Quick answer
Plan a commercial kitchen fit-out backwards from your handover date, allowing roughly 6-10 weeks across design sign-off, manufacture and certified install. MTN Kitchens runs Auckland fit-outs as one accountable supply-and-install contractor at trade pricing, with Site Safe-certified install and durable, compliant materials.
A commercial kitchen fit-out fails in ways a residential one never does. Not because the cabinets fall apart on day one, but because the door hinges go soft after eighteen months of staff slamming them forty times a day, the laminate around the urn lifts where steam gets behind the edge, and the toe kick rots out because nobody sealed the floor junction before the tenancy got handed over. The kitchen looked fine at handover. It looked rough by the first lease review. That gap between handover and real-world use is the whole game in commercial work, and it is where most of the decisions that matter actually get made.
Plan backwards from handover.
Key points
- "Commercial grade" is not one product — it is a set of choices about substrate, surface, hardware and edge detail, each matched to how hard and how wet the space gets.
- Hardware grade is where cheap jobs quietly die: domestic-rated hinges and runners sag inside a year in a real commercial kitchen.
- Not every fit-out needs a building consent, but the moment you move walls, fire separation, plumbing or use, it does — and that timeline has to live in your programme from day one.
- Lead times are arithmetic worked backwards from handover; long-lead items like specific stone slabs get flagged the day the job is awarded, not the day you order them.
- One contractor for supply and install removes the seam where mis-measures, sequencing clashes and compliance gaps fall through — and it is one invoice for the builder.
The other thing that separates commercial from resi is that you are almost never the only trade on site, and you are almost never working to your own timeline. You are slotting in behind the flooring crew, ahead of the plumber's final connect, around a tenant who is still trading, or into a two-hour after-hours window because the building manager will not give you the loading dock during business hours. Get the sequencing wrong and a five-day install becomes a three-week saga of return visits. This guide walks through how we think about material grades, compliance, site access and lead times on Auckland commercial jobs, and why having one contractor carry the whole thing matters more than the line-item price. If you are coordinating a kitchen package alongside a wider build, our note on coordinating a kitchen install with your other trades covers the sequencing side in more depth.
What "commercial grade" actually means
People throw the phrase around like it is a single product you can order. It is not. Commercial grade is a set of decisions about substrate, surface, hardware and edge detail, each chosen for how hard the space gets used and how wet it gets. A staff tea-point in an open-plan office and a back-of-house prep kitchen in a hospitality fit-out are both "commercial", and they are built almost nothing alike.
Substrate and surface
For carcasses we are usually working in moisture-resistant MDF or particleboard with a melamine or melteca face. Melteca is the workhorse here: it is tough, it cleans up, it does not telegraph every knock, and it comes in finishes that read fine in a public-facing space. For doors and fronts you are choosing between melteca, 2-pac lacquer on MDF, and timber depending on whether the surface is going to take abuse or just look good. In a high-traffic prep area, 2-pac is a liability on door edges where trolleys and elbows hit it constantly; melteca with an ABS edge handles that far better and you can replace a single door cheaply if it does cop a gouge. In a customer-facing servery where the look carries the brand, 2-pac earns its place. If you want the full breakdown of how these finishes behave, we cover it in kitchen cabinet finishes explained.
Benchtops are where the spend usually concentrates and where the use case dictates everything. Laminate is honest and cheap and perfectly good for a low-traffic tea-point. The moment you have real heat, real knives, or real water sitting on the surface, you move up to engineered stone or natural stone. Engineered stone gives you a consistent, hard, hygienic surface that takes a tight join and survives commercial cleaning chemistry. The lever is always the same: how hard is this surface going to get hit, and what does a failure cost you in downtime later. For a closer look at where each top earns its place, see laminate vs stone benchtops.
| Element | Light use (tea-point) | Hard use (prep / BOH) |
|---|---|---|
| Carcass | Melamine on MR particleboard | Moisture-resistant MDF, melteca face |
| Doors/fronts | Melteca or 2-pac for looks | Melteca with ABS edge |
| Benchtop | Laminate | Engineered or natural stone |
| Hardware | Standard soft-close | High-cycle, full-extension, load-rated |
Hardware is where cheap jobs die
This is the single most common place people under-spec. Domestic soft-close hinges and runners are rated for domestic cycle counts. Put them in a kitchen where a drawer opens two hundred times a shift and they are sagging inside a year. Commercial work wants full-extension, high-cycle-rated runners and hinges, and on heavy drawers you want the load rating to actually match what is going in them. It is unglamorous and it is the difference between a kitchen that still shuts square at year five and one that rattles. We go deeper on this in choosing kitchen handles and hardware that last.
