A standard cafe fit out in Australia is advertised at about A$2,000 to A$3,500 a square metre in 2026, so a 120 square metre room budgets to roughly A$240,000 to A$420,000 before rent and working capital.
Skai Solutions publishes this because the per square metre bands you find in search are contractors' own asking rates and almost none of them are dated, while the one number that is actually measured, the rate at which construction prices are rising, is published quarterly by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and almost nobody quotes it. Both are below, with the sources linked, so you can tell the budget from the measurement.
Rate per square metre is how builders quote hospitality work, because the floor area sets the services, the seating and the compliance load all at once. Read on 23 September 2026 from the published guides of several Australian commercial fit out contractors, the advertised bands for 2026 sit like this. They are asking rates, not measurements, so date them and treat them as a starting budget.
| Build type | Advertised rate, A$ per square metre | What it usually covers |
|---|---|---|
| Basic refit of an existing food premises | A$1,500 to A$3,000 | Cosmetic work, reuse of existing kitchen services, minor joinery |
| Standard cafe build | A$2,000 to A$3,500 | New joinery, new front of house, modest kitchen with existing exhaust |
| Restaurant or complex kitchen | A$2,500 to A$4,500 | Full commercial kitchen, new exhaust, grease pre-treatment, gas |
| High end or specialised | A$5,000 and above | Structural work, heavy services upgrade, premium finishes |
Advertised market rates read 23 September 2026 from Australian fit out contractors' own 2026 pricing guides. Written as a category rate because a single contractor's price page is that contractor's market position, not the market.
Floor area gets the quote in the right order of magnitude. Four things move it inside the band, and only one of them is visible to a customer.
| Input | Effect on the total |
|---|---|
| Kitchen equipment and refrigeration | The single largest line. Contractors' own guides put it at roughly 40% to 60% of a hospitality fit out budget. |
| Mechanical exhaust | A new canopy and duct run is a services job, not a finish. It also creates a permanent cleaning obligation. |
| Trade waste pre-treatment | A grease arrestor is usually required before a water authority will let you discharge, and it carries its own pump out cycle. |
| What the tenancy already has | Taking over a former food premises with working services can halve the figure. An empty shell with no gas, no exhaust and no grease trap is the expensive version. |
The equipment share is why two cafes of identical size quote A$150,000 apart. If you want the equipment line separately, the ranges are on our page about what commercial kitchen equipment costs. The two ongoing obligations the build creates are covered under kitchen exhaust cleaning and grease trap cleaning.
This is the part the fit out guides handle badly. They say costs are up. The Australian Bureau of Statistics measures it, quarterly, and publishes the number.
In the Producer Price Indexes release for the June quarter 2026, published 31 July 2026, output prices for non-residential building construction rose 1.0% in the quarter and 4.4% over the twelve months. In the equivalent release a year earlier, the twelve month figure was 3.3%. Building construction as a whole rose 4.9% over the year to June 2026.
| Non-residential building construction, output prices | Change |
|---|---|
| June quarter 2026, quarterly | +1.0% |
| Twelve months to June 2025 | +3.3% |
| Twelve months to June 2026 | +4.4% |
| Two years to June 2026, compounded (ours, from the two published figures) | +7.8% |
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Producer Price Indexes, Australia, June 2026 (released 31 July 2026) and June 2025. The two year figure is our arithmetic: 1.033 multiplied by 1.044 is 1.0784.
What that is for. If you are holding a quote or a budget written in 2024, it is understating the job by roughly 7.8% on published construction prices alone, before any change to your own scope. The ABS names the causes in the same release: labour shortages on large public infrastructure and defence projects pulling trades away, insolvencies extending project timelines, and elevated material costs. None of those are things a small hospitality job can negotiate around.
Ours, and every input is on the page, so change any of them and redo it yourself.
That is a budget, not a quote. It carries no landlord contribution, no council planning delay, no rent during the build and no working capital. Those sit alongside the other fixed lines in restaurant overhead costs.
