Seattle restaurant openings — week of July 2, 2026

Restaurants leave a public trail months before they open: a formation, a build-out permit, a business license, a liquor application. We read that trail across Seattle and count the opening signals: dated public filings that say a food business is on its way. Treat a signal as early evidence, not a finished story. Some filings stall, and one on its own means less than two that line up at the same address.

As of July 2, 2026, Seattle has produced 58 opening signals in the last 30 days, and 105 over the last 90 days. Here is the mix, and who each opening is a lead for.

The concept mix

What is opening, by concept, over the last 90 days in Seattle:

26 — Full-service restaurant in the last 90 days
26 — Mobile food vendor in the last 90 days
14 — Café / coffee shop in the last 90 days
14 — Limited-service restaurant in the last 90 days
2 — Bar / tavern in the last 90 days
2 — Grocery / market in the last 90 days

Source: MorningSheet, fused from King County public records · Seattle · 90-day window · as of July 2, 2026. Counts are estimates from public filings and lag real life by days to weeks.

The openings below are representative: anonymized composites by concept and month, drawn from the kinds of Seattle filings we surface. Every real lead we deliver is traced to a named public filing you can verify yourself.

Representative openings

Bar / Tavern · Seattle · signal dated June 2026

liquor liability and general-liability coverage become a dated requirement before the license issues, an opening for a commercial-insurance producer.
Café / Coffee Shop · Seattle · signal dated June 2026

a first business bank account and card processing get set up early, with no incumbent yet, an opening for banking and merchant services.
Limited-Service Restaurant · Seattle · signal dated June 2026

the card processor has to be live for the soft open, so payments and POS are the first vendor decision.
Mobile Food Vendor · Seattle · signal dated May 2026

a proven operator scaling up, so payments and (once they hire) payroll come into play.
Grocery / Market · Seattle · signal dated May 2026

higher transaction volume from day one puts POS and payments in play early.

What the mix means for you

One edition, several readers. Each concept above opens a different buying window, for a different rep, at a moment you can only catch by reading the record early.

If you sell payments or POS: the processor has to be live for the soft open, and installation plus menu programming take weeks. Full-service and quick-service openings are your volume.
If you sell commercial insurance: Washington generally requires liquor liability and general-liability coverage before a liquor license issues, so every bar or tavern signal is a dated deadline the owner already knows about.
If you sell business banking or bookkeeping: a new entity needs an account before it can take a dollar, and there is no incumbent yet. The café and bakery signals are the earliest, cleanest version of this.
If you sell payroll: the moment a truck graduates to a storefront or a first location staffs up, payroll and workers' comp become newly required.

How we count

We fuse Washington public records into one record per business: Secretary of State formations, King County and city building and trade permits, business-license registrations, WSLCB liquor applications, and health filings. A signal counts as an opening when two independent public filings line up at one address; a registration alone doesn't. Counts are estimates, rounded honestly, and described as business-entity records from open data, never lists of individuals.