UK SIC 2007 · 56101
Licensed restaurants (SIC code 56101)
Restaurants licensed to serve alcohol file here. That means sit-down dining, pub-restaurants and hotel restaurants. No other hospitality code holds more companies. Cafes and lunch-only spots are 56102, takeaways are 56103, and licensed clubs are 56301.
Division 56: Food and beverage service activities
Division 56 is about serving food and drink to eat now. It is the home of the UK hospitality trade. Takeaways and mobile food stands under 56103 form the biggest single group. Restaurants come next, split by alcohol licence. Licenced venues use 56101, and unlicenced restaurants and cafes use 56102. Pubs and bars register under 56302. Event caterers use 56210. Code 56290 collects other food services, such as contract catering and delivery-only kitchens. The codes track licensing and format, so they say a lot about how each business really runs.
Related SIC codes
Who prospects SIC 56101 companies
Hospitality churns fast and buys supplies constantly. That makes it one of the most worked sectors on the register. Food and drink wholesalers, EPOS and card payment providers, delivery platform sales teams, utility brokers, insurance intermediaries and commercial kitchen fitters all mine these codes. Accountants add payroll and tronc support. A new incorporation usually means a site opening within months. That is the window for fit-out, systems and supplier deals. Websites are weak across takeaways and cafes, so the poor-website filter gives web designers and booking platforms an obvious first conversation.
Lead generation for commercial & B2B services →How to read SIC 56101
SIC 56101 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 56, are the division, food and beverage service activities. Add the third and you have group 561; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section I, accommodation and food service, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 56101 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 56101 are London (9,438), Glasgow (997), Manchester (996), Birmingham (851) and Edinburgh (608). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 56101 as a filter
46,759 companies is 0.90 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 56101 second most used of the 7 codes we track in division 56. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
Almost everybody who uses 56101 means it: 43,024 of 46,759 companies put it first, leaving only 3,735 carrying it as a secondary code. That makes it an unusually clean filter. You can match on the code alone and trust that the companies you get really are in this line of work.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 20 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 28 per cent, so the remaining 72 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 56101 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 56101, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 46,759 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
Where SIC 56101 clusters in the UK
ACTIVE COMPANIES BY REGISTERED-OFFICE POST TOWN · COMPANIES HOUSE REGISTER, AUGUST 2026
SIC 56101 companies, as leads
Tell us the kind of company you sell to and we find them on the public record. One credit is one lead: the record, the director, a verified website and a verified email. If we cannot complete it, you are not charged. 25 free to start, no card.
About SIC 56101
How quickly do new restaurants appear under SIC 56101?
Within 24 hours of the company being registered at Companies House. Most new restaurants incorporate 1 to 4 weeks before they open. That gap is a short window for suppliers to get in touch.
Is SIC 56101 used by both pubs and restaurants?
Yes. A pub with a real kitchen usually files 56101. A wet-only pub, drinks and no food, files 56302. A fair few pubs file both codes.
Find UK SIC 56101 companies
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