Compliance, consent and what actually needs sign-off
Not every commercial kitchen fit-out needs a building consent, and not everyone realises that cuts both ways. Swapping like-for-like joinery in an existing tenancy with no structural, plumbing or fire-rating change is often maintenance-level work. The moment you move a wall, alter the fire separation, change the plumbing layout, or change the use of the space, you are into building consent territory under the Building Act, and that timeline needs to live in your programme from the start, not get discovered halfway through.
Where consent applies, the restricted building work has to be done or supervised by a Licensed Building Practitioner, and the job needs to run through council inspections to the Code Compliance Certificate at the end. The CCC is the document that says the work was built to the consent and the Building Code. On a fit-out inside a larger development, the kitchen is usually one package feeding into the main contractor's CCC, which is exactly why your install records, producer statements and as-builts have to be clean and handed over on time. A late or sloppy kitchen package can hold up someone else's compliance.
There is also the health and food-safety overlay if the kitchen is doing food service. Surfaces have to be cleanable and non-porous in the right places, junctions have to be sealable, and the layout has to support a sane food-safety flow. That is council and food-control-plan territory, and the joinery has to be built to suit it. We design to that from the drawing stage rather than retrofitting silicone everywhere at the end. Our guide to commercial kitchen compliance in NZ walks through the food-safety side in full.
Certified install and Site Safe
On any real commercial site you are not getting through the gate without Site Safe. The main contractor runs a health and safety plan, every trade signs onto it, and you are expected to turn up with your own documentation, your SSSP-level paperwork sorted, your inductions done and your crew actually trained. We are Site Safe qualified, which sounds like a box-tick until you have watched a job stall because a subbie showed up unticketed and got turned away at the dock. On a tight programme that is a day you do not get back.
Certified install matters for the same reason the materials matter: the best cabinets in the world fail if they are hung off plasterboard with no fixing into structure, or if the benchtop join sits over an unsupported span. Commercial loads are higher and the consequences of a failure are more public. An install crew that does this every week knows where to find structure behind the GIB, how to pack and scribe to an out-of-square commercial wall, and how to set a benchtop join so it does not open up when the building moves. That knowledge is not in the price list. It shows up two years later in whether the kitchen is still tight.
The drawings said the wall was plumb. It was out fifteen mil over the run. We scribed it on the day instead of forcing the cabinets and hoping — that is the whole job, the bit nobody sees once the kickboard is on.
Planning around site access
Access is the quiet killer of commercial timelines. On a CBD tower fit-out you might have one goods lift shared across every trade, a loading dock you have to book in two-hour slots, and a building manager who will not let you bring stone up during trading hours. On a suburban development you might have clear access but a muddy site and no crane window. None of this is on the joinery drawings, and all of it decides whether your install lands in five days or fifteen.
Occupied tenancies and after-hours
Refitting a kitchen in a tenancy that is still trading — an office floor that still has staff, a cafe that still wants to open weekends — means after-hours and weekend work, dust containment, noise rules, and protecting finished surfaces you are working around. The trade-off is real: after-hours labour costs more, but the alternative is shutting the tenant's operation down, which costs them far more. We would rather quote that honestly up front than surprise someone with night rates halfway through. The same constraints shape an office kitchen and tea-point fit-out on an occupied floor.
Get the measurements in before access closes
The expensive mistake is manufacturing off the drawings and never doing a proper site measure because access was tight. Walls move, services land where they land, and the slab is never quite the level the architect drew. A check-measure before the cabinets go into production, even if it means one awkward access visit, saves a full remake. On commercial jobs we treat that measure as non-negotiable — and our piece on site measure vs plan measure explains exactly why.
