If you just signed a lease in Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan, or anywhere in the GTA, the question that decides your opening date isn't "what's my construction schedule?" It's "what equipment did I order on day one, and what slipped to week eight?"
Custom hoods, walk-ins, and millwork are the three items that decide whether you open on time. Order them at lease-signing. Standard ranges, fryers, and reach-ins can wait until the building permit issues. The rest of this article walks through exactly what we put on the equipment schedule the week your contract is signed, what we hold until permit-issue, and what we don't touch until drywall is up. Buildup maintains the equipment schedule and pre-orders so you don't fall behind — see how we run project management for the full picture.
These are the items that will not catch up to your construction schedule if you wait. Lock the design, sign the spec, and place the order before the permit drawings are even submitted.
Custom grease hoods. Built to spec for a non-standard cookline — hotpot, Korean BBQ, charcoal grill, wok line, or any layout that doesn't match a hood manufacturer's stock catalog. Lead time in 2026 is 6–12 weeks from approved shop drawings. The shop drawings themselves take another 1–3 weeks of back-and-forth with your ventilation engineer. If you want a real-world example of how a hotpot kitchen sequences this, our hotpot restaurant construction breakdown covers it.
Walk-in coolers and freezers. A standard modular walk-in (off-the-shelf panel sizes) ships in 4–6 weeks. The moment you need a custom panel size, a non-standard ceiling height, an integrated refrigerated prep room, or a remote condensing unit, you're at 8–10 weeks. Summer is peak manufacturing season — June through August orders typically run a week or two longer than the spec sheet says.
Custom millwork — bar, host stand, banquettes, service counter, back-bar. Consistently 6–12 weeks with a good shop. This is the single most common reason restaurants miss opening day. Millwork can't start fabrication until the floor plan is final, and it can't install until the floor and walls are done — which means any slip in design or construction compounds onto a fixed fabrication window.
Specialty pizza ovens. Brand-name conveyor ovens (Lincoln, Middleby, Picard) are 6–8 weeks if the dealer has stock allocation; longer if they don't. Wood-fired and specialty deck ovens (Marra Forni, Forno Bravo) are 10–16 weeks because most are built to order in Italy and shipped by sea. If wood-fired is part of the concept, this is a day-one order.
High-end espresso machines. La Marzocco and Slayer machines are 8–16 weeks depending on the model and configuration. The longest pole is custom paint and dual-boiler builds. If coffee is a marquee part of your concept, place this order the same week the lease is signed.
Once the building permit is in your hands and you have a real construction start date, place the orders that ship in two to four weeks. Holding these to permit-issue keeps your deposit money working and avoids a storage problem on a tight site.
These are commodity. Your equipment dealer or restaurant supply rep can quote them in a day. Don't bother negotiating exotic brands — pick mainstream and move on.
By the time the walls are closing in, place the small stuff. Pulling these orders forward only creates a storage and inventory headache.
These are the items operators come to us asking about specifically because the lead times surprise them.
Tandoor ovens. 8–12 weeks, sometimes longer. Most tandoors are imported from India, Pakistan, or the UK; the long pole is shipping plus customs clearance, not manufacturing. We've seen tandoors clear in three weeks and we've seen them stuck in customs for six. If your concept needs a tandoor, place the order the week you sign the lease and have your customs broker lined up before it leaves the foreign port.
Hotpot induction tabletops. Branded units (CookTek, Buffalo, Garland induction) run 4–8 weeks. Generic Chinese-import units are 2–3 weeks but you accept warranty and parts-replacement risk that a 30-table operation does not want. We typically push hotpot operators toward branded — replacing a failed induction unit during dinner service is not a fun phone call.
Korean BBQ tabletop grills with downdraft ventilation. 6–10 weeks. The downdraft ducting is the long pole; the grills themselves are quick. The whole assembly has to be coordinated with the hood and floor trench locations, which is why we want this order placed before the mechanical engineer finalizes the layout. For more on which hood type your concept actually needs, see our hood and exhaust guide.
