Published: September 26, 2026 · Last reviewed: September 2026 · Reviewed by: Buildup Contracting Estimating Team · Service area: Toronto & GTA
Planning numbers, not a quote — your space, your lease and your municipality decide the specifics.
Restaurant construction in Durham Region costs the same per square foot as the rest of Toronto & the GTA in 2026: $70–120/sf for a quick-service refresh, $120–180/sf for a café or bubble tea shop, $180–300/sf for full-service and $300+/sf for hotpot or Korean BBQ. What changes in Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa is who reviews what: the Durham Region Health Department handles the food-premises review, each town or city's own building department issues the building permit, and the Region's works department governs your grease interceptor through the sanitary sewer use by-law. Most of our Durham build-outs open in 4–9 weeks of construction; full-service restaurants run 8–16 weeks. We serve Durham from our Richmond Hill headquarters, about 40 minutes across the 407.
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Get a build-out estimate → or call 647-477-7999Operators who have opened in Toronto and then sign a lease in Whitby expect the same process with fewer headaches. The process is similar; the map of who signs what is not. Durham is a two-tier region. The Regional Municipality of Durham handles health, water and sanitary sewer. The eight lower-tier municipalities, and for restaurant work that mostly means Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Pickering and Clarington, each run their own building department, zoning by-law, sign by-law, fire service and business licensing.
In practice that means a single restaurant in Oshawa deals with the City of Oshawa for the building permit, sign permit and zoning; Oshawa Fire Services for the suppression system and fire-code items; the Durham Region Health Department for the food-premises plan review and pre-opening inspection; Durham Region Works for the grease interceptor and sanitary discharge; and, as everywhere in Ontario, ESA for electrical and TSSA for gas. Move one exit east to Whitby and the health, works, ESA and TSSA contacts stay the same while the building, fire and licensing contacts change.
None of this is harder than Toronto. It is simply a different set of desks, and a contractor who works Durham regularly already knows which desk wants which drawing.
Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa each issue building permits through their own building services division. Review times for a restaurant tenant improvement have been comparable to the rest of the GTA in 2026: 4–7 weeks for a clean first submission, with each resubmission adding 2–3 weeks. Smaller building departments can be faster when they are quiet and slower when a big subdivision phase lands on their desk, so we ask the examiner about current turnaround at intake rather than assuming.
Change of use is the same trap as everywhere. If the unit was a dollar store or a phone shop, the change of occupancy to a restaurant adds 30–60+ business days of zoning and code review. Confirm permitted use at the address before you sign anything.
This is the biggest procedural difference from Toronto. Toronto Public Health does not exist in Durham. The Durham Region Health Department reviews your food-premises plans, which means submitting a kitchen layout with equipment schedule, finish specifications for floors, walls and ceilings, hand-sink locations, dishwashing and sanitizing set-up, refrigeration and storage, and washroom provisions. A public health inspector then does a pre-opening inspection before you serve. Submit the health package the same week as the building permit. Two or three weeks of review is typical; a late submission is a late opening.
The Region of Durham owns and operates the sanitary sewer system, and its sewer use by-law sets the requirements for grease interceptors on food-service discharge. Whether you need an in-ground interceptor or an under-sink hydromechanical unit depends on your fixture count and menu, and the sizing follows the Ontario Building Code's plumbing provisions. We size it with the plumbing designer in week 2 so the slab cut, if there is one, is on the permit drawings and not discovered in week 9.
Each municipality's fire service reviews the fire-safety items on the permit drawings and verifies the kitchen hood suppression system and any fire alarm work at the end of the job. The requirements are the Ontario Fire Code and NFPA 96 for the hood, same as Toronto. The scheduling is local.
Sign permits come from the local municipality under its sign by-law and, in a plaza, must also satisfy the landlord's sign criteria. Plan 4–12 weeks and submit in week 3 with the building permit. Business licensing for eating establishments is also municipal. Patios in Durham are typically approved through the municipality and, in a plaza, through the landlord's site plan; Toronto's CafeTO program does not apply here, which for plaza units mostly means a simpler conversation about parking spaces and accessible routes.
Durham restaurant real estate is mostly plaza and strip-mall space along a handful of arterials, and each corridor has a typical unit type that shapes the build.
If your shortlist has a unit on Taunton and a unit on Kingston Road, you are comparing two different construction budgets even at the same rent. The former restaurant on Kingston Road may be a $90/sf refresh; the shell on Taunton may be $160/sf before the hood is ordered.
The newer Taunton Road and Harmony Road plazas usually lease on a work-letter basis. The landlord delivers a defined base building and you build the rest. Read the work letter line by line before you sign, because "restaurant-ready" is not a defined term. What we look for:
The single biggest cost swing in Durham is whether the unit was a restaurant before you. Here is how the two starting points compare for a typical 1,500 sf quick-service or casual concept:
| Item | Former restaurant unit | Bare shell (work letter) |
|---|---|---|
| Exhaust hood and duct | Often reusable if the hood is the right type and size; duct and fan usually need cleaning, sometimes replacement. $8K–20K to refit | New Type I hood package, duct to roof, make-up air. $25K–60K installed |
| Grease interceptor | Usually present; verify size, condition and that it was maintained. $0–8K to service or upsize | New in-ground or hydromechanical unit, including slab cut. $12K–35K installed |
| Gas line | Meter and piping exist; relocate and add drops to new equipment. $3K–10K | New meter set, piping from the stub, TSSA inspection. $8K–20K |
| Electrical | Panel often adequate for a similar concept; new circuits for new equipment. $10K–25K | Service upgrade if needed (6–14 weeks through the utility), new panel, all circuits. $25K–60K |
| Floors, walls, ceilings | Selective replacement; kitchen tile and FRP often redone for health | All new, kitchen and front of house |
| Washrooms | Usually exist; accessibility upgrades may be triggered | Built from scratch to current code, including barrier-free |
| Typical construction window | 4–9 weeks | 8–16 weeks |
A former restaurant unit is not automatically the cheaper choice. A 20-year-old hood that is the wrong type for your menu, a grease interceptor that has never been pumped, and a panel with no spare breakers can add up to a bare-shell budget with a former-restaurant timeline. That is exactly what a site walk is for.
