Commercial Kitchen Installation Derby

Fitting a commercial kitchen is a different job from a home kitchen refit. The extraction has to meet a fire and grease standard, the power supply often needs upgrading to three-phase, and none of it can go live until Gas Safe and Part P certificates are in the file for environmental health to check. A domestic fitter who is used to swapping units and worktops in a week rarely has the range of trades, or the paperwork habits, that a working commercial kitchen needs before it can legally open its doors. Derby Kitchen Fitter plans and fits commercial kitchens for restaurants, cafes, pubs and caterers across Derby, drawing on the same kitchen fitting team that has worked across Derbyshire for twenty years, on everything from single-unit domestic refits to multi-zone catering fit-outs.

Every trade on site - plumbing, electrics, gas, joinery and plastering - is qualified for that specific job rather than a general fitter covering several trades at once, and the whole fit is run as one project so there's a single team accountable for the result rather than a chain of subcontractors to coordinate yourself. That matters in a commercial setting more than almost anywhere else, because a late or under-specified trade doesn't just delay a family's new kitchen, it delays a business opening its doors and taking bookings. A free site visit and a written, itemised quote come before any work starts, with the certificates you'll need for registration and inspection handed over at sign-off, so there's no scramble to track down paperwork in the week before an environmental health visit.

• Design and CAD layout of the kitchen line, prep stations and pass area, planned around your existing drainage runs and any structural walls that can't move - this is where a badly sequenced kitchen gets caught early, before steel is cut or a wall is opened up
• Supply and fitting of stainless steel worktops, wall cladding and fabricated prep units, built by joiners with City & Guilds training and a bench-joinery background rather than off-the-shelf domestic units, so joints and corners are welded or sealed to a standard that copes with daily hot-water washdowns
• A full extraction canopy, ductwork and make-up air system, sized and tested to DW172 with grease filtration built in - undersized ductwork is one of the most common reasons a commercial kitchen fails its first inspection, so canopy and duct sizing is worked out from the cooking line itself, not a standard size fitted regardless of the equipment behind it
• Gas connection, testing and commissioning of hobs, ranges and combi ovens by Gas Safe registered engineers, with certificates issued on completion for every appliance connected, not just a single certificate covering the job as a whole
• Electrical first and second fix for lighting, power and equipment circuits, wired by Part P registered electricians who supply the safety certificates your environmental health file will need, including separate circuits for heavy-draw equipment like combi ovens and glasswashers so a busy service doesn't trip the board
• Plumbing for multiple sinks, wash-hand basins, glasswashers and grease trap connections, carried out by plumbers qualified to NVQ Level 2 and City & Guilds, with grease trap sizing and positioning worked out against the drainage the premises already has rather than assumed from a standard layout
• Non-slip safety flooring with coved edges sealing the wall-to-floor joint against water and grease, and removal of old units and equipment through a registered waste carrier, so there's a documented, legal record of how the old kitchen was disposed of if it's ever asked for

• Submitting or paying for a change-of-use planning application, if your premises needs one - we'll tell you whether it applies and advise on feasibility, but the application itself and any planning fees sit with the business
• Registering the business with the local authority's environmental health team as a food business - that registration is a legal step the operator has to complete, separate from the kitchen build
• Loose smallwares such as pots, pans, cutlery, uniforms and cleaning chemicals - the installation covers the fixed equipment, worktops and connections, not the kit you'd stock the kitchen with day to day
• Arranging your commercial insurance policy - we provide the gas, electrical and installation certificates insurers ask for, but taking out the cover itself is down to the business
• Ongoing extraction cleaning and equipment servicing after handover - these are offered as separate scheduled contracts once the kitchen is signed off, not bundled into the installation quote

