Restaurant Fit-Out Cost: A Line-by-Line UK Budget

A restaurant fit-out seldom goes over budget on the line that was priced. It goes over on the lines nobody had priced yet. The extraction route may need consent for an external flue, and councils commonly ask for an odour assessment alongside it. The second-hand kitchen that came with the lease still has a gas installation, and the law on who may touch it is strict. The quote may list the cooking line and the bar but say nothing about the fire alarm or the accessible toilet. The grease trap may be missing, in a trade where careless disposal of fats, oils and grease can lead to prosecution.

Gas is the clearest example. Regulation 3 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 says that "No person shall carry out any work in relation to a gas fitting or gas storage vessel unless he is competent to do so." The HSE's catering information sheet on gas safety adds that "Gas Safe registration is the clearest way of demonstrating competence" and that "Only a Gas Safe-registered person should carry out new installation of and commission of the appliance with a plug-in gas connection". The same sheet says that "as a general rule, annual inspections are a reasonable minimum frequency, with repairs carried out as necessary." A range bought with the lease, or a hob that has stood unused for a year, is still a gas appliance. The sensible reading of that guidance is that a competent engineer checks it before the first service, not after.

Fats, oils and grease are the second trap. GOV.UK's guidance for new food businesses says: "You should dry wipe plates and pans with kitchen roll before washing them and install grease management equipment such as a grease trap or a grease removal unit." It also warns: "Not only can blockages flood your premises, but you could also risk prosecution if your business disposes of FOG carelessly." The separate GOV.UK pollution-prevention guidance says that a restaurant with contaminated washwater "must get permission from the water company or private sewer owner to discharge this waste." A drain plan that nobody has checked is a cost waiting for the first blocked gully.

Prices are moving underneath all of this. The Office for National Statistics reported on 13 August 2026 that "The annual rate of construction output price growth was 1.9% in the 12 months to June 2026." That index covers construction output across Great Britain, not restaurant fit-outs specifically, and it does not tell an owner what a particular contractor will charge. It does mean that a quote written months before the work starts is a snapshot of an earlier price level.

Then comes the technology, usually bought last. The website, the booking tool, the till, the card readers, the kitchen screen and the ordering page are often chosen after the money has gone on the walls. Each arrives as a separate subscription with its own plan, its own fees and sometimes its own annual prepayment. The owner meets the total after opening, when cash is thinnest.

This guide builds the budget from the top down and the bottom up: the published cost bands, planning and building control, each fit-out line, and a worked example for an illustrative 60-cover restaurant in a 1,500 square foot unit in England, first as an ex-retail shell and then as an ex-restaurant. Scotland and Wales run their own planning-fee and building-standards systems. The fees below are England's, and the Edinburgh cost guide used for the cross-check is a Scottish source, labelled as one.

There is no official UK price list for restaurant fit-out. The Edinburgh figure below is the only public BCIS-based restaurant rate this research could read, and it comes from a Scottish council. Everything else per square foot comes from commercial publishers, and none of it is a quote. Used honestly, the bands tell an owner the scale of the job and nothing more.

The first source is bhumicalculator.com, a calculator site. On its UK page, dated 30 June 2026, it gives restaurant and café fit-out as "£75 – £110" a square foot for a basic specification, "£120 – £170" mid-range and "£180 – £250+" high-end. It states that "Prices exclude loose furniture, IT, and VAT unless stated" and that "Figures are estimated market averages." The second source is the City of Edinburgh Council's building-warrant cost guide, "based on BCIS rates from quarter 2 2025 to quarter 1 2026", which lists restaurant fit-out at £1,984 a square metre. At 10.7639 square feet to the square metre, that is £184.32, or about £184 a square foot. The page gives no VAT basis and is a valuation guide for warrant fees, not a quote.

For a 1,500 square foot unit, the arithmetic is straightforward. Basic is 1,500 x £75 = £112,500 to 1,500 x £110 = £165,000. Mid-range is 1,500 x £120 = £180,000 to 1,500 x £170 = £255,000. High-end is 1,500 x £180 = £270,000 to 1,500 x £250 = £375,000, and the top of that band is open-ended. The Edinburgh figure works out as 1,500 square feet = about 139.35 square metres, and 139.35 x £1,984 = £276,470.

