change, new hours, a hiring burst.

Timing

• Between lunch and dinner. Call or visit between about 2 and 4 pm. Never walk in during service.
• Early in the week. Avoid Fridays and weekends, the peak days for most dining rooms.
• Before opening. Owners choose equipment, services and software in the weeks before they open. In the first weeks after opening, they're too busy to change anything.

Worked example: a refrigeration service targets new restaurants

Illustrative example. The vendor and restaurant are fictional; the counts come from New York City's inspection data (23 October 2026) and County Business Patterns 2023.

The seller: Coldline (coldline.example) sells preventive maintenance contracts for walk-in coolers and reach-in refrigerators at an illustrative $1,800 a year. The territory: Brooklyn and Queens, which had 10,642 restaurant establishments with paid employees in 2023.

1. Find restaurants about to open. The city's dataset shows 971 establishments in Brooklyn and 780 in Queens that have applied for a permit but haven't had a first inspection: 1,751 in all.
2. Qualify. If an illustrative half are full-service kitchens with walk-in coolers, that's about 875 prospects.
3. Do the arithmetic. 875 at $1,800 a year is about $1.6 million of potential annual contracts. If an illustrative 3% sign in their first month, that's 26 contracts, or about $47,000 a year, before any repair work.
4. Pick the angle. Ember and Salt (ember-and-salt.example), a full-service restaurant in Queens, applied for its permit last month and is hiring line cooks. A failed cooler in the first month of service means thrown-out stock and possibly a failed inspection.

Subject: Your walk-in before opening day

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on [restaurant name]. I saw you're getting ready to open on [street].

Most new kitchens find out their walk-in has a problem in the first busy week, when it's full of stock. We check new installations before opening and service them every quarter for [price] a year, with same-day repair calls in [borough].

I can stop by any afternoon between 2 and 4 to look at your setup, no charge. Would [day] work?

[Your name], [Company]
[Postal address]
Reply "no thanks" and I won't email again.

The note reaches the owner at the moment they're choosing suppliers, names the risk in their terms and offers a visit at a time that suits a kitchen.

Checklist before you contact a restaurant

• You know whether it's independent, a franchisee or a chain location.
• For a franchisee, you've read Item 8 of the franchisor's FDD.
• You know its stage: opening, new, established or changing hands.
• You can state your value in their numbers: food cost, labor hours, downtime.
• You'll call or visit between services, and every email has your postal address and an opt-out.

Common mistakes

• Walking in at noon. You won't get a second visit.
• Pitching a franchisee something the franchisor doesn't allow. Check the approved supplier rules first.
• Selling to the chef what the owner buys, or the other way round.
• Offering free equipment to win a beverage account. For alcohol suppliers, that can break tied-house rules.

Next step: profile your first ten restaurants with the account research template, starting with ownership, stage, service style and one dated reason to call.