Commercial cleaning leads: find businesses that just opened
Auspector ·
In the 30 days to October 27, 2026, 26,294 records in eleven sectors that run premises of their own — restaurants, cafés, bars, bakeries, grocery stores, hair and beauty salons, dental practices, pharmacies, gyms, clothing stores and car dealers — entered our newly opened businesses section in the United States, and 5,993 in the United Kingdom. A cleaning company’s prospect list is a daily one: those sectors, your service area, the last 30 days, sorted into a route.
Why a business that just opened is a cleaning lead
A business that has just moved into its premises has no cleaning contract yet, so there is no incumbent to replace. Two jobs come up around the opening. First the clean after the fit-out (the build-out, in American terms): dust, adhesive and packaging left behind by the shopfitters, before the first customer walks in. Then the routine once the doors are open: floors, washrooms, glass, kitchens. At some point in the first weeks the owner decides who does that routine — the team at closing time, or a contractor. Until that is settled, your offer competes with a mop, not with another company.
Records are dated by the day they reached us, not by an opening date. Some businesses on the list are still fitting out, others opened a few weeks ago; the first conversation tells you which of the two jobs is still open.
Which new businesses?
Offices are not one of the sectors we break down, so there is no office figure in this post; office-type categories can still be searched one by one. What we do break down are sectors where customers come through the door every day. Eleven of them:
| Sector | New, US | New, UK |
|---|---|---|
| Hair and beauty salons | 6,247 | 2,218 |
| Restaurants | 6,101 | 997 |
| Dentists and dental clinics | 3,738 | 73 |
| Bakeries and pastry shops | 2,154 | 369 |
| Cafés | 1,863 | 672 |
| Supermarkets and grocery stores | 1,530 | 385 |
| Clothing stores | 1,488 | 201 |
| Bars and pubs | 1,003 | 304 |
| Car dealers | 991 | 351 |
| Gyms and fitness studios | 949 | 338 |
| Pharmacies | 230 | 85 |
In the United States the largest groups are hair and beauty salons (6,247) and restaurants (6,101); in the United Kingdom, hair and beauty salons (2,218) and restaurants (997). Of all new US records in the period, 73.7% carry a phone number; of all new UK records, 74.9%.
What each sector needs cleaned
- Restaurants, cafés and bars: kitchen and front of house, floors and washrooms, after closing time. Kitchen extract cleaning is a specialist trade of its own; offer it only if you do it.
- Bakeries and grocery stores: early starts, flour and food areas, chilled aisles and a busy entrance.
- Hair and beauty salons: hair on the floor all day, basins and workstations — small premises, frequent visits.
- Dental practices: treatment rooms follow the practice’s own hygiene protocol. Ask for it, show how your team works to it, and price clinical rooms separately from reception and corridors.
- Gyms: changing rooms, showers and equipment, with long opening hours that can mean two visits a day.
- Pharmacies, clothing stores and car dealers: shop floors, fitting rooms, glass, and showrooms that are on display all day.
Construction companies are a different list: what they buy is the builders’ clean at handover, project by project. How many arrive each month is in new construction companies.
Where are they? Four cities in each market
| City | New records, 11 sectors | Largest groups |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 501 | Restaurants 160 · Salons 110 · Dental practices 56 |
| Los Angeles | 334 | Dental practices 95 · Restaurants 74 · Salons 54 |
| Houston | 298 | Dental practices 98 · Restaurants 67 · Salons 62 |
| Chicago | 217 | Dental practices 80 · Restaurants 46 · Salons 36 |
| City | New records, 11 sectors | Largest groups |
|---|---|---|
| London | 517 | Restaurants 159 · Salons 104 · Cafés 53 |
| Manchester | 76 | Restaurants 23 · Salons 14 · Bars and pubs 10 |
| Birmingham | 67 | Salons 23 · Restaurants 12 · Bars and pubs 7 |
| Glasgow | 53 | Restaurants 13 · Salons 13 · Grocery stores 6 |
Of the four US cities, New York had the most new records in these sectors (501) and Chicago the fewest (217). In all four, dental practices are among the three largest groups — worth having a clinical cleaning offer ready. In the United Kingdom, London leads (517) with more than six times as many as Manchester. Every sector, region by region, is on the pages for New York, California, Greater London and Greater Manchester.
Building the list
- Category: one at a time. Each record keeps its own category and categories are not merged, so “dental clinic”, “gym” or “bakery” can each be a list of its own.
- Area: the districts your crews can reach between jobs. Records carry coordinates, so the list can be grouped into a route instead of crossing the city.
- Time: arrived in the last 30 days, this week’s first.
- Opening hours, where published: they give you the cleaning window. A café open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. is cleaned before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m.
- Channel: phone number on record for a call, address for a visit.
- Clean-up: remove duplicates by phone number. The same name on many records is likely a chain whose cleaning is bought at head office — a separate list, if you serve chains at all.
- Watch: save the search; new matches arrive by email every day.
The same workflow for any seller is in building a lead list from new businesses.
The first contact: a walk-through, not a brochure
A cleaning price comes from the premises — floor area, floor types, washrooms, opening hours — so the useful first step is a ten-minute walk-through and a written quote the next day. Give the owner something small to say yes to: the post-fit-out clean before opening, or a fixed trial period at the routine price.
On the phone or at the door: “I saw you’ve just opened on [street] — congratulations. Who’s looking after the cleaning at the moment? I can walk through in ten minutes and send you a weekly price tomorrow.” The answer — the staff, a friend, a contractor, nobody yet — decides the next step. The full script, with objections, is in our cold call script for new businesses; the timing question is covered in when to contact a new business.
Visit outside their trading peaks: a restaurant at lunchtime or a salon on a Saturday morning has no time for you. Rules for unsolicited calls and messages differ sharply between countries, and the obligation sits with you as the sender; check your own jurisdiction before you start (FAQ).
Measuring it
Keep the counts per sector, month by month: records opened, conversations, walk-throughs, quotes sent, contracts signed. After two or three months your own figures show which sectors are worth a crew’s time in your area — an average from somewhere else cannot tell you that.
Searching and counting are free on every plan, so you can see how many new bakeries or gyms arrived in your area this month before spending anything. A credit is used only when you first open a record, and an export counts as an open; one credit opens one newly opened business or 5 established ones (pricing). The established businesses are the list for a different campaign: taking over from an existing contractor. Exports are CSV or XLSX with a stable ID per record. A record holds name, category, address, city, district, phone, web address, coordinates and, where published, opening hours; there is no email column and no contact name.