Two cautions apply. The calculator site's bands are generic estimates from a calculator publisher, not a contractor, so they sit at the weak end of the evidence, and the Edinburgh guide is for Scotland and for warrant-fee purposes. The pages read for this research quote one national band. They do not say whether the unit is a shell, an ex-restaurant or an ex-retail space, which is the largest single swing in the number. The worked example further down fixes that by pricing the same unit both ways.

The same calculator publisher has a separate commercial kitchen page, dated 2 July 2026. It lists "Cost Per Sq Ft (Excl. VAT)" of "£120 – £160" for a basic or economy kitchen and "£160 – £240" for mid-range. Its 500 square foot mid-range example is itemised: commercial equipment and appliances "£35,000 – £55,000", ventilation and extraction "£12,000 – £20,000", plumbing and gas "£8,000 – £14,000", electrical "£7,000 – £12,000", flooring and wall finishes "£6,000 – £10,000", fire suppression "£4,000 – £7,000" and labour "£40,000 – £65,000", for a total excluding VAT of "£80,000 – £138,000". It also says that a canopy extraction system with make-up air, fire-rated ductwork and roof-mounted fans "can add £25–£45 per square foot to the project cost." Like the restaurant bands, these are a publisher's estimates, useful for the shape of the kitchen budget and not for a price.

The cheapest fee in a fit-out is the one that is never charged, and use classes decide whether a change-of-use application is charged at all. Class E of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 covers commercial, business and service uses. Class E(a) is for "the display or retail sale of goods, other than hot food, principally to visiting members of the public", which is the usual high-street shop. Class E(b) is for "the sale of food and drink principally to visiting members of the public where consumption of that food and drink is mostly undertaken on the premises". Article 3 of the same Order says that using a building "for any other purpose of the same class is not to be taken to involve development of the land."

The reading that follows is that a shop moving to a sit-down restaurant stays inside Class E, so a change-of-use application is usually not needed. That is a reading, not a promise. Check with the council before signing, because a planning condition on the unit or an Article 4 direction can change the answer. Takeaways and pubs sit outside Class E. The Order lists "a hot food takeaway for the sale of hot food where consumption of that food is mostly undertaken off the premises" and "a public house, wine bar, or drinking establishment" as uses outside any class, so a move into either is a material change of use.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's fee schedule for England applies from 1 April 2026. Its guidance says: "All fee values from 1 April 2025 will be increased by 3.8% and these new fees will be charged from 1 April 2026." It also says that "Every year, planning fees will be increased by the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), from the preceding September." A budget written now should therefore assume the next uplift on the following 1 April.

The schedule's category 14, "The making of a material change in use of a building or land", is £610. That is the fee a change to a takeaway or pub would attract. For works that need permission but create no floor space, such as an external extract flue, category 2 applies at £309 where "no floor space is to be created by the development". Which category a flue falls in is the council's decision, so treat £309 as the likely figure, not a certainty. Advertisements displayed externally on business premises, about the business and its goods or services, are £174. A sign that does not fit that description is under "All other advertisements" at £610.

Building regulations approval does not carry a planning fee. GOV.UK lists "applications for approvals under the Building Regulations, for which charges are fixed locally under separate legislation" among applications that do not attract one. Every council sets its own table. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead's table, effective from 1 April 2026, is one example. For an "Office/Shop fit out" with a floor area up to 500 square metres it lists a plan charge of £324.00 and an inspection charge of £495.00, and it charges a further £324.00 for "Change of use of a building (charged in addition to the above works)". The page does not state a VAT basis. Another council's table will differ, so the figures are one council's charges, not a national rate.

