Restaurant fit out cost in Dubai runs from about AED 350 per square foot for a simple cafe to AED 1,500 per square foot for fine dining, before kitchen equipment and furniture. A 1,500 sqft casual restaurant lands between AED 675,000 and AED 1.1 million all in. The fit-out itself usually takes 10 to 16 weeks on site, but the approvals before it decide your opening date, and they take 8 to 14 weeks if someone plans them properly.
Most restaurant budgets break because the owner prices the joinery and forgets that the design has to pass three separate approvals before a single wall comes down. The layout you draw on day one isn’t the layout you build. Food safety rules, fire rules and the landlord’s own technical guidelines all move walls, drains and ducts. Price the fit-out after the drawings pass, or keep a real contingency.
The cost bands that hold up
These bands come from projects we have run and tendered in Dubai. Treat them as planning figures, not quotes. Fit-out cost depends on the condition of the unit, the authority that controls it and how much MEP the kitchen needs.
- Cafe or grab-and-go: AED 350 to 550 per sqft. Counter joinery dominates the budget. A 600 to 900 sqft unit costs AED 210,000 to 500,000.
- Casual dining: AED 450 to 750 per sqft. A 1,200 to 1,800 sqft restaurant costs AED 540,000 to 1.35 million. Kitchens get bigger, extract gets serious, toilets multiply.
- Fine dining: AED 750 to 1,500 per sqft. Stone, bronze, acoustic joinery, heavy joinery bulkheads. A 2,000 sqft unit runs AED 1.5 to 3 million.
These figures cover construction and MEP. Add kitchen equipment, smallware, furniture and tableware on top: budget another 15 to 25 percent of the fit-out sum for a casual restaurant, more for a kitchen-heavy concept.
Where the money actually goes
The kitchen is the cost centre. A commercial kitchen with extract, grease traps, stainless fabrication, gas and drainage easily takes 30 to 40 percent of the construction budget on a casual site, and it’s the part guests never see. The front of house gets the marble and the lighting; the back of house gets the money.
MEP as a whole runs 30 to 40 percent of most restaurant fit-outs. Extract is the line item that surprises people. A proper kitchen extract system with a fire-rated riser, fans on the roof and access for cleaning can cost AED 80,000 to 250,000 depending on the route to outside air and the length of the duct run. In a mall you share a riser with the landlord’s rules; in a standalone building you may need to core a new one.
The approvals that set your opening date
Three approvals run before or alongside the fit-out, and every one of them can change the design.
The fit-out permit itself. Which authority issues it depends on where the unit sits. Dubai Municipality covers much of the city through its building permit system. Trakhees covers Palm, Nakheel and several older master communities. Free zones like DMCC and TECOM run their own portals with their own drawing rules. DDA covers Internet City, Media City and d3. Budget AED 2,000 to 10,000 in permit fees and 10 to 20 working days per review round, and assume at least one correction round. We wrote a separate piece on which approvals you actually need before work starts; the same logic applies here with a commercial twist.
Civil Defence. Dubai Civil Defence signs off the fire protection: alarm, sprinklers where required, emergency lighting, fire extinguisher placement and the kitchen suppression system over the cooking line. The review runs in parallel with the fit-out permit, never after it, or you lose weeks. Civil Defence also inspects before handover, and they’ll fail a clean installation for a missing extinguisher bracket.
The food establishment approval. Dubai Municipality’s Food Safety Department approves the kitchen layout before you build it, and inspects before you open. The layout has to show separation between clean and dirty flows, handwash basins at every work station, backflow protection on drains, smooth cleanable finishes and enough refrigeration for the menu. Get this review wrong and you re-cut benches and re-run drains after the screed is down, which is the most expensive way to learn the rules.
On top of those three, the landlord adds its own layer. Mall operators hand you a technical guidelines document that runs to dozens of pages: fire shutters, shopfront specs, delivery and night-work rules, approved contractor lists, noise limits on plant. In a mall, the operator inspects and snags your fit-out before it lets you trade, so their guidelines are as binding as the permit.
A realistic programme
Count backwards from the opening date and it looks like this for a 1,500 sqft casual restaurant:
- Design and concept coordination: 4 to 6 weeks.
- Permit and authority approvals, run in parallel where allowed: 8 to 14 weeks.
- Procurement of long-lead items (extract fans, stone, fabricated stainless, joinery): 6 to 10 weeks, mostly overlapping approvals.
- Site works: 10 to 16 weeks.
- Authority inspections, fixes and handover: 2 to 4 weeks.
Total: roughly 5 to 7 months from signed lease to first cover, if nothing stalls. The common stall is a kitchen layout that fails the food plan review at week 10, because that sends the MEP drawings back through both the permit and Civil Defence routes.
What moves the number up and down
Four things swing the per-sqft figure more than anything else.
The first is the condition of the shell. A unit with an existing extract riser, capped drainage in the right places and a live power connection starts AED 50 to 100 per sqft cheaper than a raw shell where you bring all services in.
The second is toilet provision. Ratio rules mean more cubicles than you expect on larger floors, and every cubicle is a plumbing stack, a partition run and a ventilation problem. Moving toilets mid-project is the single most common variation we see on restaurant jobs.
The third is the acoustics package. Restaurants need absorption in ceilings and joinery or the room fights the conversation. Budget AED 30,000 to 120,000 for a mid-size room done properly, hidden inside joinery and ceiling details.
The fourth is who holds the design risk. The same drawings sent to five contractors produce five different exclusions lists. We cover how to read that in our piece on comparing renovation quotes in Dubai, and the logic carries straight over to restaurant tenders.
Budgeting without surprises
Keep three lines separate from day one: fit-out works, kitchen equipment and FF&E, and authority fees plus deposits. Mall fit-outs also carry a marketing or fit-out contribution deposit that the operator returns if you finish on schedule; miss the date and it costs real money. Add a contingency of 10 percent on the works and hold it against the kitchen and the MEP, because that’s where the drawings meet reality.
If you’re weighing a restaurant against other commercial uses, our breakdown of office fit-out costs, CAT A versus CAT B shows how a simpler commercial fit-out prices out for comparison.
If you’re planning a restaurant or cafe unit in Dubai and want the numbers checked against a specific space, we’re happy to look at the drawings. A short consultation before you sign the lease is cheaper than a layout change after it.
