# UK Food Business Leads - New Openings & Hygiene Fails (`wellbuilt_zythem/uk-food-business-leads`) Actor

Find UK food businesses at the moment they need you: the ones that just registered and are awaiting their first inspection, and the ones that just failed a hygiene inspection. Swept from all 363 local authority registers via the official Food Standards Agency API.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/wellbuilt\_zythem/uk-food-business-leads.md
- **Developed by:** [Carlos Escanez](https://apify.com/wellbuilt_zythem) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 food business records

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/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#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

## UK Food Business Leads — new openings and hygiene failures

**Find UK food businesses at the exact moment they need you.** Two triggers, swept from all 363 local authority registers:

### See it run

https://youtu.be/rnta\_WXFqf8

- **Just registered, awaiting first inspection.** The business is opening. It is buying a till system, a website, insurance, suppliers, a cleaner, an accountant — all in the same fortnight.
- **Just failed a hygiene inspection.** A rating of 0, 1 or 2 is public, embarrassing and time-limited. These businesses buy food-safety consultancy, deep cleaning, pest control and staff training, and they buy quickly.

Covers **613,092 establishments** across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, from the official Food Standards Agency register.

***

### Why this is not just another hygiene-ratings lookup

The FSA API refuses a national query outright — it answers `This is a CPU intensive query: please use one of the documented filters`. So a nationwide picture means walking 363 local authorities one at a time and stitching the results together.

Other tools on the market let you look up *one* business you already know about. This one sweeps the country and hands you the businesses you did **not** know about, filtered down to the ones worth a phone call this week.

It also flattens two different rating schemes into one comparable scale, so "failed" means the same thing in Aberdeen as in Brighton. England, Wales and Northern Ireland score 0-5; Scotland uses Pass / Improvement Required. You should not have to know that to ask for businesses in trouble.

***

### What you get

| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| `name` | Trading name as registered |
| `businessType` | Restaurant, takeaway, pub, hotel, mobile caterer, retailer, and 8 more |
| `address`, `postcode` | Full inspected premises address |
| `localAuthority`, `region` | The council, and one of 12 FSA regions |
| `rating` | As published: `5`…`0`, `Pass`, `Improvement Required`, `AwaitingInspection`, `Exempt` |
| `ratingScore` | Both schemes flattened to 0-5, so you can compare and sort |
| `ratingBand` | `excellent`, `good`, `satisfactory`, `improvement_needed`, `major_improvement_needed`, `urgent_improvement_needed`, `awaiting_inspection`, `exempt` |
| `ratingDate`, `daysSinceRating` | When it was last inspected, and how long ago |
| `hygieneScore`, `structuralScore`, `managementScore` | The three component scores where published |
| `isNewlyRegistered` | **true** if awaiting first inspection |
| `needsHelp` | **true** if scoring 2 or below |
| `latitude`, `longitude` | Present on about 80% |
| `councilEmail`, `councilWebsite` | The inspecting authority's own contact |
| `sourceUrl` | The public FSA page for that business |
| `source`, `licence`, `scrapedAt` | Provenance on every record |

**Be aware: the FSA does not publish business phone numbers or emails.** What you get is the trigger, the trading name and the exact address. Most buyers match that against their own data, or work it as a territory list. If you need phone and email on every row, this is the wrong dataset and I would rather you knew now.

***

### Coverage

| Region | Establishments |
|---|---:|
| London | 81,519 |
| South East | 79,389 |
| North West | 65,626 |
| Scotland | 59,052 |
| South West | 54,454 |
| East Counties | 54,027 |
| Yorkshire and Humberside | 50,627 |
| West Midlands | 50,235 |
| East Midlands | 43,939 |
| Wales | 34,257 |
| North East | 23,019 |
| Northern Ireland | 16,948 |
| **Total** | **613,092** |

***

### Example inputs

**This month's failures in London — the urgent list**

```json
{
  "regions": ["London"],
  "onlyNeedingHelp": true,
  "ratedWithinDays": 30
}
```

**Restaurants and takeaways opening right now across the South East**

```json
{
  "regions": ["South East"],
  "onlyNewlyRegistered": true,
  "businessTypes": ["Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen", "Takeaway/sandwich shop"]
}
```

**Everything in your patch, for territory planning**

```json
{
  "localAuthorities": ["cambridge", "peterborough"],
  "onlyWithCoordinates": true
}
```