Accessible design and fire sit under building control too. GOV.UK describes Approved Document M as "Building regulations for access to and use of buildings in dwellings and buildings other than dwellings", providing "a baseline for accessibility in the built environment". Its second volume covers buildings other than dwellings, which is where a restaurant's entrance and accessible toilet fall in practice. Ask building control which requirements apply to the specific alteration, because the answer depends on the layout and on what is being changed.

Equipment is the line owners price best, because retailers publish prices. Three examples, read on 26 October 2026 and given as cost context only, not an endorsement:

• A Lincat Opus 800 six-burner natural gas oven range on castors is £1,633.99 excluding VAT (£1,960.79 including VAT) at Catering Appliance.
• A Foster HR150 150 litre undercounter single-door fridge is £1,197.99 excluding VAT (£1,437.59 including VAT) at Catering Appliance.
• A GGM Gastro 1800mm wall-mounted extractor hood with motor, speed controller, baffle filters and LED lighting is £848.77 as read on the page, which also shows a gross price including 20% VAT of £1,018.52. The page footnote quotes a different VAT rate, so confirm the VAT basis before ordering. The price is for the hood and fan only.

Together the three come to £1,633.99 + £1,197.99 + £848.77 = £3,680.75 excluding VAT. A 60-cover kitchen needs many more items. The three are 14.9% of the low equipment line in the worked example below (£3,680.75 / £24,750), which is the point: a kitchen is a long list, and each item has to be counted.

Extraction is the line that overruns. A hood and fan is the visible part and the cheapest part. The hood at £848.77 has no ducting, no make-up air, no fire suppression and no installation, so it is a component, not an installed extraction system. The calculator publisher's 500 square foot example puts ventilation and extraction at £12,000 to £20,000 and fire suppression at £4,000 to £7,000, and it describes a canopy system with make-up air, fire-rated ductwork and roof-mounted fans as adding "£25–£45 per square foot to the project cost".

Who approves it is a separate question from what it costs. The old Defra and Netcen guidance on odour and noise from commercial kitchen extraction was withdrawn on 15 September 2017 and GOV.UK now marks it "out of date", so it should not be quoted as current. Councils commonly ask for an odour assessment with an extraction application. The planning officer can say what the council expects for the unit, and that conversation belongs before the lease is signed. The GOV.UK food-business guidance also states the baseline: "Your premises must have adequate ventilation, lighting and drainage."

Budget a Gas Safe engineer to test, commission and certify, and expect to repair or replace what fails. The drainage line includes the grease management equipment and the water company's permission to discharge.

Toilets are a fixed cost that does not shrink with the covers. An accessible toilet and a step-free entrance are matters for Approved Document M, and building control will say how it applies to the alteration. In the worked example this line is 10% of the works.

The responsible person has duties. GOV.UK's workplace fire-safety guidance says: "You're known as the 'responsible person'", and that the responsible person must "carry out a fire risk assessment of the premises and review it regularly". The food-business guidance adds a sentence worth acting on: "If you are planning to adapt your premises, it is a good idea to get fire safety advice before you start the work."

Two service prices give cost context only. M6 Fire Risk Assessments lists a "Restaurant, max 300sqm" assessment at £330 with "No VAT charged". Fire Protection Online lists extinguisher servicing at £11.95 each plus a visit charge of £37.97 plus VAT per order. Neither is an endorsement, and neither covers the alarm system, emergency lighting or compartmentation, which are works lines. The guide to restaurant fire safety covers the duties.

This is the restaurant shopfitting line: the bar, fixed seating, joinery, flooring, lighting, decoration and the fascia. It is where the specification choice shows most, and where a basic and a high-end budget part company. The bands exclude loose furniture, so tables, chairs and tableware need their own line, which this guide does not price because no cited figure was found. Signage is a planning question as well as a cost: the advertisement fee in the table above is a consent fee, not the cost of the sign.

A fitted-out unit can be assessed differently from the shell it started as. GOV.UK says that for the 2026 revaluation "Current rateable values came into effect on 1 April 2026" and that "The Valuation Office updates the rateable values of non-domestic properties in England and Wales every 3 years." This guide takes that as a pointer only: ask what the unit is assessed at, and whether the fit-out changes it.

