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PIZZA PIRATE - BUILD OUT COSTS

J

johnmorrison

New member
Met with contractor last week, working on bid. Could you share your build out costs for your new shop ? I was following your trenching and costs, need more info if you have the time - full costs , elect, hvac, plumbing, grease interceptor, hoods, ansul, flooring, rest rooms, misc,complete costs. would help a lot for many of us here THANKS !!! LOVE THAT ROBOT COUPE CL 50 !!!OTHER OPERATORS buildout costs welcome also ,thanks everyone !
 
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Honestly, I lost track of most of the expenses as they came in. It was like every day something came up that I didn’t account for and it all went way over budget. It was like I stuck my fingers in my ears and didn’t want to hear it. I should teach a business finance class 😦 Any way here is how it mostly broke down.
  1. Electrical was 10K I added a panel, all new outlets, used existing lighting and ran power to the roof.
  2. HVAC was 8K I added an ac unit to the existing
  3. Plumbing was 50K That included the grease interceptor, trenching, venting, sinks, re fills, patching ect. About 25K was just the grease interceptor
    4.The hood was 30K. Hood, fans, makeup air, fire suppression and installation. The installer told me he underbid and lost money on that one. My first bid was 40K
  4. Flooring was 15K. Tile in the dining area and epoxy in the kitchen.
  5. Restrooms we used the existing
  6. Signage 4K
  7. Plans and permits 35K. It was 6K fee to hook the interceptor to the system
  8. Demolition was 5K
  9. Walls, counters and general carpentry was 30K
  10. Ovens were 40K
  11. All the rest of the equipment was 40K combined
All in all we came in around 280K
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
Honestly, I lost track of most of the expenses as they came in. It was like every day something came up that I didn’t account for and it all went way over budget. It was like I stuck my fingers in my ears and didn’t want to hear it. I should teach a business finance class 😦 Any way here is how it mostly broke down.
  1. Electrical was 10K I added a panel, all new outlets, used existing lighting and ran power to the roof.
  2. HVAC was 8K I added an ac unit to the existing
  3. Plumbing was 50K That included the grease interceptor, trenching, venting, sinks, re fills, patching ect. About 25K was just the grease interceptor
    4.The hood was 30K. Hood, fans, makeup air, fire suppression and installation. The installer told me he underbid and lost money on that one. My first bid was 40K
  4. Flooring was 15K. Tile in the dining area and epoxy in the kitchen.
  5. Restrooms we used the existing
  6. Signage 4K
  7. Plans and permits 35K. It was 6K fee to hook the interceptor to the system
  8. Demolition was 5K
  9. Walls, counters and general carpentry was 30K
  10. Ovens were 40K
  11. All the rest of the equipment was 40K combined
All in all we came in around 280K
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OUCH!!!
What length hood? I typically use an estimate of $1,000.00 per foot for a tempered make-up air hood, how far off am I?
 
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GotRocks said:
OUCH!!!
What length hood? I typically use an estimate of $1,000.00 per foot for a tempered make-up air hood, how far off am I?
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Its like a 8 by 6. It’s a captive aire system. Supposed to be the best you can get. I don’t see any difference from our standard hoods. I don’t recommend.
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
Its like a 8 by 6. It’s a captive aire system. Supposed to be the best you can get. I don’t see any difference from our standard hoods. I don’t recommend.
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Captivaire! Great hood, but they pulled some garbage that hurt a few places

They lobbied our legislature to get a law passed where all hoods must be tempered MUA hoods, not just for new builds, but retroactive too.
Luckily the zoning people in my area are not enforcing that hood law change for existing properties until they are absolutely forced to do so.
But then a year ago, I saw a revision in the law by adding a clause that short-cycle hoods are acceptable as long as it does not reduce employee comfort.
My local state rep had a little bit with making that change happen after us bringing it to his attention, (he also owns a restaurant) and he went ballistic with a profanity laced tirade after seeing the law and knowing it would injure so many small independent business’s in the state.
He also went on about our idiotic “Must have a separate, dedicated mop sink” rule here too, and he’s working on getting that law yanked or changed too.
 
