Restaurant fit out in Cyprus, answered

A restaurant fit-out in Cyprus runs €700 to €2,100 per m² including kitchen extraction and grease management, with the middle of the market around €1,150 — roughly double a retail fit-out of the same floor area, which sits at €450 to €1,300 per m². The gap is not decoration. It is the extract system, the grease route, the incoming services and the drainage, and it is where nearly every question below eventually lands.

The ten questions we get most

1. Why does a restaurant cost so much more per square metre than a shop?
2. What is actually included in a quoted rate?
3. Does a change of use from retail to food service need a permit?
4. How is the extract system routed, and who decides where it terminates?
5. Is the incoming electrical supply large enough for the kitchen?
6. How long does a fit-out take from order to opening?
7. Should the kitchen be procured with the fit-out or separately?
8. Can the unit trade while part of the work runs?
9. Why are three quotes for the same unit so far apart?
10. How is a contractor's record checked before a contract is signed?

Short answers

Why restaurants cost more. A shop needs a floor, lighting, a shopfront and fixtures. A restaurant needs all of that plus a commercial kitchen, mechanical extract and make-up air, grease interception, water at catering volumes, gas or high-load electrical supply, fire suppression over the cooking line, acoustic treatment in the dining room and drainage that survives fat, heat and daily cleaning. The table below is the starting point; the split between front and back of house then moves a project within it.

What is in the rate. Normally: strip-out and disposal, partitions, ceilings, floor build-up and finishes, wall finishes, first and second fix electrical and plumbing, extract ductwork and fans, drainage alterations within the unit, decoration and making good. Normally not: the catering equipment itself, the point-of-sale and network hardware, loose furniture, signage, licences, and the professional fees for the drawings the permit depends on.

Change of use. Converting a retail or office unit to food service is a change of use, and it routes through the Department of Town Planning and Housing rather than being an internal matter between landlord and tenant. Certified drawings are prepared by a professional registered with ETEK, and the application sits with the owner, not the contractor. Extract termination, ventilation, drainage and means of escape are all in scope of that assessment.

Extract routing. The duct has to reach a discharge point acceptable in height, position and treatment. In a standalone building that is usually a roof run. In a mixed-use block with apartments above it is frequently the hardest single problem on the job, and it is a landlord and planning question before it is a ductwork question. Resolve it before a lease is signed, not after the kitchen is ordered.

Electrical supply. Combination ovens, induction, dishwash, refrigeration and comfort cooling together often exceed what the unit was originally supplied for. A capacity upgrade involves the Electricity Authority of Cyprus and carries a lead time no amount of site labour compresses. It is the most common reason a fit-out with no construction problems still opens late.

Programme. Set by procurement and approvals, not by trades. Extract plant, switchgear, joinery, shopfront glazing and catering equipment are ordered weeks before anyone on site benefits from them, and lead times stretch around the August shutdown.

Kitchen procurement. Buying the catering package separately usually saves margin and reliably costs coordination. Someone has to own the interface between equipment schedule, services drawing and builder's work — drain positions, supply points, canopy sizes, the wall construction behind heat sources. Where the owner buys direct, that role has to be named in writing and paid for.

Trading through the works. For a full fit-out, rarely. Partial trading is realistic where the works are front-of-house only and the kitchen and its services are untouched, and it carries a premium for out-of-hours working, protection and daily clear-down.

Why quotes diverge. Because each contractor priced a different job. The recurring gaps are the extract scope, who provides make-up air, whether drainage under the slab was allowed for, builder's work in connection with the catering equipment, and what "make good" covers.

Checking a contractor. By registration category and class, by documented completed projects of comparable value and type, and by references taken up directly. What this site records is registration detail and completed work, not opinion — and the useful question to a previous client is whether the final account matched the tender.

Where the answer depends

Three variables move the price more than the finishes anyone argues about.