For a business with aggregated turnover under A$10 million using the simplified depreciation rules, the instant asset write off limit is A$20,000, and it applies per asset. Several items each under the limit each qualify, new or second hand.
The cliff is worth knowing before you sign an equipment order. If an asset costs the limit or more, it goes into the small business pool instead, which deducts 15% in the allocation year and 30% each year after. Ours, from those published rates: an asset at A$19,999 gives a A$19,999 deduction in year one. The same asset at A$20,000 gives A$3,000. One dollar of purchase price defers A$16,999 of deduction. The test is the total cost of the asset, not the business use share.
Australian Taxation Office, instant asset write off and simpler depreciation for small business, both last updated 28 August 2026. This is general information about published rates and it is not tax advice. Check your own position with your accountant.
One question to settle before the fit out, not after: whether the grease trap pump out and the exhaust clean are building services or yours. That belongs in the lease, and our page on commercial lease outgoings covers what else should be nailed down at the same time.
If your concept is delivery led, a fit out is the wrong purchase. A shared or dark kitchen puts you in a compliant room for a monthly rent instead of a capital outlay, and the trade offs are set out on our page about ghost kitchen costs. If you are buying an existing venue rather than building one, the fit out is already sunk and the question becomes what the business is worth, which is a different calculation entirely.
And if the only reason you are refitting is that the room feels tired while the phone rings out through every lunch service, spend the smaller money first. A venue that misses bookings because nobody can pick up does not fix that with joinery.
Two things get decided during a build and then live with the venue for years: where the phone sits, and who is expected to answer it. In a new cafe the answer is usually the person on coffee, which means the phone competes with the queue from the first day of trade.
Skai Solutions answers that line instead, takes the booking or the order, and sends it through without anybody stepping off the machine. Setup takes five days. It is worth settling before the doors open rather than eighteen months later, once the habit of letting it ring has set in. If you want to see how the alternatives compare first, we have written up the cheapest ways to answer a restaurant phone.
Footpath seating is licensed separately again, and the fee depends on which council owns the pavement outside your door. We priced it in what an outdoor dining permit costs, where a 24 seat footpath at one Melbourne council works out near A$3,430 a year.
Before you price the build, settle how many people the space is allowed to hold. Restaurant seating capacity per square metre has the National Construction Code figures, the floor area that is excluded from the sum, and why the code number is not a cap on customers.
Fire gear is a build line and then an annual one. Fire extinguisher servicing costs for a cafe has the ongoing figures to budget from the day you open.
One line that belongs in the opening budget is not a fit out cost at all, and it is measured in weeks rather than dollars. See liquor licence cost in Australia, where Victoria publishes a 9 to 11 week wait for a decision.
One line in that fit-out is set by the building code rather than by your budget. Our page on how many toilets a cafe needs carries the NCC 2022 Table F4D4d numbers in full, the 20-patron exemption, and the floor area rule that decides which row you are on.
The canopy is the fit-out item most likely to fail a plan assessment, and the 2024 revision of AS 1668.2 moved the dimensions. Our page on commercial kitchen ventilation requirements has the three filter heights, the 2,000 mm front edge rule and the overhang change from 150 mm to 300 mm.
How much does it cost to fit out a small cafe? A small room of 60 to 80 square metres at the standard band of A$2,000 to A$3,500 a square metre is roughly A$120,000 to A$280,000, on rates advertised in September 2026. A takeover of a former food premises with working exhaust, gas and grease pre-treatment can land well under that.
What is the cheapest way to fit out a cafe? Take on a tenancy that was already a food premises. The services are the expensive part, and the ones you inherit are the ones you do not pay for. Second hand equipment is the next lever, and it still qualifies for the instant asset write off.
Are fit out prices still rising in 2026? Yes. ABS output prices for non-residential building construction rose 4.4% over the twelve months to the June quarter 2026, faster than the 3.3% recorded over the year to June 2025.
Does a fit out include kitchen equipment? Sometimes. Contractors quote it both ways, and equipment is 40% to 60% of the budget, so a quote that excludes it is not comparable to one that includes it. Ask which it is before comparing two numbers.