I'm opening up a fast food rest. How much $ to install an exhaust in a space that was not prev a restaurant

I'm deciding whether it is cheaper to buy an existing restaurant and re-model it to meet my needs or to just buy a space and convert it to a restaurant. Just wondering if anyone out there has been though the process of opening up thier own restaurant and could tell me how much will it cost to install the exhaust and add the other features, such as spinklers etc, to insure the space is up to code.

Thanks so much for your input.

many of the things will be dependent on the area you are in, the exhaust hood will be nowhere near as expensive as a grease trap. Depending on the area you may need to cut the slab, install separate waste lines out to a huge grease trap in the parking lot, this can easily cost 10K+.

Depending on what the space was used for before and what height your ceiling is you may have to shorten or lengthen the height of any sprinklers that may already be in the space.

rules that I've run into that also raise costs: 2nd/3rd bathroom that customers can access without passing through the kitchen, replacing all the ceiling tiles with 'scrubable ones', all walls/ floors sealed and scrubable, floor drains, mop sinks, hand wash sinks, too little power to the space to push the refrigerators & other equipment you'll need.

A normal retail space being converted to a resturant will probably also need a larger/2nd AC unit.

Depending on the location some leasing agents may split some of these costs with you, but it will be much less expensive to start with a space that has already had a resturant.

call around your town and price things out. That is the best answer anyone can tell you.

My business partner and I looked at opening a coffee shop and then gave up when we spoke to the health department. We wanted to convert a building we owned. It would have cost a fortune.

The didn't like the hardwood floors. They wanted us to put in extra sinks and larger hot water tanks. They wanted two additional bathrooms. There was discussion about handicapped access. We didn't have a correct back door. They wanted to know how we would handle garbage and how often it would be taken outside and collected.

We sold the building and invested in the stock market.