You signed a lease (or you're about to), and the question on your mind is the same one every operator asks first: how soon can I open? A typical QSR refresh is open in 7–12 weeks from lease signing; a full-service restaurant in 12–18; a bare-shell new build in 18–24. Buildup hits the short end of those ranges by sequencing permits in parallel with design, pre-ordering long-lead kitchen equipment the day a contract is signed, and stacking trades so nobody is waiting on anyone else.
Here's what each of those weeks actually looks like on the ground, who from the city walks through, and what you should be doing alongside us to keep the schedule honest.
This phase decides whether your project opens fast or slow. Construction is mostly mechanical once it starts; pre-construction is where decisions get made, drawings get stamped, and permits start moving. We run design, engineering, and permit prep in overlap rather than back-to-back, which is where most of the time savings on a Buildup job come from.
We meet you at the space, walk it with a tape measure and a camera, and pull the landlord's work letter apart line by line. The questions we're answering this week: what did the previous tenant leave behind that you can reuse, what does the landlord owe you (HVAC capacity, electrical service, sprinkler relocation, washroom rough-ins), and what does your concept actually need that the box doesn't have yet. By the end of the week you have an honest scope, a working budget range, and a contract to sign if we're a fit. If you want to see the kinds of jobs we walk into, our project experience page shows what's typical.
Your architect, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer get going. Floor plan, kitchen layout, hood and fresh-air system sizing, electrical load calculation, plumbing layout, accessible washroom layout. The kitchen equipment list gets locked this week — that's the trigger to pre-order anything with a long lead. (Our companion piece on restaurant equipment lead times in 2026 covers what to order when.) We also run a pre-application chat with the city's plan reviewer where it saves weeks downstream, especially in Toronto and Markham.
The permit drawings go to the city's Building Division. The plan reviewer reads them, the plumbing reviewer flags grease-trap and fixture-count questions, and the fire-protection reviewer signs off on the kitchen exhaust and fire-suppression scheme. Toronto Public Health (or Peel/York Public Health, depending on city) reviews the kitchen layout for handwash placement, three-compartment sink location, and finish materials. While that's in motion we file paperwork so the gas inspection can be scheduled the moment piping is ready, and we get the electrical inspector (ESA) on notice. We don't sit and wait on permit review — long-lead equipment is already on order, and the trades are scheduled for the week the permit is expected back. If you want a city-by-city read on how long this realistically takes, we maintain a GTA permit timeline comparison and a complete 2026 permit guide. Coordinating all of this is the bulk of our pre-construction and project management work.
The permit's issued, the kitchen is on a truck, and the trades start. From here, schedule depends on how disciplined the coordination is — not on how fast any one trade can move.
Old finishes, old equipment, and anything the landlord doesn't want kept gets stripped out. Dust barriers go up between you and the neighbours (the dry cleaner two doors down should not smell your demo). If the landlord's removing their own equipment, that has to happen this week or it pushes everything behind it. We dispose of waste, document the existing slab and walls before we cover anything, and do a structural look at any wall that's coming out.
Three trades in the same ceiling at the same time. The HVAC ductwork, the kitchen exhaust hood and the fresh-air ducting have to share the ceiling cavity, and there's never as much room as the drawings suggest. The electrician runs conduit to the panel and pulls service upgrades if the panel is too small for your equipment list. The plumber sets the underslab drains and sets the rough-in for sinks, the grease trap, and the washrooms. The plumbing inspector walks the rough-in to sign off before drywall goes up — if that inspection isn't booked for the right day, framing waits, and that's where schedules break.
Walls and partitions go in: kitchen line, washroom enclosures, any office or storage walls, fire-rated separations between you and the neighbouring tenants. Before drywall closes everything in, the building inspector does a mid-wall walk to confirm the framing, blocking, and any fire-rated assemblies are right. Drywall goes on, gets taped and sanded.
Sinks, faucets, toilets, the grease trap, and the floor drains get connected. The gas piping gets pressure-tested, and the gas inspector (TSSA) gets scheduled to walk the line and certify the turn-on. Your kitchen equipment lands and gets set in place: hood, range, fryers, walk-in cooler, prep tables, three-compartment sink, handwash sinks. The hood and the fresh-air system get hooked up to each other and balanced — that's a tuning step, not a flip-the-switch step.