1. Free site visit and consultation -- We look at the existing drainage, power supply and structural layout in person, talk through your trading dates and equipment list, and flag early on anything that might need a change-of-use planning application. This is also where we check what can realistically be reused - an existing grease trap or a three-phase supply already on site can take real cost out of the job, but only if it's suitable for the new layout rather than just present.
2. Design and written quote -- You get a CAD layout and an itemised written quote covering the extraction spec, power upgrades, worktops and fixed equipment, with no hidden extras added once the job starts. The layout is worked around your actual cooking line and covers positions, not just a floor plan, since moving a combi oven six inches after the ductwork is fitted is far more disruptive than catching it on paper first.
3. Trade scheduling around your opening date -- The fit is sequenced trade by trade - first fix electrics and plumbing, then ductwork and the extraction canopy, then flooring, then cabinetry, worktops and equipment - so the kitchen isn't standing idle waiting on the next trade. Where a lease or opening date is tight, this schedule is built backwards from that date rather than forwards from the start of the job, so the trades most likely to overrun are given the room they need earliest.
4. Installation and commissioning -- Qualified trades carry out the work on site, with gas and electrical certificates issued as each part of the job is signed off rather than held back until the very end. Appliances are tested under load where possible - a hob or combi oven commissioned but never run at full output can hide a fault that only shows up on a busy first service.
5. Sign-off walk-through -- A formal handover checks the finished kitchen against the original quote, hands over every certificate for your environmental health file, and puts the labour and product guarantees in writing. Any snags are noted and scheduled before the team leaves site, rather than left as an informal promise to come back.

Commercial kitchen costs vary far more than a domestic refit, because so much depends on what's already on site. A small café kitchen with a domestic-style gas supply and no structural changes costs a fraction of a full restaurant fit-out that needs a three-phase power upgrade, a new extraction canopy through an external wall, and drainage moved to take a grease trap. Kitchen size, the number and type of appliances - a single combi oven against a full cooking line - and how much of the existing power and drainage can be reused are the biggest factors. Whether the extraction ductwork can run a short, direct route to an external wall or has to snake through a false ceiling and over several rooms also makes a real difference, since ducting and fire-rated casing add up quickly on a long run. Timing matters too: a kitchen that has to fit in around a lease deadline or an opening date sometimes needs evening or early-morning work to avoid lost trading days, which adds to the programme. Because of that spread, we don't quote a price without seeing the site first - the free site visit is what turns a rough figure into a written, itemised quote you can rely on, with every element priced separately so you can see exactly what's driving the total.

A commercial kitchen fails or works on how well the trades fit together. If your electrician, plumber, joiner and extraction installer are all booked separately, a delay from one pushes back every trade after it, and if something isn't right when environmental health visits, it's often unclear whose job it was to fix. Derby Kitchen Fitter runs commercial fit-outs as one project-managed crew, so the same team that measures the kitchen on day one is accountable for it at handover - there's no separate contractor to track down if a socket needs moving or a joint needs re-sealing after the sign-off walk-through.

That matters most on the details environmental health and gas registration actually check: connections signed off by a Gas Safe engineer, lighting and power certified by a Part P electrician, and old equipment cleared through a registered waste carrier rather than left for someone else to deal with. The installation carries a 5-year guarantee on labour and installation and a 2-year guarantee on products, and the business is a member of CITB and FSB - not as a badge to display, but because a kitchen that has to trade every day can't afford a callback six months in. Twenty years of fitting kitchens across Derbyshire also means the team has seen the ways a commercial fit-out tends to go wrong before it happens on your job - a grease trap positioned before the final equipment layout is confirmed, or a distribution board sized for the original spec rather than the appliances actually ordered - and plans around those failure points at the design stage rather than discovering them once the walls are closed up.

Derby Kitchen Fitter works out of a registered workshop on Stenson Road in Sunny Hill, Derby, and most commercial jobs come from within a short run of the city - independent cafes and bars around the Cathedral Quarter and Sadler Gate, takeaways and restaurants along London Road and Osmaston Road, and unit fit-outs at Pride Park and the Meteor Centre, where the shell is often a bare retail or industrial unit with no existing kitchen infrastructure to build from. Those retail-unit jobs tend to need the most from-scratch work, since there's usually no drainage run, no extraction route and no power supply anywhere near what a working kitchen needs, whereas a Cathedral Quarter conversion is more likely to involve working around an existing but undersized system in an older building. Food business registration and inspection for anything trading within the city sits with Derby City Council's environmental health team, who apply the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme once the kitchen is operational - one reason we hand over gas, electrical and installation certificates as a complete pack at sign-off rather than piecemeal. Beyond the city, the same team fits commercial kitchens in Chesterfield, Long Eaton, Belper, Ilkeston, Heanor and Alfreton, and into Nottingham, where food safety registration falls to the relevant borough or district council rather than Derby City Council itself.