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We have had the dedicated mop sink for a good 30 years out here. We also must have a hand sink every 15 or 20 feet and we also had to put in a floor sink next to our cutter mixer because it is a clean in place piece of equipment. Those 2 sinks added a good 5 grand to the total
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
We have had the dedicated mop sink for a good 30 years out here. We also must have a hand sink every 15 or 20 feet and we also had to put in a floor sink next to our cutter mixer because it is a clean in place piece of equipment. Those 2 sinks added a good 5 grand to the total
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Ugh, Just ridiculousness IMHO.
I see no reason that the single dish/slop sink next to my hot-water dishmachine (with a 3-phase garbage disposal) is not good enough for mop water.
Especially when we have a 2-compartment dedicated food prep sink in house too.
But no! I had to get a friggin floor level mop sink in my darn mechanical room shoved in along with my HVAC & water heater. Many places in my area got the mop sinks installed, but they still dump their mop water in the parking lot just as they have always done for the previous decades.
 
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It seems the rules and regulations are being controlled by the company’s that provide the services these days, and NOT the actual governing body that is supposed to balance cost/safety, not just profits of what little thing i can get passed that will add 0.000000000000000000000000000001% good for the business or employee.
 
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Its like we have a sea of sinks

Dish sink
Prep sink
mop sink
2 hand sinks
6 floor sinks
2 bathroom sinks

They also must install a vent for each one. Its a maze of black pvc pipe over here.
 
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pizzapirate: How man square feet is your shop if you don’t mind me asking? Man, this reminds me why my wife and I left Sonoma County CA. The educational system is so bogged down in do not offend/intrude on anyone’s rights to the point that teaching there became the most stressful experience I have had to date. Then we were going to get our 800sqft 1930’s house repainted and the estimate was 28k- tent the house, special chemicals to remove the paint, ground cleanup… We ended up hiring a guy just out of San Quentin who was working on doing life on the positive and he charged $1,500. Walter
 
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thanks for that info! Boy that is a lot of $ for such a space. It was a great interest to me because I plan to open my own pizzeria in the next year or so. It help me realize I will need to find a site that is restaurant ready or pretty close to it. Walter
 
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thanks for that info! Boy that is a lot of $ for such a space. It was a great interest to me because I plan to open my own pizzeria in the next year or so. It help me realize I will need to find a site that is restaurant ready or pretty close to it. Walter
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In almost every case, it is easier and way more affordable to get a building that was already built out as a restaurant and has the plumbing and other items to make you build out more affordable
 
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This spot was built out as restaurant already. I thought it would save us more money that it did. Somethings, like the flooring, cost us more because we had to tear up and grind down the old floor. All I used from the old build out was the drop ceiling, the bathrooms, some electrical and a 4000 waterheater that they left behind.
 
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I have met with some commercial realtors and SCORE people. They all said that landlords will often pay for buildouts and add it to the rent. I am visualizing an existing space in the area that we want to locate to that is mostly ready for my setup. I will be keeping things very simple and hopefully 1000 sqft max. Walter
 
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I am thinking that Pizza Pirate’s build out is probably on the high end of the scale…I am sure in no small part due to his states (and maybe local) requirements. Every municipality is different. Keep in mind, he has an existing, high volume operations and no doubt bought equipment to support high volume similar to his other locations.

I did a full build out (including used or reconditioned equipment) in Michigan for about 90K. I sub’ed out the electrical, plumbing and mechanical, but did most of the rest of the interior alterations ourselves. It was a 1,000 sq ft delco that had been a restaurant in a previous life, but about the only thing we gained from that was the fact that the three phase electric had already been run to the space. We had hoped to use the existing restrooms, but were unpleasantly surprised to find that we had to move the restrooms to the front of the store so that they were publicly accessible. This contributed about 5-10K of the 90K.

My experience is probably on the low end, but I probably had to spend another 10K to “fix” or change things that either did not work, weren’t good work flows, add things I did not account for initially, etc. I also built the store for low volume - I figure it is a lot easier to buy more equipment if the volume exceeds my expectation than it is to return or sell equipment if it does not exceed my expectation.

My breakdown is roughly as follows:

20K - Electrical
8K - Plumbing
6500 - Mechanical
30K - Equipment (does not include smallwares)
10K - Interior Alterations (Paint, replace ceramic tile floor, ceiling tile, security cameras, etc.)
8K - Hood, fan and make up air
5K - Misc. (Granite Countertop, fountain machine installation)
3K - Licenses, plans, permits, etc.

