What we build · Full-Service Restaurant
The Kitchen Decides the Building
A full kitchen with a dining room. The most demanding food service buildout, and the one where the space either supports it or does not.
Before you sign. We will tell you what the landlord has actually delivered and what it will cost to make it a restaurant.
Pre-lease
We will walk the space before you sign it
Rent clock
Every week of delay is a week of paying for a closed room
Grease
Routing checked before design, not discovered at permit
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
Three questions before anything else
Can the hood exhaust reach the roof. Can grease waste reach an interceptor. Is there enough power. If any of those is no, the space is not a full-service restaurant at any budget you would accept, and all three are answerable in an afternoon before a lease is signed.
The reason those three questions get skipped is that they are invisible on a walkthrough. A prospective tenant sees a room with a good frontage and the right square footage, and the exhaust route, the grease routing and the electrical service are all somewhere they are not looking. The lease gets signed on the room.
What drives the cost
- Type I hood, exhaust routing and make-up air — the largest single item.
- Grease interceptor, sized by the authority and located where it can be serviced.
- Electrical service, which existing retail space rarely has enough of.
- Floor drains, slope and a floor finish the health authority accepts.
- Walk-in coolers, and whether they fit through the door.
What a former restaurant is actually worth
A space that was previously a restaurant may come with the hood, the interceptor and the service already in place, which can be worth a great deal. It may equally come with equipment at the end of its life, an interceptor undersized for your operation, and a hood that was never right.
The value is entirely in the condition, not in the history. Have the existing infrastructure verified rather than assuming that a restaurant space means restaurant-ready, because the second closed restaurant in a row is usually a building telling you something.
How we handle it
- 01Check exhaust path, grease routing and power before design.
- 02Coordinate the kitchen equipment package before rough-in.
- 03Build the exhaust and make-up air as a balanced system.
- 04Install drainage, slopes and finishes to what will be inspected.
- 05Sequence to the opening date, and flag early if it will not hold.
Balance the make-up air with the exhaust properly. A kitchen pulling more air out than it brings in puts the dining room under negative pressure, and the symptom is a front door that is hard to open and a room that smells of the kitchen all evening.
Said plainly
Where we stop
If the exhaust cannot get to the roof or grease cannot reach an interceptor, we will tell you the space will not work rather than proposing something creative. Creative solutions to those two problems are how restaurants fail inspection.
FAQ
Common questions
- What decides whether a space can be a restaurant?
- Exhaust path to the roof, grease routing to an interceptor, and electrical capacity. All three are checkable before signing.
- Why is the hood so expensive?
- It is a system — hood, ductwork, fan, fire suppression and balanced make-up air, not a single item.
- Why does the dining room smell of the kitchen?
- Unbalanced make-up air. The room goes negative and pulls kitchen air into it.
- Is existing power usually enough?
- Rarely, in space that was previously retail.
The hard parts
The Hood & Make-Up Air
commercial kitchen hood exhaust makeup air cost
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Grease & Drainage
grease interceptor restaurant requirement florida
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Health Department Review
restaurant plan review health department florida
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The Landlord's Delivered Condition
restaurant lease landlord work letter tenant improvement
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The Rent Clock
restaurant construction delay cost rent commencement
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.