The question every operator asks first is “how long will this take?” The honest answer is that it depends more on the space and the approvals than on the construction, and that the phases most people underestimate are the ones before anyone picks up a tool.
What follows is the actual sequence. Durations are typical ranges for Ontario projects, not promises — a second-generation café in a cooperative municipality moves faster than a change-of-use grocery fit-out in a busy one.
The phases, end to end
| Phase | Typical duration | Runs in parallel with |
|---|---|---|
| Feasibility and site review | 1–3 weeks | Lease negotiation |
| Concept and layout | 1–2 weeks | Equipment selection |
| Construction documents | 3–5 weeks | Equipment quoting |
| Permit and plan review | 4–8 weeks | Long-lead equipment orders |
| Construction | 8–16 weeks | Equipment delivery |
| Equipment install and commissioning | 1–3 weeks | Final inspections |
| Inspections and occupancy | 1–2 weeks | Staff training, stocking |
Add those up and a realistic range for a typical restaurant project is roughly four to seven months from signed lease to open doors. Cold shells and change-of-use projects sit at the top of that range or beyond it. A clean second-generation space with a compatible menu can beat it.
Phase 1 — Feasibility and site review
Before anything is drawn, someone should establish that the project works: zoning permits the use, the services exist or can be brought in, the exhaust has a route, and the budget and the concept are in the same universe.
This is the cheapest phase to spend time in and the most expensive one to skip. It is also the only phase where the answer can be “not this space” without costing you anything but a walkthrough.
What you should have at the end: a go or no-go on the unit, a preliminary budget range, and a list of the things that need verifying.
Phase 2 — Concept and layout
The kitchen layout and the menu are the same decision. Every piece of cooking equipment carries ventilation, gas, electrical and fire-suppression implications, so the equipment schedule has to be settled before the drawings can be finished.
This is where operators are tempted to leave options open. Resist it. A menu change after the drawings are stamped is not a minor revision — it is a re-review.
What you should have at the end: a floor plan, a fixed equipment schedule, and a seating count you can live with.
Phase 3 — Construction documents
Architectural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing drawings, coordinated against each other and against the equipment schedule, prepared to the standard the building department and the health unit require.
The quality of this package determines your permit timeline more than anything else. A set where the equipment layout and the mechanical drawings disagree about hood coverage will come back with comments, and every comment letter costs a full review cycle.
What you should have at the end: a stamped, complete, internally consistent submission package.
Phase 4 — Permit and plan review
Two submissions to two different authorities, and they should run at the same time:
- Building permit — municipal building department. Code compliance, structure, life safety.
- Food premises plan review — your local public health unit. Finishes, sink counts and placement, food flow, storage, equipment certification.
TSSA (gas appliances) and ESA (electrical) come later, tied to installation milestones rather than to this stage.
This is the phase you control least. Municipal review queues belong to the municipality, and no fee or relationship accelerates a statutory review. What you control is submitting a complete package the first time and answering comments in days rather than weeks.
Order long-lead equipment during this phase. Not after permit issuance. Walk-in coolers, custom hoods, refrigeration and millwork have lead times that will otherwise sit on the critical path at the end of the project, when they are most expensive to wait for.
Phase 5 — Construction
Demolition, framing, mechanical and electrical rough-in, plumbing, drywall, finishes. Inspections happen at defined milestones — rough-in has to be inspected before it is covered, which means the schedule has to accommodate inspector availability rather than assuming it.
The realistic range is eight to sixteen weeks for a typical restaurant. What moves it:
- Scope discovered after demolition. Opening a ceiling or a wall in an older building reveals things. Some of them are expensive.
- Change orders. Every mid-build change costs more than the same decision made on paper.
- Trade availability. Especially mechanical and refrigeration.
- Inspection scheduling. Not instantaneous, and not something you control.
Phase 6 — Equipment install and commissioning
Equipment is set, connected, and commissioned. Gas appliances need TSSA involvement. Refrigeration needs charging and balancing. The hood and make-up air system needs to be balanced as a system, which is a specific piece of work that is easy to leave until too late.
This is where a project that ordered late discovers the problem. A walk-in cooler that arrives in week fourteen delays a final inspection regardless of how clean the rest of the file is.
Phase 7 — Inspections and occupancy
Finals happen in a sequence, and occupancy depends on all of them:
- Fire suppression and life safety
- Gas (TSSA)
- Electrical (ESA)
- Building final
- Public health final
Any single outstanding deficiency holds the chain. This is the phase where an announced opening date becomes a liability, because a re-inspection is not same-day.
Where the money actually goes out
Cash flow rarely matches the schedule, and this is worth planning for:
- Deposit and first months’ rent — at lease signing, before anything is built.
- Design fees — front-loaded, in phases 2 and 3.
- Permit fees — at application.
- Equipment deposits — during permit review, because of lead times.
- Construction draws — through phase 5, typically against progress.
- Equipment balance — on delivery, before you have any revenue.
- Opening costs — staff, stock, marketing, POS, smallwares.
The gap that catches people is between the equipment balance and the first day of trading. Those costs land close together and neither of them waits.
The four places schedules actually slip
An incomplete first permit submission. The single most common cause. A resubmission is not a quick correction, it is a full cycle, and it goes back into the queue behind everything filed since.
Late menu or equipment changes. Adding a fryer or a charbroiler after drawings are stamped changes hood type, exhaust volume, make-up air, fire suppression and possibly gas and electrical load.
Long-lead equipment ordered too late. Ordering after permit issuance rather than during review can put a twelve-week item on a schedule that had eight weeks left.
Unpermitted existing work. Found during review, corrected on your budget and your schedule.
Setting an opening date
Do not announce the earliest date that is theoretically achievable. Announce one with float in it.
The costs of missing an opening are real and mostly invisible in a budget: staff hired and paid before there is revenue, perishable stock ordered against a date, marketing spent driving people to a closed door, and a launch that lands flat because it happened twice.
If you want a date you can defend publicly, take the realistic timeline and add the length of one permit review cycle. If nothing goes wrong you open early, which is a problem worth having.
What we would tell you on a call
Most projects that run long did not run long during construction. They ran long in approvals, and the approval delay was usually set in motion months earlier by an incomplete package, a late decision, or a space whose problems were not identified before signing.
The phases you can genuinely compress are the ones at the front, and you compress them by making decisions earlier, not by moving faster.