Professional fees cover the design, the drawings, the odour assessment, the structural or services engineer where one is needed, and any project management. No public source gives a percentage, so the worked example uses an illustrative 6% of works at the low end and 12% at the high end. The contingency is illustrative too, 10% at the low end and 15% at the high end, and the ONS figure above is the reason it belongs in the budget.

The unit is an illustrative 60-cover restaurant in an ex-retail (Class E(a)) unit of 1,500 square feet in England, moving to restaurant use (Class E(b)) with no new floor space. Every venue figure is an assumption, every figure excludes VAT, and nothing here is a quote. Ask an accountant what VAT the business can recover.

The works use the calculator publisher's basic band as the envelope: £75 to £110 a square foot, so £112,500 to £165,000, excluding loose furniture and IT. The six lines below split that envelope using shares that this guide chose. The shares are illustrative, not cited, and a real quote will put the weight elsewhere.

The arithmetic, line by line. At £112,500: 22% = £24,750; 26% = £29,250; 22% = £24,750; 10% = £11,250; 6% = £6,750; 14% = £15,750. Added together, £24,750 + £29,250 + £24,750 + £11,250 + £6,750 + £15,750 = £112,500. At £165,000: 22% = £36,300; 26% = £42,900; 22% = £36,300; 10% = £16,500; 6% = £9,900; 14% = £23,100, and £36,300 + £42,900 + £36,300 + £16,500 + £9,900 + £23,100 = £165,000.

The cited fees come from the table above. In the low case, planning is £0 because a shop moving to a restaurant stays inside Class E, advertisement consent is £174, building control is £324 + £495 = £819, and the fire risk assessment is £330: £0 + £174 + £819 + £330 = £1,323. In the high case, the category 2 application for an external flue adds £309 and the building control change-of-use charge adds £324, so building control is £324 + £495 + £324 = £1,143 and the total is £309 + £174 + £1,143 + £330 = £1,956.

Professional fees at 6% of the low works are 6% x £112,500 = £6,750. At 12% of the high works they are 12% x £165,000 = £19,800. The technology line is priced in the next section and is £619 in the low case and £1,316 in the high case.

The low case is: £112,500 + £1,323 + £6,750 + £619 = £121,192. A 10% contingency is £12,119, so the all-in total is £121,192 + £12,119 = £133,311, which is £133,311 / 1,500 = £88.87, about £89 a square foot. The high case is: £165,000 + £1,956 + £19,800 + £1,316 = £188,072. A 15% contingency is £28,211 (0.15 x £188,072 = £28,210.80, rounded), so the all-in total is £188,072 + £28,211 = £216,283, which is £216,283 / 1,500 = £144.19, about £144 a square foot.

The all-in low case of £89 a square foot sits inside the calculator's basic band of £75 to £110, and its total of £133,311 sits between the band's £112,500 and £165,000. The all-in high case of £144 a square foot sits inside the mid-range band of £120 to £170, and its total of £216,283 sits between that band's £180,000 and £255,000. The works lines alone sit exactly on the basic band by construction. Fees, professional costs, technology and contingency are what lift the totals into the mid-range band at the top.

Edinburgh's top-down figure for the same space is £276,470, which is £60,187 above the high case (£276,470 - £216,283). That gap is expected for three reasons. The guide is a Scottish warrant-fee valuation based on BCIS rates, it does not say what is in its figure, and it knows nothing about the condition of one unit. A lean ex-retail fit-out with sound services can sit below a general valuation figure. A unit that needs new power, new drainage or a structural opening will not.

Taking over a unit that already ran as a restaurant changes the lines, not just the total. The planning position should be simpler, though the owner should still check any conditions on the previous permission with the council. The kitchen exists, the toilets exist and the fire installation exists. What the owner pays for is testing, repair and refresh. The shares below are the part of each shell-case line that stays in the budget. They are illustrative, and the low and high columns use different shares because an ex-restaurant can be in very different condition.

