Guide
How to find restaurant owners in the UK
If you sell POS, payments, delivery tech or supplies into hospitality, the person you need is the owner, and the venue phone number rarely reaches them. The good news is that the UK publishes more about who owns a restaurant than almost any other country. This guide walks through the public routes anyone can use, what each one gives you and where the do it yourself approach stops making sense.
Do it yourself
Five public routes to a restaurant owner
Everything below is public and free. Used together, the registers usually get you from a shopfront to a named owner.
Companies House
Most UK restaurants trade through a limited company, and every limited company sits on the Companies House register. Searching it is free at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Look up the restaurant name and check the officers list for directors and the PSC list for people with significant control. The PSC list is often the fastest route to the real owner because it names whoever holds more than 25 percent of the business.
The catch is that the name over the door is a trading name, not the registered company name. The Golden Fork on the high street might be registered as GF Hospitality Ltd at an accountant's office two towns away. Search by the venue's postcode as well as its name, and treat the registered office address with caution because it is frequently a service address rather than the restaurant itself.
The food hygiene register
Every food business in the UK has to register with its local authority before opening, and inspection results are published. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland the register sits at ratings.food.gov.uk. Scotland runs its own Food Hygiene Information Scheme at fss.scot.
The register will not give you an owner's name, but it gives you two things Companies House cannot: the operating business name behind a venue and confirmation the site is actively trading. It is the bridge between a shopfront and a registered entity, and it is searchable by postcode, so you can also map every food business in a territory.
Premises licence registers
If the restaurant sells alcohol in England or Wales it holds a premises licence, and councils are required to keep a public licensing register. The licence names the premises licence holder and the designated premises supervisor. For an independent restaurant the licence holder is very often the owner or a company the owner controls.
Each council publishes its register differently. Some have a searchable online portal, others publish PDFs and a few require you to ask. Search for the council name plus licensing register to find the right one.
The venue itself
The simplest route is often overlooked. Independent restaurant websites frequently name the founder on an about page, and the domain registration or the site footer sometimes names the operating company. Instagram tends to be more active than LinkedIn for hospitality, and the founder often runs the account personally.
If you are working a local patch, visiting between service peaks works better than any register. Mid afternoon on a weekday is when an owner is most likely to be in the building and least likely to be slammed.
LinkedIn and local press
Search the venue name on LinkedIn with titles like owner, founder or director. Coverage is patchy because many independent restaurateurs simply are not on LinkedIn, but when they are you get a name, a face and often a warm route in.
Local news is stronger than people expect. Openings, refits and awards almost always name the founder, and hospitality trade press covers multi site groups closely. A search for the venue name plus the town usually surfaces something.
Worth knowing
Not every restaurant is a limited company
Sole traders and partnerships do not appear on Companies House at all. For those venues the hygiene register, the premises licence and the venue itself are your only public routes, which is exactly why they are worth learning even when Companies House draws a blank.
The honest trade off
Where doing it yourself stops working
For a handful of dream accounts, the manual route is genuinely the right answer. It breaks down when identifying owners becomes a pipeline problem rather than a research problem.
It does not scale
Researching one venue properly takes real time. Doing it for a whole city, then keeping it current as sites open and close, is a full time job on its own.
Registers give names, not numbers
None of the public registers publish a phone number that reaches the owner. You still end up calling the venue line during service and pitching whoever picks up.
The compliance work is on you
If you plan to call the numbers you find, PECR still applies. You need to screen against the TPS and CTPS registers before dialling and keep screening as your list ages. Skipping that step is how B2B callers end up with ICO complaints.
The alternative
When a data provider makes sense
The switch point is usually territory. When your team works whole cities rather than a shortlist of venues, buying records that already carry the owner detail beats a spreadsheet of half finished research. What matters then is what a provider actually stands behind on each record.
Peach Data operates across the UK, Europe and Australia, proven deepest in the UK, and supplies verified UK restaurant records with a named owner or operator where we can identify one and a direct dial where it can be verified, screened against the TPS and CTPS registers before delivery and refreshed on a rolling cycle so closures drop out and new openings land. Records are delivered through a portal, as CSV export or over an API, and lawfully supplied under UK GDPR.
If you want to see how that compares with your own research, the fair test is a sample of records from your patch. Our methodology page sets out the standard every record is held to, and the restaurant dataset page shows what ships on a record.
Guide FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out who owns a restaurant in the UK?
Start with Companies House, which lists directors and people with significant control for every UK limited company, free of charge. Match the venue to its registered company using the food hygiene register at ratings.food.gov.uk, check the council's premises licence register if the venue sells alcohol and look at the restaurant's own website, Instagram and local press coverage. Used together these public sources usually surface the owner's name.
Is Companies House free to search?
Yes. The Companies House register at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk is free and public. You can view a company's officers, its people with significant control, filing history and registered office without an account.
How do I find the owner of a restaurant that is not a limited company?
Sole traders and partnerships do not appear on Companies House. For those venues use the food hygiene register to confirm the operating business name and check the council's premises licence register, which names the licence holder and designated premises supervisor for venues selling alcohol in England and Wales. Also look at the venue's own website and social profiles.
Why is the name above the door different from the company name?
The name above the door is a trading name. The registered company name is the legal entity behind it, and the two often differ completely. The food hygiene register and the venue's website footer are the quickest ways to bridge a trading name to the registered entity, which you can then look up on Companies House.
Can I legally cold call UK restaurants?
B2B cold calling is lawful in the UK, but PECR requires you not to call numbers registered on the TPS or CTPS suppression registers, and sole traders and partnerships can register on the TPS. That means screening every number before you dial and screening again as your list ages. The ICO can fine businesses that call registered numbers, so screening is not optional.
How do I get a restaurant owner's phone number?
Public registers publish names, not direct phone numbers, so the manual route usually ends at the venue's public line. Data providers can attach a direct dial where they have verified one. Peach Data attaches a direct dial where verified rather than on every record, and every number is screened against TPS and CTPS before delivery.
When should I buy restaurant data instead of researching it myself?
Manual research suits a short list of high value accounts. Once your team works whole cities or regions, the time cost of identifying owners venue by venue and keeping the list current usually outweighs the cost of buying verified records. If you go that route, test any provider on your own territory before committing.
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