Specialty wok ranges (commercial Cantonese-style 3-burner / 5-burner). 8–14 weeks if imported. North American-built equivalents (Town Food, Garland) are 4–6 weeks and worth the price difference for service-call convenience.
Most operators forget that the exterior sign is its own permit, on its own timeline, separate from the building permit. In Toronto, Mississauga, and Vaughan, sign permits commonly take 4–10 weeks depending on the city and whether the sign is illuminated, projects from the wall, or is on a heritage frontage.
Add another 4–6 weeks of fabrication once the sign permit is approved (channel letters, illuminated cabinets, vinyl, stand-offs).
That's a realistic 8–16 weeks from lease-signing to a sign on the wall. Apply for the sign permit the same week you sign the lease. This is the easiest opening-week embarrassment to avoid, and it's the most common one we see. The number of restaurants that open with a piece of vinyl taped to the window because the sign is still in fabrication is higher than it should be — and the fix is one form, two weeks earlier.
If your concept is a franchise, expect another 8–12 weeks because franchise signage usually has a single approved fabricator with their own queue. Loop them in at lease-signing too.
Patterns we see over and over on second-restaurant operators that first-time operators tend to learn the hard way:
This is the kind of schedule we run on every project — see how Buildup handles project management and examples from past restaurant builds.
Q: I just signed my lease — what do I order this week? A: Custom hood, walk-in cooler/freezer, custom millwork, and any specialty oven (wood-fired, tandoor, high-end espresso). Also the sign permit application. Everything else can wait until the building permit issues.
Q: Can I substitute a stock hood for the custom one to save lead time? A: Sometimes — but only if your cookline fits a stock hood's dimensions and the engineer signs off on the air-balance numbers. For most hotpot, Korean BBQ, charcoal, or wok-heavy concepts, the answer is no; stock hoods don't capture enough at the right velocity. Talk to your ventilation engineer before you assume this is a shortcut.
Q: How does my contractor know what's long-lead vs short-lead? A: A contractor who's done restaurant work knows the lead times by category and updates the equipment schedule weekly. On every Buildup project, we maintain a master equipment schedule with order dates, manufacturer ETAs, and delivery windows, and we pre-order long-lead items as soon as the contract is signed — well before the building permit issues.
Q: My equipment dealer says everything is "in stock." Should I believe them? A: For commodity items (stock fryers, stock reach-ins, three-compartment sinks), yes. For custom hoods, walk-ins, millwork, and specialty equipment, "in stock" usually means "we can get it" — which is not the same thing. Ask for the manufacturer name, the model number, and a written ETA. If they can't produce all three in 24 hours, it's not in stock.
Q: What if I'm doing a franchise build-out — does that change the equipment schedule? A: Yes. Franchise concepts usually have a single approved equipment supplier and a brand-spec equipment package. Lead times are often longer because the brand-approved fabricator has their own queue. Get the equipment package and PO in the franchisor's hands the week you sign the lease.
Q: How do equipment lead times affect my overall opening timeline? A: A typical GTA restaurant build-out runs 4–6 months from lease to opening, and the equipment schedule sits inside that. We've broken down the full sequence in our restaurant build-out timeline guide — long-lead equipment is one of the three things that most often pushes the opening date.
Q: I'm worried about the cost of pre-ordering equipment before construction starts. Is that risky? A: A 30–50% deposit is standard on custom equipment. The risk of pre-ordering is small compared to the cost of opening four weeks late and paying rent on a closed restaurant. For a fuller cost view, see our GTA restaurant build-out cost guide.
Q: Do equipment lead times depend on which GTA city I'm building in? A: Equipment lead times are continent-wide, not city-specific. What does change by city is the permit timeline that runs alongside it — see our Ontario restaurant permit guide for city-by-city specifics, and our restaurant construction page for how Buildup handles each.
If you're within a week of signing a lease — or you signed last week and the equipment list is still on a napkin — we can build the master schedule with you, place the long-lead orders, and run the deliveries to land in sequence with construction. Call 647-477-7999, email info@buildupcontracting.ca, or book a site walk through our contact page. More background in our FAQ.