Southwestern Ontario
Restaurant and food buildouts in London.
London has a deep supply of mall and plaza inline units, where the landlord criteria and the building’s existing services shape the project as much as the code does.
Book a free consultationWho signs off on your project here
Two separate approvals, two separate authorities.
A food premises in Ontario needs a municipal building permit and a public health review, and they are not the same submission. In London they go to these two:
Public health review
Middlesex-London Health Unit
Serves the City of London and Middlesex County.
Their food premises page ↗Building permit
City of London Building Division
Issues the permit and carries out the building inspections.
Their permit page ↗Anyone operating a food premises in Middlesex-London is required by the Health Protection and Promotion Act to notify the Medical Officer of Health, and floor plans are submitted to the health unit for review.
Verified against each authority's own published material in September 2026. Processes and requirements change, and the only answer that counts for your project is the one the authority having jurisdiction gives for your address — check both before you rely on anything here.
On the ground
What is different about building in London
Inline mall units answer to two rulebooks
A unit inside an enclosed mall has to satisfy the building code and the landlord’s design criteria, and the second is often the tighter of the two. Shopfront treatment, signage, hours of work, delivery routes and the tenant coordinator sign-off all sit on the critical path alongside the permit.
Work hours are a schedule risk, not a detail
Malls commonly restrict construction to overnight windows, which lengthens a build that would take eight weeks in a stand-alone unit. That belongs in the schedule from the first day, not discovered in week three.
Franchise standards and code both have to be met
A franchisor drawing set is written for a generic unit. It still has to be reconciled against this building, this health unit and this municipality - and where brand standard and code disagree, code wins and the brand has to approve the deviation.
What it costs here
London buildout ranges, per square foot
These are the same figures our public cost calculator uses, with the kitchener–waterloo, guelph, cambridge, london market factor applied and a second-generation space assumed. A cold shell runs higher; an operating refresh runs lower.
Projects
Work in and around London
London projects
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