The low column is the shell low line times the low kept share: £24,750 x 30% = £7,425; £29,250 x 20% = £5,850; £24,750 x 50% = £12,375; £11,250 x 20% = £2,250; £6,750 x 20% = £1,350; £15,750 x 30% = £4,725. They add to £33,975. The high column is the shell high line times the high kept share: £36,300 x 60% = £21,780; £42,900 x 40% = £17,160; £36,300 x 80% = £29,040; £16,500 x 40% = £6,600; £9,900 x 40% = £3,960; £23,100 x 60% = £13,860. They add to £92,400.

Fees fall away at the low end. With no permission needed and no building control inspection, the low case keeps the advertisement consent of £174 and the fire risk assessment of £330, which is £504. The high case keeps the shell high fees of £1,956. Professional fees at 6% of £33,975 are £2,038.50, rounded to £2,039, and at 12% of £92,400 they are £11,088. Technology stays at £619 and £1,316.

The low case is: £33,975 + £504 + £2,039 + £619 = £37,137. A 10% contingency is £3,714 (rounded from £3,713.70), so the all-in total is £40,851, or £40,851 / 1,500 = £27.23, about £27 a square foot. The high case is: £92,400 + £1,956 + £11,088 + £1,316 = £106,760. A 15% contingency is £16,014, so the all-in total is £122,774, or £122,774 / 1,500 = £81.85, about £82 a square foot.

The figure shows where the works money goes in the low case. In the shell, the lines are 22%, 26%, 22%, 10%, 6% and 14% of £112,500. In the ex-restaurant, the same lines are 21.9%, 17.2%, 36.4%, 6.6%, 4.0% and 13.9% of £33,975 (for example, £12,375 / £33,975 = 36.4% for front of house). Kitchen services and extraction fall from the largest share to a smaller one, and front of house becomes the biggest line.

Against the shell, the ex-restaurant is £133,311 - £40,851 = £92,460 cheaper in the low case and £216,283 - £122,774 = £93,509 cheaper in the high case. The ex-restaurant totals fall below the calculator's basic band at £27 and £82 a square foot. The band describes a fit-out from a bare unit. The ex-restaurant lines are the share of that work still needed.

Several things are not in the ex-restaurant case. A lease premium or a rent-free period is not included, since no cited figure was found. The gas installation still needs testing by a Gas Safe engineer, as described above, and extraction and grease equipment may need replacing. The toilets and fire lines shrink only where the existing layout and certificates are acceptable to building control, so a fire alarm that predates the last change of layout, or an accessible toilet that no longer meets the standard, takes the line back toward the shell figure. The decision is the survey, not the percentage.

The cost is small next to the works, but it is the one line that recurs every month. The honest comparison is between one plan that covers the website, bookings, the till connection, the kitchen screen and ordering, and a stack of separate subscriptions that each carry their own plan tier, annual prepayment and renewal terms, per-seat or per-cover charges, add-ons and, for marketplaces, a commission on every order. This guide does not name that stack. Ask each vendor for the plan the restaurant actually needs, what is prepaid, what renews, and what is charged per order or cover.

TableSpark prices the whole flow in three plans. Starter is £19 a month excluding VAT, Growth is £39 a month excluding VAT, and Full is £69 a month excluding VAT; yearly billing is £190, £390 and £690, all excluding VAT. Each plan includes the one before it. In the fit-out budget the lines are Growth yearly at £390 excluding VAT in the low case, and Full yearly at £690 excluding VAT in the high case. Growth carries on-site reservations, live availability, floor plans and table assignment, the kitchen display screen, POS connections and the live service console. Full adds online ordering on the restaurant's own site, table QR ordering and kitchen ticket printing. TableSpark takes 0% commission on direct bookings and orders; Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments.

The card reader is the one piece of hardware on the Stripe side. Stripe's UK page lists the Stripe Reader S700 at £229.00 excluding VAT, with mobile data at £7.00 per reader per month. TableSpark's POS connection is described on its pricing page as "Stripe Terminal card readers for the till: charge an order or a walk-up amount on a reader, settled into your own Stripe account."

