About
About this site
Cleveland Foodservice Guide is a free resource for people who run kitchens in Northeast Ohio — restaurants, bars, food trucks, caterers, church halls, school cafeterias, and the people trying to become one of those things.
Why it exists
Greater Cleveland is well covered on the consumer side. If you want to know where to eat, or which restaurant just opened downtown, several outlets do that well.
The operator side is empty. If you want to know which agency licenses your address, what plan review costs, how risk levels are assigned, or which hood cleaner will actually show up — you are calling around, asking in Facebook groups, and piecing it together. The information exists, scattered across agency PDFs and phone trees. Nobody had assembled it in one place and written it in plain English.
That is the entire premise of this site.
Who publishes it, and the obvious problem with that
Published by Dean Supply — supplying Cleveland kitchens since 1950. Dean Supply owns this site, pays for it, and is a restaurant supply company that sells many of the things written about here.
That is a real conflict of interest, and we are not going to dress it up as a “sponsorship.” You should read this site knowing exactly who is behind it, which is why it says so at the top of every page rather than only down here.
What makes a resource like this worth trusting is not a claim of independence. It is whether the rules it operates under are specific enough that you can catch it breaking them. So here they are.
The rules, and how to check them
- Directory listings are free and always alphabetical. Position is not for sale, to anyone. Open any category page and check the order yourself.
- Dean's competitors are listed on identical terms. Restaurant Depot, TriMark, Dubick, A1, Buy3Get1, and CrazyGoodBuy all sell against Dean and all appear in this directory. If a competitor serves operators here and is missing, tell us and we will add them.
- Dean's listing is written to the same standard as every other — what they do, who it suits, and the practical caveats — and is labeled as the publisher wherever it appears.
- Nothing here is written to move product. Guides answer regulatory questions and link to agencies, not to a shopping cart. If a page ever reads like a sales pitch, that is a bug — tell us.
- No paid placement, no affiliate links, no referral fees from any listed vendor, including Dean.
Where a conflict would be unmanageable, we do not play. We will not rank or rate suppliers in Dean's own categories, and we will not publish “best of” lists that Dean could win.
How we work
- Everything regulatory is sourced and dated. Each guide lists the agency documents it draws on and the date we last opened them. Rules change; a guide that does not say when it was last checked is not worth trusting.
- We do not publish numbers we cannot verify. Where a fee schedule was not available to us, we say so and point you at the phone number, rather than printing a plausible guess.
- Listings are verified before publication. We would rather show an empty category than a business that closed last year.
- No paid placement, no affiliate links, no referral fees from listed vendors.
Who is responsible for this
Dean Supply publishes this site and is accountable for it — what goes up, what gets corrected, and what comes down. There is no separate editorial company, no agency, and no third party to point at. The same business that sells restaurant supplies in Cleveland is the one answering for every page here.
We say that plainly because the alternative is worse. A policy promising fast, visible corrections is worth nothing if “we” is a masthead rather than someone who reads the mail. Corrections sent to corrections@clevelandfoodservice.com are read by the people who publish this, and we aim to answer within two business days — a commitment you can hold us to, and one you should tell us about if we miss.
Business owners who believe a directory listing or a tracker entry is wrong about their own business go to the front of the queue, ahead of everything else.
What we are not
We are not a law firm, a consultancy, or a government agency. Guides here summarize public requirements so you know what to ask and what to budget. They are not legal advice, and they do not replace a conversation with your health district. Every guide names the agency you should confirm with.
Contact
- General: hello@clevelandfoodservice.com
- Corrections: corrections@clevelandfoodservice.com
- Directory listings: listings@clevelandfoodservice.com
- Openings and closings tips: tips@clevelandfoodservice.com
See also our editorial policy and how directory listings work.