Week-one Philly food licenses: a hood-cleaning crew's route

Ray runs a two-truck kitchen-exhaust cleaning crew out of Port Richmond, degreasing hoods, filters and ductwork for restaurants and takeout counters across Philadelphia. His best accounts are kitchens that just got their food license, because a new owner is setting up vendors for the first time and hasn't signed a hood-cleaning contract yet.

He used to find them by driving past paper signs in windows, and by then a competitor had usually left a card. A new City of Philadelphia food license is the earlier signal: the city publishes it with the business name, street address, ZIP, council district, license type and issue date.

What changed

He bought PhilaLead for $19. After Stripe checkout, the CSVs were emailed directly from Armorlight: 7-day and 30-day files of newly issued Philadelphia business licenses, plus a ready-made food file. Ray only needed the license type column to separate full kitchens from everything else.

That week

• Mon: opened the 7-day file: 129 new licenses issued Oct 5 to Oct 7, most of them rental licenses he doesn't need. Filtering license_type to food left 32 rows, and the 14 "Food Preparing and Serving" licenses (6 of them for 30+ seats) were the ones with real cook lines and hoods.
• Tue: sorted those by ZIP. 19143 in Southwest Philly had 3 new food licenses that week, and 19137, 19127, 19104 and 19148 had 2 each. 19137 is his own Bridesburg and Port Richmond backyard, so those went on Wednesday morning's route.
• Wed: stopped by before lunch service with a one-page quote: first cleaning at a new-account price and a quarterly schedule that keeps the fire inspector happy. He skipped the 8 annual mobile-vendor licenses, since food trucks rarely have a hood he can service.
• Thu: opened the 30-day food file for the bigger picture: 131 food licenses with first issue dates from Sep 14 to Oct 6, including 45 "Food Preparing and Serving", 20 more for 30+ seats and 9 caterers. The 65 sit-down kitchens were spread thin, with 19120 leading at 4 and 19147, 19143, 19146, 19135, 19106, 19130 and 19125 at 3 each, so he grouped them into two weekly loops instead of cold-calling every restaurant in the city.

The file became his Monday planning sheet: each new kitchen license is a reason to be at that door this week, before the owner picks a vendor.

Illustrative scenario: Ray is a composite operator, not a named customer. The license counts, types, ZIPs and dates come from real PhilaLead 7-day and 30-day files from the latest weekly refresh.

Armorlight Enterprises, LLC is not affiliated with the City of Philadelphia.