How to open a restaurant in Australia: work back from opening night

To open a restaurant in Australia, secure a site whose planning use and services can carry a full kitchen, then start the slowest jobs first: council approval, exhaust, gas and grease trap works, and a liquor licence if you’ll pour. Run food business registration, a food safety supervisor, hiring and training alongside the build, and budget for every cost that lands before opening night.

That’s the short answer. The longer one is that a restaurant is a different animal from a café. A café can sometimes squeeze a toastie press and a two-group machine into an old shopfront. A restaurant with a six-burner range, a fryer, a chargrill and a dining room of 60 covers needs air, gas, drainage and power on a scale that decides which sites are even possible. If you’re opening something coffee-led, our guide to opening a café is the better fit. This one is for the full kitchen.

Why should you plan backwards from opening night?

Because the builder rarely sets your opening date. The approvals and services do. Most first-time owners plan forwards: find a site, sign, design, build, open. The ones who open on time start with the items that have the longest lead times and fit everything else around them.

Here’s a rough order of lead times for a typical restaurant, longest first:

Lead time	What it covers	Why it takes so long
Longest	Planning approval for restaurant use (if the site wasn’t one)	Council assessment, possible public notification, conditions on hours and seats
Long	Kitchen exhaust design and install	Engineering design, duct route to the roof, council and landlord sign-off
Long	Liquor licence	State regulator assessment; in some states council approval comes first
Medium	Gas, power upgrades and grease trap	Utility and water authority approvals, supply upgrades, trade waste permits
Medium	Kitchen equipment	Lead times on combi ovens, ranges and cool rooms, plus installation
Shorter	Food registration, music licence, staff	Can run in parallel in the final weeks

Every week one of those slips is usually another week of rent with no takings, which is why the order matters so much to your budget.

Is the site actually capable of being a restaurant?

Before you fall for the room, check four things a restaurant lives or dies by:

• Planning use. Is restaurant use already approved, or will you need a change of use? A former restaurant is the easy case. A former clothing shop may need a full development application, with conditions on trading hours and seat numbers.
• A route for exhaust. Can a duct run from the kitchen to the roof without going through a neighbour’s tenancy? In a ground-floor shop under apartments, this is often the deal-breaker.
• Gas and power capacity. A full line of gas appliances or an all-electric kitchen with induction and combi ovens may need a bigger gas meter or a three-phase upgrade. Ask the landlord for the existing supply details in writing.
• Drainage for a grease trap. Most restaurants need one, sized to their output and approved by the water authority. Our guide to grease traps and trade waste explains how sizing and approval work.

Then negotiate the lease with those costs in mind. A rent-free fit-out period, a term long enough to recover the build, the bond, and who pays for services upgrades all belong in the heads of agreement. Work through our retail lease checklist before you sign anything.

Does your kitchen need a commercial exhaust canopy?

For a full restaurant menu, almost certainly. Councils enforce mechanical ventilation under AS 1668.2, and their guidance spells out the triggers. The City of Wanneroo’s kitchen exhaust guidelines, for example, require a hood where electric cooking appliances exceed 8 kW, total gas input reaches 29 MJ/h, or power density passes 0.5 kW per square metre of kitchen floor. Other councils add that any deep fryer needs mechanical exhaust, whatever its rating.

A single commercial six-burner range can blow past the gas figure on its own, so most restaurants are in canopy territory from day one. The cost isn’t just the stainless hood you can see. It’s the engineering design, the ductwork, the fan on the roof, fire dampers where the duct passes through walls, make-up air so the kitchen isn’t starved, and ongoing filter and duct cleaning. Get the mechanical engineer in before the kitchen layout is final, not after, because moving a canopy once the duct route is fixed is expensive.

The AS 1668.2 standard was updated in 2024, and designs drawn to the older version may need recalculating. If you’re inheriting an old system, ask a mechanical contractor to check it against what your council now expects before you assume it can stay.

How long does a restaurant liquor licence take?

Long enough that it should be one of the first applications you lodge. The approach differs by state:

• New South Wales. Restaurants apply for an on-premises licence. While it’s being assessed, the NSW interim restaurant authorisation lets you sell liquor with meals, but only if council has already given planning approval for restaurant or café use (a complying development certificate doesn’t count), your hours fall between 10am and midnight, and you aren’t also seeking extended hours, takeaway or a primary service authorisation. You must notify police and council two days before you start.
• Victoria. The Victorian Government advises applying for a restaurant and café licence at least 11 weeks before you need it. The non-refundable fee is set by capacity, currently $518.10 for up to 200 customers.
• Other states run their own regulators and timeframes. Check yours early.

The pattern is the same everywhere: council approval feeds the liquor licence, so a slow planning approval delays your drinks list as well as your opening. Our guide to liquor licences for cafés and small bars walks through the paperwork and the cash you’ll need in between.

What restaurant startup costs land before you open?