Flooring, paint, ceiling tile or open-ceiling treatment, millwork (host stand, bar, banquettes, service stations), light fixtures, your dining furniture, signage prep. This is the 30% of the schedule that decides how the room actually feels. Millwork is the trade most likely to slip a week because of a measurement issue — we bring the millworker to the pre-construction meeting specifically to head that off.
A working week of inspections, often staggered across two weeks because each agency has its own calendar:
Each one can ask for a small correction. We schedule them in an order that lets a correction on Monday be fixed by Wednesday and re-walked by Friday.
We hand you the keys, walk the punchlist with you, and your team trains on the equipment. Soft opens to friends and family for two or three nights so the kitchen finds its rhythm before paying customers walk in. Then you open. We're back the following week to close the punchlist out.
A few things can stretch a build-out, and they're all things we plan for at the start instead of reacting to later.
Permit resubmissions can add a couple of weeks each, which is why we submit a complete package the first time — drawings stamped, code references right, the plumbing reviewer's standard questions answered before they're asked.
Long-lead kitchen equipment — custom hoods, walk-in coolers built to a non-standard size, branded signage, custom millwork — can run six to twelve weeks. We pre-order it the week the contract is signed, not the week the permit comes back.
Landlord-side work like an HVAC unit replacement, a sprinkler relocation, or a service upgrade has to be on the landlord's schedule, not yours. We push for written start and finish dates from the landlord during lease review so it doesn't become your delay.
Inspection scheduling in Toronto's busy season can sit a week before someone walks. We book inspections as forward-looking placeholders the day the permit is issued and reschedule rather than wait in line.
Scope changes mid-project — "can we add a second bar back here?" — are the single biggest cause of slipped opening dates. We'll give you a clean answer on what a change costs in dollars and days before we touch a tool, so the call is yours with full information.
Q: Can I open in 3 months from lease signing? A: For a QSR refresh in a former food space — yes, that's the short end of the 7–12 week range, and we hit it regularly. For a full-service restaurant or anything with a custom hood and millwork, three months is tight; plan for 12–18 weeks and treat anything faster as a bonus.
Q: What can I do during the permitting weeks to save time later? A: Lock your equipment list and place the orders, sign off on the finish package, hire your chef early enough that they're part of the kitchen-layout review, and start your hiring and training plan. Permitting is the only stretch where the operator's parallel work matters as much as the contractor's.
Q: Should I sign the lease before getting a quote? A: No. The slab, the electrical panel, the existing ventilation, and the landlord's work-letter scope all change the number meaningfully. We'll walk a space with you before you sign — the walk is free, and it has saved operators six figures more than once. Reach us here.
Q: How long does the permit itself take in Toronto vs. the 905? A: It depends on city and scope, but Toronto restaurant permits typically run 4–8 weeks for a clean tenant-improvement submission; Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, and Richmond Hill are often faster on simple scopes and slower on heavy-ventilation kitchens. We've broken down the permit timelines city by city for operators choosing where to open.
Q: What's the single biggest reason restaurants miss their opening date? A: Long-lead kitchen equipment that wasn't ordered early enough. The hood, the walk-in cooler, and any custom millwork are the items that hold a job hostage if they ship in week 8 instead of week 4. See our equipment lead-time guide.
Q: Do I need to be on site every day? A: No, and we don't recommend it. We send weekly progress reports with photos and a dated schedule so you know where things stand. You should be on site for the design walk-through, the rough-in walk before drywall, and the pre-opening punchlist — three visits in a 12-week schedule, not 60.
Q: What if the landlord's HVAC isn't ready when my construction is? A: That's the conversation we want to have at lease-review, not week 6. If the landlord's scope slips, your construction sequence has to flex around it; we keep an alternate sequence ready so we're not paying trades to stand still. More on how we coordinate this on the project management page.
Q: Can you compress the schedule if I pay for overtime? A: Sometimes — finishes and millwork respond to overtime, but inspections and permits don't. We'll tell you honestly which weeks have slack you can buy and which weeks are fixed.
If you've signed a lease (or you're about to), the fastest way to get an honest week-by-week schedule for your specific space is a site walk. Call 647-477-7999 or send us your address and target opening date and we'll give you a real timeline, not a generic range. More questions answered on our FAQ page, and you can see the kinds of restaurants we've delivered on our project experience page. For a full read on what those weeks cost in 2026 dollars, the Toronto restaurant build-out cost guide is the companion piece to this one.