How Much Does a
Commercial Kitchen Cost?

If you're opening a café, restaurant, pub kitchen, or upgrading a school servery, the first question is almost always the same: what's this going to cost? The honest answer is "it depends" — but that's not much use when you're trying to budget. Below are real, independently-sourced UK cost ranges, what actually drives the price up or down, and some lessons from projects we've completed across Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and the wider East Midlands.

What goes into the cost

A commercial kitchen fit-out is never just the ovens and worktops. A typical project breaks down roughly like this:

• Design & planning (10–15%) — layout, workflow, compliance checks against health and fire regulations
• Equipment (40–50%) — cooking suites, refrigeration, ventilation, sinks, dishwashers, fabrication
• Installation & labour (25–35%) — gas, electrics, plumbing, ventilation, commissioning and testing
• Compliance & certification (5–10%) — CP42, gas interlocking, fire suppression sign-off, building inspections

Typical cost ranges

Based on current UK industry data, most commercial kitchen projects fall into one of three bands:

• Small kitchens (cafés, takeaways, compact prep areas): roughly £20,000–£50,000
• Medium kitchens (full-service restaurants, pubs, busy catering operations): roughly £50,000–£100,000
• Large or high-spec kitchens (hotels, schools and colleges, multi-zone operations): typically £100,000–£150,000+, with bespoke or large-scale fabrication projects going higher still

One thing worth knowing if you're based in the East Midlands rather than London or the South East: labour and site costs here are generally lower, while equipment pricing is broadly similar nationwide — so your fit-out pound tends to go further here than the national headline figures suggest.

What actually drives the price

• Size and layout complexity — more zones (prep, cook, wash, storage) means more services to route and more labour
• Equipment specification — a basic café setup and a high-output restaurant kitchen are very different budgets
• Gas interlocking and ventilation — a legal requirement under BS6173, and a cost that's easy to underestimate
• New build vs working refurbishment — refurbishing a live kitchen around service hours generally costs more than fitting out an empty shell
• Compliance and certification needs — schools, care homes and NHS sites carry extra DBS, safeguarding and certification requirements

Real projects, real lessons

Every one of our completed projects illustrates a different cost driver in practice:

• Our Hurts Arms, Ambergate project shows how flood-resilience requirements (raised electrics, sealed cold rooms) can add cost that a standard fit-out wouldn't need
• Our fully-electric installation for Games Workshop Nottingham shows how removing gas from the spec entirely changes the ventilation and interlocking requirements — and the cost profile
• The canopy refurbishment at East Midlands Conference Centre is a good example of how a targeted upgrade (rather than a full strip-out) can bring compliance up to standard for a fraction of a full rebuild
• Our servery extension for Nottingham College Science Park reflects the budget realities of public-sector education projects, where value and durability matter as much as spec

What should be in your quote

Whoever you use, a proper quote should be fully itemised and cover: design and layout, equipment supply, installation labour (gas, electrical, plumbing), ventilation and gas interlocking, and certification (CP42 and any fire suppression sign-off). If a quote is a single lump figure with no breakdown, ask for one before you commit.