***

### Example output

```json
{
  "fhrsId": 1881081,
  "name": "Bodhi's Coffeeshop",
  "businessType": "Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen",
  "address": "2 The Green, Southwick, West Sussex",
  "postcode": "BN42 4DA",
  "localAuthority": "Adur",
  "region": "South East",
  "rating": "2",
  "ratingScore": 2,
  "ratingBand": "improvement_needed",
  "ratingDate": "2025-09-02",
  "daysSinceRating": 373,
  "isNewlyRegistered": false,
  "needsHelp": true,
  "latitude": 50.8317031860352,
  "longitude": -0.276165992021561,
  "councilEmail": "environmentalhealth@adur-worthing.gov.uk",
  "sourceUrl": "https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1881081",
  "source": "Food Standards Agency (FHRS)",
  "licence": "UK Open Government Licence v3.0"
}
```

***

### Who buys this

- **Food-safety consultants and EHO trainers** — the failure list is their entire pipeline.
- **Commercial cleaning and pest control** — same trigger, same urgency.
- **EPOS, booking, and delivery platforms** — new openings, before the competition arrives.
- **Food and drink wholesalers** — a new kitchen picks its suppliers once.
- **Web designers and local marketing agencies** — a new restaurant needs a site in week one.
- **Insurance brokers and accountants** — new business registrations.

***

### Pricing

Pay per delivered record. **Filtered-out businesses cost you nothing** — you are charged only for the leads that reach your dataset. A month's failures in one region is a few hundred records; the whole UK is 613,000, so use `maxResults` unless you mean it.

***

### Reliability

- Each of the 363 councils is fetched independently. If one is unavailable the sweep continues and the failure is recorded in the `RUN_SUMMARY` key-value record.
- Requests retry three times with backoff before an authority is given up on.
- Coordinates are parsed and bounds-checked rather than passed through, because the API returns them as strings and nulls.

***

### Data source and licence

All data comes from the Food Standards Agency's public FHRS API, published under the **UK Open Government Licence v3.0**, which permits commercial use with attribution. Every record carries its `source`, `sourceUrl` and `licence`.

**What you pay for is the nationwide sweep, the trigger detection, the two-scheme normalisation and the maintenance — not the data itself**, which is public. Assembling it across 363 councils is the product.

This Actor contains only **business** data: registered food premises and their public inspection results. No personal data.

# Actor input Schema

## `onlyNewlyRegistered` (type: `boolean`):

The highest-intent filter. A business awaiting its first hygiene inspection has just registered: it is opening, and it is buying everything at once.

## `onlyNeedingHelp` (type: `boolean`):

A business rated 0, 1 or 2 has an urgent, public, time-limited problem. Works for both the English 0-5 scale and the Scottish pass/fail scheme.

## `ratedWithinDays` (type: `integer`):

Only businesses inspected recently. Combine with the rating filter to get this month's failures rather than every failure ever. 0 means no date limit.

## `regions` (type: `array`):

Filter by FSA region. Leave empty for the whole UK.

## `localAuthorities` (type: `array`):

Filter by council name, case-insensitive and partial. Typing "cambridge" matches Cambridge City, East Cambridgeshire and South Cambridgeshire.

## `businessTypes` (type: `array`):

Filter by the FSA's own business type. Leave empty for all of them.

## `maxRatingScore` (type: `integer`):

Finer than the failure switch. 3 gives you everything below a good rating. Leave at -1 to ignore.

## `onlyWithCoordinates` (type: `boolean`):

About 80% carry latitude and longitude. Turn this on if you are plotting them or assigning territories.

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

Stop after this many records. Leave at 0 for no limit. The whole UK is over 613,000 establishments, so set this unless you mean it.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "onlyNewlyRegistered": false,
  "onlyNeedingHelp": false,
  "ratedWithinDays": 0,
  "regions": [],
  "localAuthorities": [],
  "businessTypes": [],
  "maxRatingScore": -1,
  "onlyWithCoordinates": false,
  "maxResults": 0
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Food businesses from the FSA hygiene register with rating, scheme, local authority, region and the newly-registered and needs-help flags.

## `runSummary` (type: `string`):

What the run actually did: sources swept, records delivered, records charged for, and any failures. Read this to see what a run cost before trusting its numbers.

# 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("wellbuilt_zythem/uk-food-business-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("wellbuilt_zythem/uk-food-business-leads").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).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 wellbuilt_zythem/uk-food-business-leads --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,wellbuilt_zythem/uk-food-business-leads"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/4tbfE398CXkDbj4Fp/builds/sWca6i0fdoSTGcMD7/openapi.json