New restaurants as leads
In the last 90 days, 499 new restaurants, bars, caterers and canteens were registered in the Norwegian business register (Enhetsregisteret), in 127 municipalities; 9 of them have already had their first smiley inspection (Brønnøysund Register Centre and Mattilsynet, data as of 8 Oct 2026). A new restaurant buys everything at once – refrigeration, cleaning, internal control, labelling – and picks its suppliers in the first few months. This guide explains what the registration means, what Mattilsynet does with new places, and how to use the list.
What a registration in Enhetsregisteret means
Everyone doing business in Norway is registered with the Brønnøysund Register Centre. The company – a limited company (AS), a sole proprietorship (ENK) or another form – is the main entity with an organisation number. Every physical place where the business operates is a sub-unit with its own organisation number and an industry code. Restaurants have industry code 56: 56.11 restaurants and cafés, 56.12 mobile food service (street kitchens, food trucks), 56.21–56.29 catering and canteens, and 56.30 bars and pubs.
Every morning Restoradar fetches the sub-units with industry code 56 registered in the last 90 days and links them to their main entity. The registration date says when the sub-unit was created; the start date (when given) says when operations began. Note:
- Registered is not always open. Many register the sub-unit weeks before opening, while the premises are being fitted out. That is exactly when the purchases are made.
- A new registration can be a change of owner. A place that changes hands often gets a new sub-unit at the old address. Just as interesting for you: new owners tend to change suppliers.
- Bankruptcy estates and dissolved units are filtered out. The list shows active sub-units only.
Why the first months matter
A restaurant that opens makes most of its supplier choices before the first guest: cooling equipment and temperature monitoring, a cleaning contract, a pest-control contract, an internal-control system, menus with allergen labelling, kitchen equipment. Those choices tend to stay for years – switching is expensive and awkward once the place is running. Whoever is there first with a concrete solution often gets the customer.
At the same time, new places make the classic mistakes. Routines are not set, the staff is new, and the internal control is often a binder nobody has filled in yet. Mattilsynet’s first inspection comes sooner or later, and then the place has to show that its routines work. A supplier who helps the place be ready – documentation included – sells not just a product but a smiling face at the entrance.
What Mattilsynet does with new places
A new restaurant must register with Mattilsynet before it opens (the “Ny matbedrift” form) and must have internal control in place from day one. Mattilsynet then decides when the place gets its inspection “based on an overall assessment of risk and capacity” – new places are a priority group, but there is no fixed deadline. After the first smiley inspection the place gets its first face and appears on smilefjes.mattilsynet.no.
In the data it looks like this: a new place is in the list with the status “Not visited yet” until Mattilsynet has been there. After that the status shows the current face, and the place gets its own row in the ordinary list of findings if it got grade 2 or 3. In the last 90 days, 186 places were inspected for the first time. If you are early, you get two chances: before the first inspection, and right after it if it produced a finding.
How the New restaurants page works
- Window: places registered in the last 30, 60 or 90 days, refreshed every morning.
- Filters: county, municipality and kind (restaurant, bar, catering/canteen, mobile food service). Every county has its own page, for example Oslo, Vestland and Trøndelag.
- Public for everyone: counts per county, municipality and kind, the registration date and whether Mattilsynet has been there – nothing that identifies the place.
- For registered companies (free, with a Norwegian organisation number): name, address, the company behind it, the organisation number with a link to the business register, and the status with a link to Mattilsynet once the place has been inspected.
- Sole proprietorships: a sole proprietorship’s name is by law its owner’s name, i.e. personal data. Restoradar withholds the name until Mattilsynet has published the place on the smiley site, and never shows the street address or organisation number for them. The export notes that e-mail marketing to them requires prior consent (Marketing Control Act § 15).
- Excel export: the list as filtered, with the same quota and the same rules as the export of findings. The file has its own sheet with the sources and the date.
Combine with the findings
The strongest list is the combination: new places in your area that have not been visited yet (they need the routines now), and new places that already got a finding matching your product (they need the solution now). Filter the ordinary list by municipality and industry, sort by date, and hold it against the new registrations in the same municipality. The rules for getting in touch – factual, no cold e-mail to sole proprietorships, never shame – are in How to use Mattilsynet’s inspection data in sales.
Sources
- Brønnøysund Register Centre: Enhetsregisteret – open data (NLOD) – sub-units, industry codes, registration and start dates.
- Mattilsynet: Startpakke for nye matbedrifter (Norwegian) – registration before opening, internal control, when the first inspection comes, who is in the smiley scheme.
- Mattilsynet: smilefjes.mattilsynet.no and open data (CC BY 4.0), processed by Restoradar, data as of 8 Oct 2026.
Questions and answers
- How many new restaurants are registered?
- 499 restaurants, bars, caterers and canteens (industry code 56) were registered in Enhetsregisteret in the last 90 days, in 127 municipalities; 9 of them already have a smiley inspection (data as of 8 Oct 2026).
- Does a registration mean the place has opened?
- Not always. The sub-unit is usually registered shortly before opening, sometimes weeks earlier; the registration date and the start date are both in the list. A place that is later inspected by Mattilsynet is definitely open.
- Why are some names withheld?
- A sole proprietorship’s registered name is by law its owner’s name, so Restoradar withholds it until Mattilsynet has published the place on the smiley site. Companies (AS and the like) are shown with their name to registered users.
Source: Mattilsynet – smiley inspections (CC BY 4.0) and the Brønnøysund Register Centre – Enhetsregisteret (NLOD), processed by Restoradar. Data as of 7 Oct 2026. Restoradar is not affiliated with Mattilsynet.