Worked example: a Flat Bush 24-unit development plus the body-corp tea-point
Take a 24-unit terraced housing development in Flat Bush, staged over the back half of a build programme, with a small shared resident lounge that needs a commercial-style tea-point. This is bread-and-butter Auckland volume work and it shows how the pieces fit.
The builder gives us a handover date for the first six units and a staged release after that. We work backwards. The melteca carcasses and laminate benchtops for the residential units go into the East Tamaki workshop in batches matched to the release stages, so we are not storing 24 kitchens' worth of joinery on a muddy site waiting to get wet or knocked. Each stage gets a check-measure once the GIB is up and stopped, then manufacture, then a single install run per stage. Because supply and install sit under one contract, the builder is not coordinating a separate measure-up company, a separate manufacturer and a separate install crew across three businesses — when stage two slips a week because the flooring ran late, we move our run a week and absorb it, rather than three parties pointing at each other. The mechanics of staging at this scale are covered in supplying kitchens for a 20-unit development.
The shared lounge tea-point is the one genuinely commercial element: higher-cycle hardware, an engineered-stone top because residents will abuse it, and a layout that suits a body-corp cleaning regime. It is a tiny fraction of the contract value and the easiest thing to under-spec, and it is the one that generates complaints if the cheap hinges go. We spec it up deliberately. The whole job lands as one invoice to the builder, the install records feed the development's compliance package, and the staged install means each block of units is handover-ready as the build front moves through the site rather than all at the end in a panic.
Lead times, worked back from handover
The only date that matters in commercial work is handover. Everything else is arithmetic backwards from it. A realistic commercial joinery package has a few fixed-cost blocks of time you cannot compress past a point, and pretending otherwise is how programmes blow up. We unpack this for whole builds in kitchen lead times and your construction programme.
- Design and shop drawings sign-off — this is where time hides; every revision after sign-off pushes everything right.
- Material lead time — standard melteca and laminate move fast; specific stone slabs, imported finishes or non-stock colours need ordering early.
- Manufacture in the workshop — batchable, but it has a floor; ten-plus kitchens a week of capacity helps, it is not infinite.
- Site readiness — GIB stopped, floors in or protected, services roughed in to the right points; you cannot install into a room that is not ready.
- Install window — a single coordinated run, typically five to seven days for a defined package, plus connection by the plumber and electrician.
- Defects, sign-off and compliance handover — leave real time here; a rushed defects pass is how you end up doing return visits.
The honest version of lead-time management is flagging the long-lead items the day the job is awarded. If a benchtop slab or a specific finish has a six-week lead and your handover is in eight, that decision gets made in week one or it does not get made at all. Owning supply and install in one shop means we see both halves of that equation at once, rather than a manufacturer quoting a lead time that the install crew only finds out about when the slab does not turn up.
Honest cost guidance and the levers that move it
Commercial kitchen pricing is genuinely range-bound because the spec range is so wide. A simple melteca tea-point with a laminate top is a different universe of cost from a hospitality back-of-house in stone with high-cycle hardware throughout. Anyone giving you an exact per-unit number before seeing the drawings is guessing. What is useful is knowing which levers actually move the number, so you can decide where to spend and where to hold.
- Benchtop material: laminate to engineered stone to natural stone is the single biggest swing per square metre.
- Door finish: melteca is the value play; 2-pac lacquer and timber cost more and are worth it only where the surface is seen or specified.
- Hardware grade: high-cycle commercial runners and hinges cost more up front and save you the replacement cost later.
- Access and hours: after-hours, weekend, single-lift or crane-window work all carry a real labour premium — it is the site, not the joinery.
- Volume and repetition: identical units batched through the workshop are cheaper per unit than one-off bespoke layouts; a 24-unit run prices very differently to one custom kitchen.
- Revisions after sign-off: every change once material is ordered or cut costs money and time — lock the design.
All of this is quoted in NZD plus GST. Trade and wholesale pricing without a showroom markup is the other structural saving — you are paying for the kitchen and the install, not for a retail experience. The full picture of that gap is in trade vs retail kitchens: what developers actually pay.
