Restaurant & Bar Fit-Out

Every restaurant fit-out that struggles at opening struggles for the same reason: the dining room was drawn before anyone worked out how many covers the kitchen could support, at what turn time, on a Saturday night in August. We start with a covers model — seat count, expected turn time, peak-hour throughput and menu complexity — because that model sizes the kitchen, not the other way round.

A kitchen built for forty covers on a simple grill menu looks nothing like one built for forty covers on a multi-station à la carte concept. Getting the covers model right before a wall is drawn is the difference between a kitchen that can run a full house and one that buckles on the busiest night of the year.

Size the kitchen from the covers model, not the dining room drawing. The kitchen decides how many covers the room can actually serve.

The most expensive surprise in a Greek restaurant fit-out is not the equipment; it is the smoke. Kitchen extraction has to be routed and discharged the way the building and the municipality require, which in an apartment block often means a duct taken up to the roof. A unit with no route for that duct cannot host a real kitchen, however good the lease looks.

So the extraction route is the first thing we check in the survey, before layout and before pricing. From there the cook line, wash-up and cold storage are laid out to keep raw and cooked flows apart, finishes are specified for hygiene, and the extraction is sized to the grill, fryer and oven load the menu actually needs.

Seating layout, table spacing and lighting are not decoration decisions: they set how many covers a room can turn per service and how long a guest is comfortable staying. A room built too tight kills the experience; a room built too loose leaves covers on the table every night the restaurant is full.

In Greece half the year's covers are often outdoors, so the terrace is designed with the room, not after it: a layout that fits the municipal pavement permit, shade, furniture that survives sun and wind, and lighting that works after dark. Indoors we choose sealed flooring, wipeable upholstery and lighting that flatters food without overheating a packed room in July.

A single restaurant tolerates individual decisions. A brand with several locations cannot: a guest who visits three branches expects the same counter, the same lighting and the same menu board in each. We build one reference unit, lock every material and equipment decision in a specification pack, and price every following unit against that pack.

What makes a rollout work is refusing site-by-site improvisation. Where a unit's shell differs from the reference — a lower ceiling, an awkward column, a narrower frontage — the specification is adapted on paper before work starts, not solved on site by whoever is there that day.

A rollout succeeds by refusing improvisation. Every deviation from the reference unit is solved on paper, before it becomes a site decision.

In Greece a food business opens under the rules for premises of health interest: an operating notification, a kitchen that meets food-hygiene (HACCP) requirements, fire-safety documentation and, where music is played, a municipal music permit; a pavement terrace needs its own permit. Each has its own paperwork and sequence, and leaving them until the build is finished routinely pushes back an opening date already agreed with a landlord or franchisor.

Your engineer or consultant files them; we prepare the drawings and specifications in parallel with construction, from the same file that goes into the build, so the inspection and the fit-out reach completion together. For a seasonal island or beach business, that parallel running is the difference between opening for the season and opening for the last weeks of it.