Methodology

How FirstVendor identifies businesses entering a buying window, and what it deliberately does not claim.

Where the data comes from

The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control publishes a daily export of every licence and application in the state, plus dated daily reports of new applications, issued licences and status changes. FirstVendor captures all of it each business day and keeps the raw file, so any figure here can be traced to the record it came from.

What counts as an opportunity

A business appears here when it holds an application that is pending — filed, not yet issued. Applications attached to already-operating premises are excluded; treating them as openings would overstate the count roughly threefold. A record with no premises address is stored but never shown, because a business we cannot locate is not something we can responsibly publish.

Filing dates

ABC's bulk export leaves the application date blank on every pending record. FirstVendor recovers it from the dated daily reports, which covers about four in five. Where it cannot be recovered, the page says the date is not published. It is never estimated.

FirstScore

A 0–100 score from how recently the application was filed, what the licence type implies about the buildout, and how many licence records support it. Two components are capped on purpose: corroboration, because several records from one agency are not independent confirmation, and timing, which stays at zero until enough openings have been observed to say anything honest about it. The ceiling rises as that evidence accumulates.

Facts and predictions

Anything labelled FACT is traceable to a public record. Anything labelled PREDICTED or ESTIMATED is an inference from venue type and is not an observed purchase. The two are never blended.

Privacy

FirstVendor publishes business names, business addresses and licence records. It does not publish licensees' personal names or mailing addresses, which are frequently residential. Where a business has no trade name, the listing is described by address rather than named after the individual who applied.

Corrections

If a record is wrong or should not be displayed, tell us and we will correct or suppress it.