What goes wrong
The failures are predictable and most are avoidable. Under-spec'd hardware in a high-use space is number one — the runners sag and the doors drop just after the warranty runs out, and the building owner wears the replacement. Number two is sequencing: joinery installed before the floor is down, or before services are roughed to the right point, forcing rework. Number three is late compliance records, where a joinery package with its paperwork half done leaves the whole development sitting on its CCC while someone chases up as-builts after the fact.
Then there is the coordination failure that comes specifically from splitting the work across too many parties. A separate designer, manufacturer and installer means three contracts, three timelines and three places for the ball to drop, and when something goes wrong on site nobody owns it. The classic version: the benchtop measure was taken off the cabinets-as-drawn, the cabinets went in slightly different on site, and the stone does not fit — and the manufacturer blames the installer who blames the measure. One accountable contractor removes that entire failure mode because there is no seam to argue across.
Last, water and edges. Commercial kitchens are wet. If the splashback junction, the benchtop-to-wall scribe and the toe-kick-to-floor detail are not sealed properly, water gets in, the substrate swells, and the surface lifts. It is mundane and it is the most common long-term failure we get called to fix on kitchens other people installed.
What to ask before you award a commercial kitchen fit-out
Before you sign anything, get straight answers to these. The good contractors will not flinch at any of them.
- Is supply and install under one contract and one invoice, or am I coordinating separate parties?
- Are you Site Safe qualified and can you supply your health and safety documentation for our main contractor's plan?
- Who does the check-measure, and when does it happen relative to manufacture?
- What hardware grade are you specifying, and is it rated for commercial cycle counts?
- What are the long-lead items on this job, and have they been ordered?
- How do you handle compliance records and as-builts feeding into the CCC?
- What does the install window look like, and how do you plan around our site access and hours?
- Is this priced at trade/wholesale, and is the quote plus GST?
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a building consent for a commercial kitchen fit-out?
It depends entirely on scope: like-for-like joinery replacement with no change to structure, fire separation, plumbing or building use is often maintenance-level work that needs no consent. The moment you move walls, alter fire rating, change plumbing or change how the space is used, you are into consent territory under the Building Act, with restricted building work needing an LBP and the job running through to a Code Compliance Certificate.
How long does a commercial kitchen fit-out take?
The install itself for a defined package is typically a five-to-seven-day single run, but that is only the visible part. The real timeline is design sign-off plus material lead time plus manufacture plus the install window plus defects and compliance handover, all worked backwards from your handover date — and long-lead materials like specific stone or imported finishes can add weeks, which is why we flag them the day a job is awarded.
Why use one contractor for supply and install instead of splitting it?
Because the seams between separate parties are where commercial jobs fail — one contract means one party owns the measure, the manufacture and the install, with no gap for a mis-measure or sequencing clash to fall into. It also means the people who know the workshop's lead times are the same people planning the install, plus it is one invoice and one point of contact for the builder.
Can you work in an occupied tenancy without shutting us down?
Yes, and it is common for offices and hospitality spaces that need to keep trading through a refit. It means after-hours or weekend work, proper dust containment, protecting surfaces and equipment, and respecting the building's noise and access rules — there is a labour premium for out-of-hours work, but it is almost always cheaper than closing the tenant's operation, and we price it honestly up front.
What material should I use for a high-traffic commercial kitchen?
For carcasses and most doors in a hard-use back-of-house, melteca with a tough edge detail handles abuse well and lets you replace a single damaged door cheaply; for benchtops with real heat, water and knife use, engineered stone is the sensible default for its hardness, hygiene and tight joins. Save 2-pac lacquer and timber for customer-facing surfaces where the look carries the brand, and do not cheap out on hardware — high-cycle runners and hinges are the difference between a kitchen that still shuts square in five years and one that does not last two.
Send us the brief
If you have a commercial fit-out, a development run, or a tea-point package coming up, the fastest way to a real number is to send us what you have — a unit count, the drawings, or even a rough brief and a target handover date. We will work the lead times back from your handover, flag the long-lead items, and come back with trade pricing within 24 hours. One contract, one invoice, supply and install from our own East Tamaki workshop, Site Safe on site. Twenty-three-plus years and two thousand-plus kitchens means we have already met whatever your site is going to throw at us. Send the drawings and let us price it properly.