How We Work
How a restaurant gets into
our directories
Every listing in HelpMeFind passed through the same process: automated discovery, chain filtering, and human review. Here is exactly how that works.
Discovery
Our crawler searches OpenStreetMap for restaurants that match our cuisine categories across cities and metropolitan areas throughout the United States.
OpenStreetMap as a data source
OpenStreetMap is a global geographic database maintained by a community of volunteers. It contains detailed restaurant data including names, locations, cuisine types, contact information, and attributes that help identify chain vs. independent operations.
We chose OpenStreetMap because it is openly licensed, community-maintained, and contains attributes — like the brand tag and operator:type tag — that are useful for identifying chain restaurants. Unlike commercial databases, it is not dominated by restaurants that have paid for inclusion.
Chain Filtering
Every result passes through our chain exclusion system before it can enter the review queue. This is the most important step in the process.
How we identify chains
We maintain a blocklist of national and regional chains that are automatically excluded. This list currently covers more than sixty brands across our restaurant categories, from national breakfast chains to regional pizza concepts to large casual dining groups.
In addition to the name blocklist, we check OpenStreetMap's brand tag, which is populated for chain restaurants and provides an exclusion signal that is independent of the name. A restaurant with a known brand tag is excluded regardless of what its name appears to be.
The threshold for what counts as a "chain" requires judgment. We exclude corporate franchise models regardless of scale. We evaluate multi-location family operations on a case-by-case basis, applying the test of whether genuine personal ownership remains.
Human Review
Restaurants that pass automated filtering enter a review queue where a human editor evaluates each one before it goes live.
What the review covers
- →Operating status. We check that the restaurant is currently open, using the restaurant's own website, recent Google Maps activity, and local news sources where available.
- →Independent ownership. We verify that the restaurant is independently owned, checking for franchise indicators, corporate parent companies, or brand affiliations not caught by automated filtering.
- →Correct categorization. We confirm that the restaurant belongs in the directory it has been placed in — that a listing in our Italian directory is genuinely an Italian restaurant, not a tangentially related concept.
- →Data accuracy. We check that the address, phone number, and website information is correct and current.
Live in the Directory
Restaurants that pass review are published and appear in search results. They remain active unless we are notified of a closure or a change in ownership status.
Ongoing maintenance
Our crawler runs on a regular schedule, updating information and flagging listings where data has changed. Restaurants that appear to have closed are removed from active results. Restaurants that have been acquired by chains are removed from our directories.
We rely in part on user submissions to keep the data current. If a restaurant in our directory has closed, or if we have listed information incorrectly, the submission form on each directory site allows anyone to alert us.
What We Don't Do
Accept payment for listings
A restaurant cannot pay to appear in HelpMeFind, to rank higher in results, or to be featured. Every listing is evaluated on the same criteria regardless of any commercial relationship.
Rank by review volume
We do not use review count or rating as a ranking signal. A restaurant with forty reviews and excellent food is not disadvantaged relative to a chain with four thousand reviews.
Evaluate food quality
We are a directory, not a review site. Inclusion in HelpMeFind means a restaurant is independently owned and correctly categorized — not that we have evaluated or endorse the quality of its food.
List every restaurant
We have fewer listings than open directories and we will always have fewer. Our coverage is not comprehensive; it is curated. Every listing has been looked at by a person who made a conscious decision to include it.
Know a restaurant we should list?
If you know of an independently owned restaurant that belongs in one of our directories and isn't there, submit it through the relevant directory site. We review submissions on a rolling basis and evaluate each one against the same criteria that govern our crawler's output.
We cannot guarantee that every submission will be accepted, but we look at each one. The goal is a directory that is as complete as we can make it within our criteria.