Restaurant startup costs in Australia sit in layers, and the builder’s contract is only one of them. A bare shell and a turnkey former restaurant can differ by hundreds of thousands, so build your own number line by line rather than trusting a headline figure:

1. Design, engineering and approvals: architect or designer, mechanical and hydraulic engineers, council fees, certifier.
2. Build and services: shopfitter, exhaust system, gas, three-phase power, plumbing, grease trap, cool room install.
3. Kitchen equipment: range, combi oven, fryers, chargrill, refrigeration, dishwasher, benches. See our page on commercial kitchen equipment finance.
4. Dining room and bar: furniture, lighting, acoustic treatment, bar fridges, glassware, crockery, POS.
5. Security and rent: the bond or bank guarantee, plus any rent before trading.
6. Pre-opening wages: chef and front-of-house training, menu trials, a soft opening.
7. Opening stock: food, drinks, packaging, cleaning supplies.
8. Trading buffer: several weeks of wages, rent and suppliers while bookings build.

One timing point catches many owners: the GST on the build is paid upfront and only comes back through your BAS later, so it needs a place in your cash plan. On the tax side, the ATO confirms the $20,000 instant asset write-off is now law and continues from 1 July 2026 for small businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million. It applies per asset, so a $14,000 combi oven and a $9,000 blast chiller can each be written off in the year they’re installed and ready for use. Ask your accountant how that affects your first year.

Our fit-out cost estimator takes you through each line and shows the gap between your contribution and the total. If that gap is already obvious, you can find out where your restaurant plans stand with a short enquiry; it won’t leave a mark on your credit file.

Which registrations and permits does a restaurant need?

Search ABLIS by your address and “restaurant” for the full list. Most restaurants end up with:

• ABN, business name and company registration, plus GST registration (most restaurants pass the $75,000 turnover threshold quickly, and registering early lets you claim GST credits on the fit-out).
• Food business registration with council or your state food authority, often with a pre-opening inspection.
• A certified food safety supervisor. Under Standard 3.2.2A, in force since December 2023, FSANZ says category one and two businesses must appoint one before handling unpackaged, potentially hazardous ready-to-eat food, with a certificate less than five years old. In a restaurant with split shifts, consider certifying your head chef and a senior sous so someone is always on the pass.
• Trade waste approval for the grease trap.
• A music licence. OneMusic Australia sets restaurant background music fees by seating capacity and how you play the music, so a 90-seat room streaming playlists pays more than a small room playing the radio.
• Signage, outdoor dining and footpath permits from council where relevant.

How do you staff a restaurant before opening night?

Hire your head chef early. They’ll shape the kitchen layout, the equipment list and the menu costs, and a good one will spot a badly placed pass or an undersized cool room on the plans. Front of house comes later, but leave time for at least one full week of paid training and a couple of friends-and-family services.

Most sit-down restaurants fall under the Restaurant Industry Award, and mainly takeaway venues under the Fast Food Industry Award. Build your roster from the Fair Work pay guides, including weekend and public holiday penalties, because restaurants trade hardest exactly when penalties apply. And since Payday Super started on 1 July 2026, super leaves your account with every pay run. Our page on Payday Super cash flow shows what that does to your weekly cash. Then cost every dish properly with our menu costing guide before you print a menu.

An illustrative example

Illustrative only. Two former head chefs find a corner site that used to be a bank. The rent is fair, but there’s no restaurant approval, no gas and no exhaust route. Rather than sign straight away, they get a mechanical engineer to confirm a duct can run up the side of the building and ask the landlord to cover the gas connection. They then negotiate a rent-free period that matches their planning timeline. They lodge the development application first and the liquor licence as soon as the planning approval arrives, and they order the combi oven and cool room while the shopfitter is still on site. Their budget carries ten weeks of trading costs. The opening slips three weeks after council asks for an acoustic report, but the buffer absorbs it.

How are new restaurants usually funded?

With no trading history, a new restaurant has nothing for an unsecured lender to size a loan on. That’s why most openings combine the owner’s contribution with a property-secured business loan: from $20,000 to $5,000,000 through first mortgages, second mortgages or caveat loans over residential or commercial property. Once you’ve traded for a while and have bank statements to show, unsecured and cash-flow options, typically $5,000 to $500,000 sized on turnover, open up for a new oven, a refit or a quiet winter. Our pages on restaurant business loans and restaurant fit-out finance go into both stages.

Ready to fund the opening?

Every restaurant opening has a moment, usually around the second set of quotes, when the owners realise the build is only part of the bill. That’s a good time to talk to us, before the builder’s contract is signed and while there’s room to plan. Allora, here’s how it works. The enquiry takes about 60 seconds, and asking what’s possible doesn’t touch your credit file. Your details stay with us rather than being passed around a crowd of lenders, so your phone won’t light up with strangers. A real person who understands kitchens and venues reads your plan and calls you to talk it through. Please fill the form in accurately, especially your total budget, your own contribution and any property you could offer as security, so we can line up the right option the first time.

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