One thing I want to iterate for anyone reading this to plan their build out…Bodegahwy makes a point that you should not only consider what it takes to get the doors open, but also what it costs to get to profitability. I am learning this lesson right now and it hasn’t been fun at times. There is a certain amount of money that will probably need to be spent on promotion until you gain a strong enough following day in and day out to pay the bills. If you are thinking that your product will carry you and you will depend on word of mouth, then it will still cost you money in terms of paying for rent, utilities, possibly labor, etc. until that word of mouth takes hold strong enough. It is different for everyone and every market, but understand there will be additional money to plan for after the doors open until you get to profitability, and for most, it will take more than you think. I am over 9 months open and we have been up 8 out 9 months so I think we are making progress, but it has been much slower than I had hoped or expected. Further, every time the season changes, we see our markets change and it different groups of customers change their ordering frequency. This may be less relevant for climates that don’t have four seasons, but you will likely still see shifts and ups and down that confound you and you have to be prepared (financially) to weather them until you reach that tipping point and become profitable.

Also, I don’t have direct experience with buying an existing business, but I agree with GotRocks, it appears that this would be the way to go in almost all cases. There will be some surprises there as well, but I think there would be less than doing the build up from the ground up.
 
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pizzapiratespp:
We got really lucky on the bathrooms. The ladies restroom toilet was 1 inch off from meeting ADA requirements. ( It was 1 inch too close to the wall ) The only solution was to demolish both bathrooms and re build from the ground up ( estimate was 30K ) We left them as is, and prayed for the inspector not to notice. When final inspection came around we failed. The inspector said he would let 1/2 inch slide but not 1 inch. This was on a Tuesday and he also mentioned that he was off on Friday. So my contractor rescheduled another inspection on Friday. A different inspector came out, asked if it was fixed. My contractor said yes, inspector signed it off, and we opened the next day.
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Are you in the area where ADA lawsuits are some of the biggest source of income for many??
I’ve heard some ADA horror stories come out of CA, like a restaurant losing a case due to a mirror being an inch too high, and a customer documented 27 visits, and the judge nailed the guy with 27 counts of non-compliance at $5K a crack!
The woman would take pictures with a tape measure each visit to document the issue, yet not once did she bring it to the operators attention, she went to an attorney with it first thing
 
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GotRocks said:
Are you in the area where ADA lawsuits are some of the biggest source of income for many??
I’ve heard some ADA horror stories come out of CA, like a restaurant losing a case due to a mirror being an inch too high, and a customer documented 27 visits, and the judge nailed the guy with 27 counts of non-compliance at $5K a crack!
The woman would take pictures with a tape measure each visit to document the issue, yet not once did she bring it to the operators attention, she went to an attorney with it first thing
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That’s some bad juju.
 
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I personally know 2 CA restaurant owners that have been sued for thousands by these ADA litigation teams-simply on the basis of entryways being slightly out of specification, no one was hurt. Typically a lawyer or legal team partners with a guy in a chair and they then canvas an area looking for litigatable infractions.
There has been some push back in recent years with the passage of SB1186 which includes some of the below elements:
  • Prohibits prelitigation “demands for money” by attorneys. (This is what my friends got hit with over 5 years ago.)
  • Puts into place new provisions to prevent “stacking” of multiple claims to increase statutory damages. (This addresses the 27 infraction stacking that GotRocks refers to.)

    []Reduces statutory damages and provides litigation protections for defendants who correct violations.
    [    ]Establishes priorities for the California Commission on Disabled Accessibility that promote and facilitate disability access compliance.
According to the Ca chamber of business, California had 40% of the nation’s ADA lawsuits but only 12% of the country’s disabled population before this law was passed.
 
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pizza99 said:
I personally know 2 CA restaurant owners that have been sued for thousands by these ADA litigation teams-simply on the basis of entryways being slightly out of specification, no one was hurt. Typically a lawyer or legal team partners with a guy in a chair and they then canvas an area looking for litigatable infractions.
There has been some push back in recent years with the passage of SB1186 which includes some of the below elements:
  • Prohibits prelitigation “demands for money” by attorneys. (This is what my friends got hit with over 5 years ago.)
  • Puts into place new provisions to prevent “stacking” of multiple claims to increase statutory damages. (This addresses the 27 infraction stacking that GotRocks refers to.)

    []Reduces statutory damages and provides litigation protections for defendants who correct violations.
    [    ]Establishes priorities for the California Commission on Disabled Accessibility that promote and facilitate disability access compliance.
According to the Ca chamber of business, California had 40% of the nation’s ADA lawsuits but only 12% of the country’s disabled population before this law was passed.
Pirate, I’d recommend deleting the above statement from a public forum. Willful violation could land you in court.
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Sounds like a good idea. We are in compliance. My contractor was able to install a flexible flange and move the toilet over the inch that was needed.

The bulk of those fraud law suits come from the big city areas where the buildings are older. Those are field days for these scam artist. My new location is completely up to code.
 
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