Disclaimer

What this site is

Cleveland Foodservice Guide publishes plain-English summaries of the public rules that apply to running a food business in Northeast Ohio, together with a vendor directory and a tracker of local openings and closings.

Every regulatory claim on this site carries a citation to the document it came from and the date we last read that document. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and our editorial policy explains how it works. It is also the reason this page exists: sourcing a claim well is not the same as being qualified to tell you what to do about it.

What this site is not

Nothing here is legal, insurance, tax, accounting or professional advice. Reading it does not create any professional relationship between you and Cleveland Foodservice Guide or Dean Supply, and no one here is acting as your adviser.

The guides describe rules in general terms. They cannot account for your lease, your entity structure, your ownership, your municipality, your payroll, your history with an agency, or the specific facts that usually decide the answer. A rule that reads one way in general can land differently on your address.

Which questions belong with whom

• A lawyer — contracts and leases, liability, entity structure, buying or selling a business, employment disputes, enforcement actions, appeals, and anything with a filing deadline attached to it.
• A licensed insurance professional — what a policy actually covers, what limits you need, whether a particular loss is payable, and how your lease or lender requirements map onto a schedule. Nothing on this site is an offer of insurance, a quote, a recommendation of a specific policy, or an opinion about coverage.
• An accountant — tax positions, payroll, thresholds that turn on your revenue or your hours, and anything that depends on how your books are actually kept.
• Your licensing agency — whether a rule applies to your address, what your fee is, what your risk level is, and what they will accept. They are the only authority on that. Find yours here. Nothing on this site binds them, and no summary here overrides what they tell you.

Accuracy, and its limits

Rules, fees, forms and thresholds change — often on a January 1, and often without an announcement that reaches us. Each guide shows the date it was last reviewed and lists the documents behind it. Treat anything older than that date as unverified rather than as current, and confirm before you rely on it.

We correct things. If something here is wrong, out of date, or missing the nuance that changes the answer, tell us — corrections go to corrections@clevelandfoodservice.com and we publish the fix rather than quietly editing around it.

We provide this site as-is. We do not warrant that it is complete or error-free, and to the extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from decisions made in reliance on it. That is the ordinary legal position, and we would rather state it plainly than bury it.

The directory, and who pays

Listings in the vendor directory are free, ordered alphabetically, and are not endorsements or recommendations. We do not vet the work of the businesses listed, we take no payment for placement, and being listed says nothing about quality — only that the business appears to serve this market. How listings work sets out the rules in full.

Published by Dean Supply — supplying Cleveland kitchens since 1950. Dean Supply owns and pays for this site and sells many of the products written about here. Competing suppliers are listed on identical terms. We say so on every page rather than in a footnote — see about this site.

Outside links

We link to agency pages, statutes and rules so you can check us. Those sites are not ours, we do not control what they publish, and a link is not an endorsement of anything else on the far end of it.