Where the data comes from
Every record originates with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Division of Hotels and Restaurants, from public extracts the department publishes.
| Layer | Source | What it supplies |
|---|---|---|
| Records | DBPR inspection extracts | Which business has a documented, dated, coded citation. Seven district files each for food service and lodging, covering all 67 counties, refreshed weekly. |
| Records | DBPR emergency closure extract | Weekly statewide closures with a dated closure condition per row. |
| Identity | Public business sources | Business phone, email, website, license number and named decision maker. State-published business records and public business listings only — never a residential address, personal mobile or personal email account. |
FlowLeads is an independent business. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of DBPR or any government agency, and neither is your company. Do not suggest otherwise on a call. This appears on every sheet we send.
The legal basis for using it
Florida Statute 119.07(1)(a) requires that public records be open for inspection and copying by any person desiring to do so, and no statement of purpose is required. Florida's open-government guidance is explicit that commercial interest does not give a custodian discretion to deny inspection, and that the requester's intended use is irrelevant.
What a citation does and does not mean
This is the single most important thing to understand before you call anyone on the list.
Take the pest category as the worked example. For food service establishments it reads, in full:
One number covers all of it. A citation tells you the category was cited. It does not tell you whether an inspector found insects, rodents, a live animal on the patio, or a gap under a back door. In the published data those are indistinguishable, and the detail that would separate them is not published in bulk at any price.
Treat a row as a reason to ask, not a finding to assert.
The same limit applies to every trade, because the state publishes category-level counts and nothing beneath them. A refrigeration row tells you the temperature-control category was cited, not which unit failed. A plumbing row tells you the water or waste category was cited, not what was wrong with the line. What we cover for each trade is set out here.
A second limit belongs beside it: an inspection record describes one day. Conditions change, and the business may already have fixed the problem — possibly before the list reached you. Open the record on the state's site before you rely on any row. The identifier on the row is there for exactly that.
How a record may be described
Every fact on a row belongs to a level, and statements may never cross levels. The state records a disposition for a visit as a whole, and nothing in the published data links that disposition to the violation that caused it.
| Level | What it licenses you to say |
|---|---|
| Category | "Cited under [the state's category] on [date]" |
| Visit | "This inspection resulted in [disposition] on [date]" |
| Sequence | "A follow-up visit on [date] recorded [disposition]" |
| Establishment | "This is the business at that address" |
Never say
- "Warned for pests", "closed for pests", or "cited and warned for a rodent problem"
- "A high priority pest violation"
- "Failed inspection for pests" — or for temperature, or for plumbing
- Anything asserting the specific finding inside a category the state publishes as one number
Say instead
This rule governs the sheet, the delivery email, and everything we say on a sales call. It is also the reason every band header on the sheet quotes the state rather than summarizing it.
How the list is ordered
Rows are grouped and ordered by the inspection disposition the state recorded, by how many separate times the state has cited the establishment, and by how complete our contact research is. That order is built only from DBPR's own published fields and from our own records.
FlowLeads does not score, rate or rank these businesses. The order is not a severity rating, not a measure of how bad the underlying problem is, and not a prediction that any business will buy. Nothing on the sheet is FlowLeads' opinion about any business.
A likelihood-ordered sheet is only safe while it says in writing what the ordering is and is not, so a sheet missing that disclosure does not go out. With it in place, the answer to "why was I near the top of your list" is a dated sentence the state wrote.
Contact information
- Public business sources only. State-published business records and public business listings. Nothing bought, scraped from private sources, or inferred.
- Business locations only. Every address on the sheet is a business location taken from the licensing or inspection record. Officer, registered-agent, mailing and principal addresses are on an explicit denylist and cannot enter the record at all.
- No residential addresses, no personal mobile numbers, no personal email accounts. The enrichment step is structurally incapable of writing one, not merely instructed not to.
- Exact matching only. A record is attached to a business on an exact license-number key, or on exact agreement of normalized business name and address. There is no similarity score and no confidence threshold anywhere in the join.
If a row is wrong, tell us
Records come from a third-party government source and can be inaccurate or out of date, and our matching of a record to a business can be wrong.
If a business disputes a row, or you believe a record has been attached to the wrong business, email stanley@flowleadsco.com. We will pull the row and correct the source of the error. Stop using the row in the meantime.
Your outreach is yours
The businesses on your list have not been contacted by us and are not expecting to hear from anyone. This is cold outreach, and the legal obligations attached to it sit with you.
- Email is subject to CAN-SPAM.
- Calls and texts are subject to the federal TCPA and to the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act, Fla. Stat. 501.059, which carries statutory damages and a private right of action.
- Autodialers, prerecorded messages and text campaigns raise the exposure sharply. Get your own advice before running any of them.
FlowLeads provides information and does not conduct outreach. We do not email, call or text the businesses on your list; we do not book, confirm or attend anything; we do not represent you to any prospect; and we do not verify whether you acted on a row. The software that sends your spreadsheet refuses any address that is not your delivery contact, so a business email resolved during a run is unreachable by it.
License and use
Your list is licensed for your own use in your service area. It is not transferable, and it may not be resold or passed on. Lists are non-exclusive. Volume is best-efforts with no minimum and varies with what the state publishes.