How to find new businesses opening (7 public sources)

New businesses leave a public paper trail before they open: formation filings, permits, licenses, inspections, and liquor applications. All of it is public. The hard part isn't finding the records — it's knowing which signal means "opening soon" and stitching the separate ones together. Here are the seven sources, earliest to latest.

1. Secretary of State business formations

The earliest signal, and the noisiest. A new LLC means someone intends something. Useful as a starting point, useless on its own — most formations never become a storefront, and many are holding companies or side projects.

2. Liquor-license applications

One of the best early signals for food and beverage. Applications are filed roughly 90 days before opening, they're public and dated, and they carry the applicant's name and address. If a place is applying for a liquor license, it's serious and it's coming.

3. Building permits

A building permit means a real buildout with money behind it. The estimated project cost doubles as a size signal — a $40,000 permit and a $900,000 permit are very different prospects.

4. Trade and hood permits

Electrical, mechanical, and kitchen-hood permits mean the buildout is underway, not just planned. For anyone selling to restaurants, the hood permit is the clearest "this is really happening" signal short of the open date itself.

5. "Now hiring for a new location" posts

Job posts for an unopened location put the open date four to eight weeks out. They often name the concept and sometimes the owner. Independents who skip the big job boards still post locally.

6. Business license with an open date

The official "we're operating" record, often carrying a start date and the owner's phone. Late in the timeline, but it confirms the others were real.

7. Health and food inspections

The last signal before opening. A scheduled pre-opening inspection is about as close to the doors opening as a public record gets — valuable to confirm, but if it's your first signal, you're late.

One source is never enough

A registration is not a customer. Any single signal is mostly noise — formations fall through, permits stall, applications get withdrawn. The fix is two-signal confirmation: when two independent records line up at the same address — say a liquor application and a buildout permit — you have a real opening, not a rumor.

The honest part: done by hand across a whole metro, this is a real job — roughly 5 to 10 hours a week of pulling records, matching addresses, and chasing contacts. And the early permit signals, the most valuable ones, are the easiest to miss because they're buried in separate city portals.

Common questions

Where can I look up new LLCs in Washington? Through the Secretary of State's business search, which is free and public. It's a good starting point, but a new filing alone rarely means a business is actually about to open.

How early can you tell a business is opening? The earliest reliable signals — liquor applications and building permits — appear roughly 90 days out. Formation filings come earlier but are far less reliable on their own.

Is this data free? Yes. All seven sources are public records. The cost isn't access — it's the time to pull, match, and verify them across separate systems.

The takeaway

The records are all public and all free. What costs you is the assembly: pulling seven scattered sources, matching them by address, and confirming the early signals before they go cold. Read in order and confirmed in pairs, those filings stop being paperwork and start being a dated, qualified list of who's about to open near you.