The unit's previous use. Taking over a unit that was already a restaurant is a materially different job from converting a shop. An existing food unit comes with a duct route, a grease interceptor, a supply sized for catering and drainage designed for it. Those may need replacing, but the routes and the approvals precedent exist. A conversion from retail starts from none of it, and the cost of the first extract route and the first supply upgrade lands entirely here.

Where the unit sits in the building. A ground-floor unit in a Limassol high-rise with apartments above is constrained on duct termination, noise, vibration, delivery access and working hours in a way a standalone taverna is not. Limassol's rapid high-rise development has made balcony waterproofing and facade maintenance routine in that stock, and a restaurant cutting new penetrations through those elevations inherits the detail and the responsibility for it. Coastal frontage adds its own line: in Kato Paphos, salt-laden air makes galvanised and marine-grade fixings standard for external seating structures, awnings, condenser units and shopfront ironmongery.

The calendar. Seasonal resort trade concentrates refurbishment into November to March, because the covers are there for the rest of the year. In Ayia Napa and the surrounding resort strip that is a fixed window shared by every operator on the same coast, and contractor capacity in it is committed months ahead. A Nicosia or Limassol unit trades year round, so the question becomes how many weeks of closed trading the business can absorb rather than which weeks are available.

What nobody asks but should

What does the lease require at the end of it? Reinstatement obligations turn a fit-out into a future liability. A duct cut through a structural slab, an interceptor set into a floor, or a shopfront replaced to a new line may be cheap now and expensive at lease expiry, and that cost belongs in the appraisal.

Who owns the extract route in the landlord's building? The right to run a duct through common parts, across a roof or up an elevation is a property right, not a construction detail. Where it is not written into the lease, it is negotiable at the moment the tenant has least leverage.

What is behind the ceiling in a pre-2000 unit? Older Cypriot commercial stock can contain asbestos cement materials in soffits, flues and service ducts. A survey before demolition costs a fraction of stopping a strip-out halfway.

How will the kitchen be cleaned, and by whom? Grease management is a maintenance regime, not a product. Interceptor servicing intervals, duct cleaning access panels and canopy filter replacement should be designed in. A system with no access panels is cheaper to install and considerably more expensive to own.

Is the dining room acoustically survivable? Hard floors, glazed frontage, plaster ceilings and a full room produce a space guests leave early. Absorption is cheap at ceiling-void stage and disruptive to retrofit once trading.

What documentation arrives at handover? Commissioning records for extract and make-up air, electrical test certificates, gas certification where applicable, fire suppression sign-off and as-built drawings. These matter at licensing and at insurance renewal, and are far harder to obtain after the final payment.

Contractors documenting completed hospitality fit-out projects are listed by district in the sector and coverage sections of this site, alongside the restaurant fit-out pages that separate front-of-house and kitchen scopes.

Common questions

Should the fit-out be tendered on a drawn scope or a description?

On a drawn scope. Three quotes against a written description of intent will differ by more than the market ever would, because each contractor resolved the ambiguities differently. A drawn scope with an equipment schedule and a services layout costs money before tender and saves more at final account.

How much of a quote should be provisional sums?

Enough to cover what genuinely cannot be seen — drainage under a slab, the substrate behind a wall, the condition of an existing duct riser — and named individually. A quote on an older unit with no provisional sums has not removed the risk; it has hidden it, and it reappears as a variation priced without competition.

Does the contractor need a particular registration for restaurant work?

Registration is granted by category and by class, and the class caps the value of works that may lawfully be undertaken. There is no separate "restaurant" category, so the checks that matter are that the class covers the contract value, that electrical and mechanical works are carried out by appropriately qualified people, and that the contractor has completed food-service projects before. The first is verifiable in advance; the last is a matter of documented projects and references.

When should the licensing route be started?

Before the works, not during them. Change of use, extract termination, drainage and means of escape all feed the permit application, and the drawings that support it are the drawings the contractor prices from. Starting after demolition has begun is how a fit-out finishes on programme and still cannot open.

Contractors documenting hospitality fit-out projects

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