Because so much Durham restaurant space is second- or third-generation, retrofit work is a large share of what we do here.
The questions we answer on the walk: Is the existing hood a Type I (grease-rated, for fryers, grills and woks) or a Type II (heat and steam only)? Is it long enough to cover your cook line with the overhang the code wants? Is the duct welded and liquid-tight, or is it a leaky rectangular box behind the drywall? Is the exhaust fan on the roof still working, and does it terminate far enough from the make-up air intake and the neighbour's HVAC? Is there a suppression system, and is it a ULC 300-listed wet-chemical system with a current tag? A hood that fails any of these is usually replaced rather than repaired, because the labour to cut open ceilings is the same either way.
Older Kingston Road units often have an in-ground interceptor under the kitchen floor that no one has opened in years. We lift the lid on the site walk. If it is intact and sized for your fixture load, it is a service and a new lid. If it is undersized or the baffles have failed, replacement means a slab cut, and that goes on the permit drawings. In units where an in-ground unit is impossible, a properly sized hydromechanical interceptor under the three-compartment sink is often accepted, and it avoids the slab entirely.
The trades, the equipment and the code are the same across Toronto & the GTA, so the construction ranges are the same. Land and rent are cheaper in Durham; build-out is not.
Add design and permit fees, kitchen equipment, furniture, POS and signage, then a 10–15% contingency. The one line that runs slightly higher in Durham than in central Toronto is mobilization for specialty trades that are based west of the region; we offset it by scheduling those trades in blocks rather than repeat visits.
Lease to opening in Durham follows the same 14–26 week range as the rest of the GTA. A realistic sequence for a former-restaurant unit on Kingston Road:
A bare shell on Taunton with a full-service concept follows the same sequence with an 8–16 week construction window and, if a hydro upgrade is involved, a utility lead time that has to be started in week 3.
Our team has delivered 100+ commercial build-outs, and the site walk is where most of the budget accuracy comes from. In a Durham plaza unit we check, in this order:
You get a written scope and budget range within one business day of the walk. If the unit is a bad fit, we say so before you sign, because a lease on a unit with no exhaust route is a problem no contractor can build you out of.
Buildup Contracting is headquartered in Richmond Hill and builds restaurants, retail and offices across Toronto & the GTA, including Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa and Clarington. Most of our build-outs open in 4–9 weeks of construction; full-service restaurants run 8–16 weeks. We carry WSIB and $5M commercial general liability, and every project comes with a 1-year workmanship warranty. The 407 puts most Durham units 35–50 minutes from our office, close enough for the same weekly site meetings and photo reports we run in Toronto. Recent work includes a Toronto quick-service restaurant taken from shell to opening-ready in 9 weeks, a national brand's take-out kitchen built inside a Vaughan gas-station convenience store that never closed, and a bubble tea shop build-out in Mississauga; the process on a Kingston Road unit is the same.
The building permit is reviewed and issued by each municipality's own building department. Food-premises plan review and the pre-opening inspection are handled by the Durham Region Health Department, not by a city health unit. Grease interceptor and sanitary discharge fall under the Region of Durham's sewer use by-law.
Rent is cheaper; construction is not. The trades, equipment and code requirements are the same across the GTA, so the per-square-foot ranges are the same: $70–120/sf for a QSR refresh up to $300+/sf for hotpot or BBQ. The savings in Durham come from the lease, not the build.
Most of our build-outs open in 4–9 weeks of construction; full-service restaurants run 8–16 weeks. With design and permits in front, plan 14–26 weeks from lease signing to opening, the same as elsewhere in the GTA.
It depends on what the former restaurant left behind. A working Type I hood, a maintained grease interceptor and an adequate electrical panel can save $50K–100K and a month of schedule. A worn-out hood, a failed interceptor and a full panel can erase that advantage. Walk it with a contractor before you decide.
Yes. We serve all of Durham Region from our Richmond Hill headquarters, along with the rest of Toronto & the GTA. The site walk is free wherever the unit is.
Buildup Contracting builds restaurants, retail and offices across Toronto & the GTA. See our restaurant construction services and recent projects, or book a free site walk — written scope and estimate within one business day.
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What happens when you get in touch
You deal with Lev directly. He does the site walk and writes the scope — not a salesperson who hands you off.
A written scope and a first read on budget within one business day.
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Planning a build-out
Buildup Contracting builds offices, retail stores and restaurants across the Greater Toronto Area — permits, trades and inspections on one contract, with a written scope and a first read on budget within one business day of the site walk.
Restaurant constructionRetail fit-outsOffice and commercial TIFranchise and multi-unitLandlords and property managers
Building in a specific city? These pages cover the local approvals, the departments that review them, and what usually moves the schedule there.
More of the research we use to scope real projects:
Commercial kitchen design mistakesChoosing a restaurant contractorOffice fit-out costs in TorontoBubble tea shop build-outsLease-to-opening checklistChoosing a renovation contractorAll guides
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