UK Food Business Leads & Change Monitor

UK food business lead monitoring

Find food-business candidate leads and possible business changes using official Food Standards Agency (FSA) records. Search records with recent activity dates or monitor later observations and changes. Built for agencies, suppliers and researchers who want structured results with less manual checking.

Enter a town, city, postcode or address. Receive business names, source addresses, food hygiene ratings, observation signals and links to the original FSA records.

Newly observed does not mean newly opened. Every result has openingStatus: "not_verified".

Quick start

1. Enter a location, such as Glasgow.
2. Choose Recent records for a one-off search, or Monitor changes for ongoing tracking. A new input form initially selects Recent records.
3. Run the Actor and open Candidate leads and Run summary in its output.
4. For ongoing monitoring, use the settings below with a maximum run cost of $0.25, save them as an Apify task and schedule repeat runs.

{
  "mode": "monitor",
  "location": "Glasgow",
  "maxResults": 25,
  "recentDays": 90,
  "maxPages": 20
}

Use one sequential schedule per location and prevent overlapping runs. Apify provides scheduling, dataset exports and API access.

One-off recent-record searches

Set mode to recent_records to search eligible records with FSA rating/inspection dates within recentDays. These are recent activity signals, not verified new openings. Output uses signalType: "recent_fsa_record_date" and trackingStatus: "recent_record_not_new".

This mode does not read, create or update a monitoring baseline or pending queue. firstSeenAt and baselineAt are null; lastSeenAt records the current retrieval time. Repeated searches can return and charge for the same records again. Use Monitor changes for ongoing tracking.

For a small one-off search, use:

{
  "mode": "recent_records",
  "location": "Glasgow",
  "maxResults": 5,
  "recentDays": 90,
  "maxPages": 20
}

Five delivered records cost $0.075 including the start fee; a $0.10 run limit covers this example. A recent-record search may return zero if no eligible records fall within the date window.

How monitoring works

Select Monitor changes (mode: "monitor"). Existing tasks and API calls that omit mode retain this behaviour. Recent-record searches do not affect a monitoring baseline, including one for the same location.

The first complete scan establishes a baseline. It returns a limited preview of eligible records with recent rating or inspection dates. Those dates are activity signals, not opening dates.

Later runs compare the source records with that baseline:

Signal	Meaning
baseline_recent_fsa_record_date	A recent-record preview from the initial baseline. Its tracking status is baseline_preview_not_new.
first_seen_after_baseline	A record newly observed by this monitor. It could describe a business that already existed.
possible_business_identity_change	A known FSA identifier appeared with a different normalized business name or address. The business change is unverified.

Unchanged premises and rating-date updates alone do not generate new leads. Records with old or missing rating dates can appear in later monitoring if they are newly observed.

Runs of this Actor using the same location text within your Apify account share a baseline, including runs from different tasks. Case and extra spaces are ignored. Changing result limits or the preview window does not reset monitoring.

The initial preview selects up to maxResults records. Existing records outside that preview do not become new leads on the next run.

Input settings

Setting	Default	Purpose
mode	monitor when omitted; new input forms prefill recent_records	Choose a one-off recent-record search or ongoing change monitoring.
location	Glasgow	Matches source address text. It does not enforce a strict city or council boundary.
maxResults	25	Maximum records to deliver in this run, from 1 to 500.
recentDays	90	Activity-date window for recent-record searches and the first monitoring preview, from 1 to 365 days.
maxPages	20	Maximum source pages per scan attempt, from 1 to 100. Requests up to 5,000 records per page; the source can return smaller pages.

A complete, stable scan is required before monitoring state changes. Incomplete scans produce no leads and preserve the previous baseline.

Output

Candidate leads contains the delivered records. Run summary explains scan completeness, baseline status, detected changes, delivered counts and queued records.

Fields	Contents
runMode	recent_records or monitor.
businessName, businessType	Source business name and category.
address, postcode	Source address information, subject to screening.
ratingValue, ratingDate	Published rating and activity date. Scottish ratings can use text such as “Pass”.
opportunityScore, opportunityReason	Rule-based priority ranking and its reasons. The score is not a probability or confirmed purchasing need.
signalType, trackingStatus	Why this candidate is being delivered.
firstSeenAt, lastSeenAt, baselineAt	Monitor observation timestamps. In recent-record searches, first observation and baseline are null.
fhrsId, sourceFhrsIds, source	FSA identifiers and original source link.
eventId, openingStatus	Delivery identifier and unverified opening status.

This shortened example uses placeholders and is illustrative, not a real business record:

{
  "businessName": "Illustrative Cafe",
  "businessType": "Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen",
  "signalType": "first_seen_after_baseline",
  "trackingStatus": "first_seen_after_baseline",
  "openingStatus": "not_verified",
  "firstSeenAt": "2026-10-04T08:00:00Z",
  "eventId": "0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef",
  "source": "https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/<fhrsId>"
}

Pricing and spending limits

Pricing is $0.05 per Actor start plus $0.005 per delivered record, equivalent to $5 per 1,000 records. Platform usage during the Actor run is included in this price. Memory is capped at 1 GB.

Delivered records in one run	Event charges
0	$0.05
10	$0.10
25	$0.175
100	$0.55

The start fee applies to runs that start, including those returning zero records. Recent-record searches and baseline previews are billable too. Every delivered record in a repeated recent-record search is charged again, even if its identifier is unchanged. Refer to the Actor’s Pricing tab for current prices.

The Actor respects your run spending limit. For example, a $0.10 limit permits 10 records after the start fee. In Monitor changes mode, eligible undelivered changes and undelivered records from the selected initial preview remain queued for a later run. Queued candidates are checked again and removed if they are no longer visible or eligible. Recent-record searches do not queue undelivered records; another search starts again from the current eligible records.

A failure after output is written but before monitoring delivery is acknowledged can repeat a record on retry. Use eventId to deduplicate combined exports; repeated dataset writes can incur record charges. In recent-record searches, unchanged identity and rating information produce the same eventId, but repeated delivery is still billable.

Business and address screening

Screening is mandatory and uses source names and categories. It excludes alcohol-focused venues and retailers, gambling and adult businesses, tobacco/vape name matches, and selected institutional kitchens. Names matching pork, bacon or ham patterns are also excluded.

Ordinary food-service businesses may remain eligible even if they serve alcohol. The Actor does not inspect menus or certify religious suitability.

Records with missing street addresses or possible flat/apartment addresses are held out of delivery. The Actor does not add personal emails or telephone numbers. These checks can miss unsuitable records or exclude suitable ones; they do not establish that every remaining record is free of personal data or suitable for outreach.

Troubleshooting and support

Why did a successful run return zero leads?
In Monitor changes mode, the baseline may already exist and no eligible changes were observed. In Recent records mode, no eligible records may fall within the activity-date window. Check runMode, monitoringMode, scanComplete, returned and queuedForLaterRuns in Run summary.

Why is my scan incomplete?
If the page limit was reached, increase maxPages or narrow the location. If source pagination changed during scanning, retry later. The existing baseline is preserved.

Can I get verified openings, owners, emails or phone numbers?
This Actor provides candidate signals from FSA records. It does not verify opening dates or enrich owner/contact details.

How do I get help?
Open an issue on the Actor’s Issues tab with the run ID and input settings.

Data source and attribution

Source: Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Rating Scheme API.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Retain source and licence attribution when redistributing the data.

Mu Tech is independent of the FSA. This Actor is not endorsed by the FSA. Ratings can change; check the original source before relying on a rating or publishing it as current. See the FSA terms for using ratings information.