Restaurant buildout budget breakdown

A restaurant buildout has more ways to go over budget than almost any other interior, because so much of the cost lives in systems you cannot see on a floor plan. Here is where the money actually goes.

The big lines

• Kitchen and equipment — the single largest category on most builds. Equipment set, connections, and the coordination around it.
• Hood, make-up air, and exhaust — mechanical work driven by code, not by preference, and easy to underestimate.
• Grease interceptor and plumbing — often a below-slab, jurisdiction-specific requirement that lands hard when it is missed early.
• Walk-in coolers and freezers — refrigeration, drainage, and the electrical to support it.
• MEP upgrades — restaurants pull far more power and water than the space was likely built for, so service upgrades are common.
• Dining room and finishes — the visible part, and usually not where the budget risk lives.

The lines that blow up budgets

The overruns are almost never the dining room. They are the grease interceptor the health department requires, the make-up air the mechanical code demands, and the electrical service that has to be upsized because the panel was never sized for a kitchen. Scope those early and honestly and the rest of the budget behaves.

We have done over a hundred franchise buildouts, so this sequence is not new to us. If you are budgeting a restaurant, call us and we will help you price the lines that actually matter.