These prices are not like-for-like, because the providers charge for different things. A reader is hardware, and a plan is software. The worked example adds them as the technology line. The low case is Growth yearly at £390 excluding VAT plus one reader at £229.00 excluding VAT: £390 + £229 = £619. The high case is Full yearly at £690 excluding VAT plus two readers (2 x £229 = £458) plus mobile data on both for twelve months (2 x £7.00 x 12 = £168): £690 + £458 + £168 = £1,316. A tablet or phone for service, a receipt printer and a kitchen printer are not priced, because no verified figure was found, and each is a quote to ask for.

Domains and mailboxes are the add-ons. TableSpark's own pricing page says that a domain bought through Settings is shown itemised from £6.33 a year, and that mailboxes are £2.00 a month each. Both prices appear in the app before payment. Custom domains and managed SSL come with Growth and Full.

A website can be live at a working link and still be absent from Google. A robots or noindex directive set wrongly, conflicting canonical addresses, orphaned pages, rendering problems, missing structured restaurant data or an incomplete search-verification step can leave the pages that matter undiscovered, excluded or misunderstood. A restaurant that has spent six figures on the room can then be missing when guests search its name, its menu, its cuisine or its postcode. They may reach a directory, a commission-charging marketplace or a competing restaurant first. The restaurant is left dependent on paid discovery instead of owned direct demand.

TableSpark packages that work into every plan, from £19 a month excluding VAT: crawlable structured restaurant content, titles and descriptions, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, internal links, mobile-first output and managed search-verification set-up, with the sitemap submitted to Google Search Console on every publish and custom domains getting their own verified property. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google, and no site can promise either. A general entry-level builder can publish a page, but a complete search-ready set-up there can mean specialist configuration, add-ons, maintenance and indexing risk that the owner carries, or pays a technician to carry.

Guest records from bookings and enquiries are stored under the restaurant's TableSpark account, visible in the Inbox and the guest list, with CSV export, so the list the new room builds belongs to the restaurant. The software costs page sets out the plans and add-ons, and the pricing page shows which plan carries each capability.

The checklist runs in four stages. The timeline table below lists the order; the checklists give the detail.

The wider budget, covering rent, deposits, stock, wages and working capital, is in the guide to what it costs to open a restaurant, and the sequence of registrations and consents is in how to open a restaurant.

A light refurbishment is the third starting point: a trading restaurant refreshed with decoration, soft furnishings, signage and perhaps a new bar. The temptation is to skip the surveys. The gas test, the fire risk assessment and the grease and extraction checks are still due, and a change to the layout can reopen building control and, where the room is licensed, the licensed plan.

The technology line is the part of the fit-out an owner can finish before the builders leave. The steps below use Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, or Full for ordering and kitchen printing; the pricing page shows which plan carries each capability. They assume Stripe is connected under Settings, then Payments, as the get-paid tutorial describes. The guide to getting paid walks the connection.

Kitchen tickets by station on any tablet or TV are on Growth, and online and table orders printing straight to the kitchen printer are on Full. The guides to the restaurant EPOS system, the EPOS system in the UK and the kitchen display system cover the service side in detail.

A fit-out is the one cost an owner can no longer reduce once it is spent, so the sensible order is to survey first, price the lines separately and keep a contingency. The budget in this guide runs from £133,311 to £216,283 for the ex-retail shell and from £40,851 to £122,774 for the ex-restaurant, with every venue figure labelled as an assumption and the official fees taken from the sources named.

On the technology line, TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant. One plan carries the website, the bookings against real tables, the floor plan, the kitchen display and the POS connection to Stripe card readers, and the search-readiness work is included on every plan rather than left to a technician. The entry plan, Starter, is £19 a month excluding VAT. Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT or £390 a year excluding VAT, carries reservations, floor plans, deposits, the kitchen display screen and the Reserve with Google booking-link connection. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT or £690 a year excluding VAT, adds online ordering and kitchen ticket printing. There are no per-seat charges, and TableSpark takes 0% commission on direct bookings and orders.