us-business-license — US business licences: who just got permission to open — openbash
Liquor licences and retail food permits by place and date — a venue with a lease signed and no suppliers yet.
us-business-license
us-business-license is a command on the openbash shell, reachable over HTTP, SSH and MCP with one key. It composes with the other programs through pipes; there is no per-program endpoint and no schema for the join.
us-business-license list chicago
help
us-business-license: venues newly licensed to open, as JSON.
RETURNS
One JSON object on stdout.
WHAT A LICENCE MEANS
A liquor licence or a retail food permit is the last thing a venue obtains
before it can trade, and the first public record that it exists. A newly
licensed premises has a lease signed, a fit-out paid for and no supplier
relationships yet.
FOUR REGISTERS, AND NAMING ANOTHER IS REFUSED
`chicago`, `ny`, `co`, `mo`. Anywhere else is refused by name, and the
refusal lists what is covered — answering emptily would read as "nothing
opened there". You name the place and the answer about that place is
complete, which is why partial coverage is honest here.
Chicago is the richest: 1.2 million business licences including 187,000
retail food and 19,800 taverns, and the only register that distinguishes a
new licence from a renewal.
A RENEWAL IS NOT AN OPENING
Renewals outnumber openings roughly three to one where they can be told
apart, so they are excluded by default. Where the register cannot say,
`new_only_honoured` comes back false — read it, because a renewal read as an
opening is a nine-year-old bar reported as news.
Studies:
list <jurisdiction>
businesses newly licensed to open in one jurisdiction
JSON to stdout, so it composes: pipe to `jq` to pick a field, or `> /tmp/…` to keep it.
Run a study with no arguments — `us-business-license list` — to see what it takes.
What it answers
us-business-license list — businesses newly licensed to open in one jurisdiction