# Food Service License Leads - Chicago Restaurant Openings (`rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads`) Actor

Find newly licensed Chicago restaurants and food businesses from official City of Chicago records. Export recordId, businessName, legalName, address, zip, neighborhood, licenseNumber, issuedDate, applicationCreatedDate, and licenseStartDate. Public government data; no login needed. Chicago only.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads.md
- **Developed by:** [Rook DataTools](https://apify.com/rook-data-tools) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, Business
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 license leads

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## New Food Service License Leads - Chicago Restaurant Openings

**Find newly licensed Chicago restaurants and food businesses at the moment they are
preparing to open or have just opened.** This Actor turns official initial Retail Food
Establishment license records into a clean, scheduled lead feed.

Built for teams that sell to new food-service businesses:

- Restaurant equipment, smallwares, refrigeration, and food distributors
- POS, payments, online ordering, payroll, and accounting providers
- Insurance brokers, staffing firms, cleaning services, and pest control
- Signage, security, internet, waste, and opening-day service vendors

### What the signal means

The Actor returns City of Chicago records where the application type is `ISSUE`, the
license type is `Retail Food Establishment`, and the city marks the license as issued.
That is a useful opening-time signal, not a generic restaurant directory entry.

The source is the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection
open-data API. It is public, requires no login or API key, and is updated daily by the
city.

### Quick start

1. Set the **Lookback window** (14 days is a good first run).
2. Optionally add Chicago **neighborhoods** or **ZIP codes**.
3. Leave **Only new since last run** on for a scheduled delta feed.
4. Choose a **Max results** cap and click **Start**.

At the intended future Console price of $0.005 per saved lead plus a $0.005 run-start
event, 100 returned leads would cost about **$0.505**. Pricing is not configured by this
code; see `pricing.md` in the project directory for the recommendation.

### Output fields

Each saved record can include:

- Signal: `leadType`, `jurisdiction`, `status`, `eventDate`, `issuedDate`
- License: `recordId`, `licenseId`, `licenseNumber`, `licenseCode`,
  `licenseDescription`, `licenseStatusCode`, `applicationType`
- Business: `businessName`, `legalName`
- Location: `address`, `city`, `state`, `zip`, `neighborhood`, `communityArea`,
  `ward`, `latitude`, `longitude`
- Timeline: `applicationCreatedDate`, `requirementsCompleteDate`,
  `approvedForIssuanceDate`, `licenseStartDate`, `expirationDate`
- Provenance: `source`, `sourceUrl`, `scrapedAt`

Fields the city leaves empty are omitted instead of being filled with guesses.

### Delta mode and deduplication

With **Only new since last run** enabled, the Actor stores stable Chicago license-record
IDs in its named key-value store. Scheduled runs return only records not delivered by an
earlier delta run. Duplicate rows inside the same run are also suppressed. The registry
is retained for 400 days so it stays bounded while covering normal annual schedules.

### Reliability behavior

- HTTP/JSON only; no browser, login, CAPTCHA, or credential is used.
- Chicago's one-second crawl delay is honored between API pages and retry attempts.
- Transient `429` and server errors use bounded retries and honor `Retry-After`.
- One malformed record is logged and skipped without losing the rest of the run.
- `maxResults` is enforced before additional leads are saved.

### Honest limits

- Coverage is Chicago only.
- These are newly issued initial food-service licenses, not pending applications and not
  health-inspection records.
- Issuance means the business is legally licensed; it does not prove an exact opening
  date or that the business has not already opened.
- The source does not provide email addresses or phone numbers in this dataset, and the
  Actor does not invent or enrich them.
- A license filing is a sales signal, not proof that the business wants to be contacted.

# Actor input Schema

## `sinceDays` (type: `integer`):

Return newly issued initial Retail Food Establishment licenses from this many days back.

## `neighborhoods` (type: `array`):

Optional. Only return leads in these Chicago neighborhoods (case-insensitive, for example LAKE VIEW or ENGLEWOOD).

## `zipCodes` (type: `array`):

Optional. Only return leads in these ZIP codes.

## `onlyNewSinceLastRun` (type: `boolean`):

When on, license records already returned by previous runs are skipped. The first run returns everything in the lookback window.

## `maxResults` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many license leads.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "sinceDays": 14,
  "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true,
  "maxResults": 1000
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=rook-data-tools/new-food-service-license-leads",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/QebmLBZO8JcaiTju4/builds/fds7wa5kF9DgEMwDt/openapi.json