What Is the Ideal Restaurant Construction Timeline?
For the restaurant construction timeline to work, make certain the architectural plans are comprehensive and aligned with mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and health plans. No discrepancies should exist. Choose a contractor who has a solid rapport with vendors and subcontractors. It’s imperative these partners are licensed, bonded, and insured up to the requirements set by your landlord. Before finalizing the contract, discuss potential weekend work. If weekend work is needed, your contractor should be willing to comply. Costs for overtime work should be pre-agreed upon, especially if needed to meet tight deadlines. After selecting a general contractor for your restaurant, you’ll naturally want to begin immediately. However, always ask for and review a project schedule before the actual construction begins.
Here are a variety of factors that determine the timeline for restaurant construction.
- Size and design of the restaurant.
- Final touches such as painting, caulking, and installations related to millwork, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing finishes.
- Timeliness and quantity of equipment deliveries, including kitchen equipment, lighting, and HVAC systems.
- Specific site details and landlord stipulations.
- Challenges related to the space or location.
- Utility companies and their availability with scheduling meter installs
- Clear and consistent communication among stakeholders.
- Changes made during the construction process.
- The team size of contractors and subcontractors.
- Weather conditions.
PLANNING AHEAD
Is the latest version of plans and construction documents prepared? Have you set the delivery dates for the fixtures and furnishings? Have the utilities been turned on, and are all accounts set up? For any new services, it’s crucial to complete all paperwork at the project’s outset. Field representatives from different utility companies should inspect the site early on to assess the scope of work and initiate processes. Only after the city inspectors provide the final approval can utility companies proceed with installing new meters and activating services. Be aware that installing a meter might take up to a month, depending on the utility provider. Therefore, prioritizing this immediately after the project finishes and obtaining city approvals is essential.
Opening a new restaurant entails three significant pre-construction phases:
- Architectural Design & MEP Plans: 4 to 6 weeks
- Construction Bidding: 2 to 3 weeks
- Plan-check/Permits: can extend up to 8-10 weeks
DESIGNING
During the design phase, the architect creates the restaurant’s full set of plans. Depending on the restaurant’s size and intricacy, this process can take up to 6 weeks. For smaller establishments, the design typically wraps up within a month.
BIDDING
Approximately 2-3 weeks before city approval of the plans, consider inviting up to three contractors to submit bids for the project. One useful approach is to request a blank cost spreadsheet from one contractor and require the others to use this same format. This promotes uniformity, making it easier to compare cost breakdowns across different bids. Contractors should present their final cost estimation based on the latest plans submitted to both the city and health department. Their submission should detail the scope of work, specifying what is included and what is not. This clarity allows you to determine if certain items need to be incorporated into their tasks before finalizing the contract. Ultimately, the onus is on you to ensure detailed bids are received, largely influenced by the information you provide to the bidding contractors. The more detailed your input, the better you safeguard against potential change orders and additional costs down the line.
PERMIT
Once you’ve selected a General Contractor and signed the contract, and the plans have received approval, they will proceed to obtain all necessary permits. Typical Tenant Improvement (TI) projects require permits and associated fees for Building, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical, Health, and occasionally, Low Voltage. It’s possible to secure a permit as soon as a day after plan approval.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO BUILD A RESTAURANT?
Once the three pre-construction stages are completed, restaurant construction should commence without delay. Building a fast-food restaurant typically takes around 8 weeks. A fast-casual eatery might be completed in about 10-12 weeks, while a full-service or fine dining establishment could require 20 weeks or more to finish.
Marketing as Lead Generation Tactics of B2B
Email marketing was the most popular among all other lead generation tactics primarily due to the ease of its implementation and for producing the desired effective results. Content marketing was found relatively difficult. But it was found to produce good results. It was found, it provides the market research experts to experiment on the same for a longer time and even learn the tactics of interacting with consumers.
Thus it is well-known that email ranks as one of the most cost-effective as well as best conversion providing lead generation tactics in B2B. Before loading up a number of messages into the inbox of the prospect, it is essential to encourage and support the different leads in the funnel at this stage.
Important aspects of lead nurturing campaigns
As a midway answer to these two answers, there was a third opinion about “Lead Qualification” that revealed a new aspect. Though many respondents might show interest in buying, there are very few who would really want to buy at that specific point in time. Though one can analyze all these through a specific method of experimentation there is no tool available from now on to measure or predict the same. Thus the sales department is under constant pressure to recognize and differentiate as who is a ready to buy respondent and who is just an anticipated respondent.
Bond of communication
Sending a clear message to the prospects that the organization has their welfare in mind and considers it as its priority by stating “How Can I help you” will go a long way in making them open up easily. Though it is not easy to please all the consumers all the time, it will definitely open up the channel of communication and bring in suggestions for new and better communication.
In short, for an organization looking to bring in or develop more leads, it needs to bring in a major shift in its style of working from marketing and only sales to problem detecting and problem-solving.