Quick answer
Lock a firm per-unit kitchen rate early as a supply-and-install package, then hold it with fixed specs, a tagged schedule of quantities, and signed variations. Auckland developers often use a single supply-plus-install partner like MTN Kitchens at trade pricing to keep that line on programme and in the feaso.
Key points
- The kitchen line blows the feaso when the starting number is soft, not when kitchens are unpredictable. Lock a firm per-unit trade rate early and hold it to handover.
- Price supply and install on one contract and one invoice, against a defined spec, so design lock is a confirmation rather than a renegotiation.
- Know the levers: benchtop, appliance pack, cabinetry finish, lineal metres and repetition. You can hit any target by adjusting spec instead of chasing a cheaper supplier.
- Standardise to three or four kitchen types. Repetition cuts the per-unit cost and the callbacks; every extra type is another setup and another line for the QS to track.
- MTN quotes off a schedule and sample layout inside 24 hours, supply and install plus GST, from an East Tamaki workshop running 10-plus kitchens a week.
A real per-unit number holds.
The kitchen line is one of the easiest items to get wrong in a feasibility, and one of the dearest to fix once the build is underway. Early on you are working off an allowance, a retail showroom quote, or a number a builder gave you over the phone. By the time you have a real design and a real supplier, the figure has shifted, the programme has tightened, and the variance is chewing into a margin you committed to months ago. The kitchen rarely blows the feaso because it is unpredictable. It blows it because the number you started with was never firm.
If you are doing volume work across Auckland — terraced housing in Flat Bush, walk-ups in Mount Wellington, a subdivision out at Papakura — the job is to get a defensible per-unit rate early, know exactly what it buys, and hold it through to handover. This is the long version: how to set that number, what actually moves it, how it behaves across a real staged job, where it goes wrong, and what to put in front of a supplier so you get a price and not a guess.
What a feasibility kitchen number is actually doing
At feaso stage the kitchen line is carrying more than the cabinets. It is standing in for cabinetry, benchtops, the splashback or the tiled-splashback allowance, sometimes the appliances, the install labour, the trade coordination, the scribing and the callbacks. If you have only priced the boxes, you have priced maybe two-thirds of what hits the job. The rest turns up later wearing different clothes — preliminaries, programme float, a main-contractor margin on a scope nobody named at the start.
So the first discipline is honesty about scope. A number that says "kitchens, $X per unit" is only useful if everyone reading the feaso agrees what "kitchen" means. Does it include the scullery joinery in the four-bedroom type? The laundry tall cupboard? The appliance pack, or just the cabinetry the appliances slot into? Get that boundary drawn before you go looking for a rate, because two suppliers quoting different boundaries will hand you two numbers that look like a saving and aren't. Knowing how to read a kitchen quote and spot the hidden costs is half the battle here.
The second discipline is treating the kitchen as a programme item, not just a cost item. A firm price that lands six weeks late is no longer a firm price — it has quietly become a resequencing cost, an idle-trade cost, and a risk to your Code Compliance Certificate. The number and the delivery are the same conversation. Price one without the other and you have only done half the work.
Get a real per-unit number, not a showroom guess
A retail showroom quote is the wrong instrument for a feaso. It carries display markup, sales margin and a residential mindset that assumes one kitchen, one client, one set of bespoke choices. None of that reflects what a 40-unit townhouse development costs to fit out. What you want is a trade rate from a manufacturer who prices supply and install as one line, against a defined specification, for your unit count. The gap between the two is real money — it is worth understanding what developers actually pay on trade versus retail before you commit a figure.
We quote off your schedule and a sample layout and give you one rate per kitchen type, priced against a spec we have both written down. We manufacture in our own East Tamaki workshop and price at trade with no showroom margin, so the figure you drop into the feaso is the figure you contract against. That is the difference between an allowance and a price. An allowance is a hope with a dollar sign; a price is something you can hold a supplier to.
The catch with feasibility-stage pricing is that you usually do not have full drawings yet, and you do not need them. What a volume manufacturer needs to give you a sound rate is the unit mix, a representative layout per type, the benchtop and finish direction, and a rough sense of who is supplying appliances. From that you get a per-type rate that will move only a little once the real drawings arrive — assuming the brief does not change underneath it. The earlier and rougher the conversation, the better, because the levers are still in your hands.
Know what moves the figure
Most of the cost in a volume kitchen sits in a handful of decisions. Learn the levers and you can flex the spec to hit a target, instead of finding the overrun at tender. The big ones are predictable:
- Benchtop: priced by the lineal metre, so it grows with every extra run of bench in the layout. On rental and affordable stock it is usually the first lever anyone pulls.
- Cabinetry finish: the dark and ultra-matte doors cost more to make and more to keep looking right after handover, so pick the finish for the stock you are building, not for the sales brochure.
- Lineal metres and complexity: islands, returns, tall pantries and a separate scullery all add joinery and labour, and a scullery effectively gives you a second small kitchen to build and install.
- Appliances: whether you supply them or we coordinate, and the tier you spec, shifts the number materially — and the appliance pack is often the single biggest swing in the whole line.
- Repetition: the cheapest lever on the list, and the only one you can pull without taking anything out of the kitchen itself.
| Lever | Cheaper end | Premium end | Swing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchtop | Laminate, square edge | Engineered or natural stone | High |
| Cabinetry finish | Melteca / timber-look melamine | Matte or dark 2-pac lacquer | Medium-high |
| Appliances | Developer-supplied standard pack | Integrated / panelled, higher tier | High |
| Complexity | Single galley or L-shape | Island plus separate scullery | Medium |
| Repetition | 3-4 standard types | A different layout per unit | High |
The point of knowing the levers is that you can hit a target two ways. You can chase a cheaper supplier and hope, or you can hold the supplier and adjust the spec until the number lands. The second is far more reliable. If a Flat Bush rental block needs to come in lower, you move the benchtop from engineered stone to a quality laminate with a square edge, drop the matte 2-pac back to melteca on the cheaper types, and you have usually found your gap without touching anyone's margin. That is exactly what proper value engineering without cheapening the build looks like — decisions you make on purpose, early, with the cost in front of you, not discoveries you make at tender.
The levers that look small and aren't
A few items punch above their apparent weight. Handleless cabinetry reads as a small detail but changes the door manufacture and adds cost across every unit. Integrated or panelled appliances mean more joinery and tighter tolerances. Full-height tiled splashbacks versus a glass or laminate splashback is a tiler's scope as much as a kitchen one, and it is easy to leave it falling between two trades. And the quiet one: any kitchen that has to wrap a structural element, a meter box or a weird services run stops being a repeated type and becomes a one-off, with one-off pricing to match.
Spec once, repeat everywhere
The biggest saving in volume work is consistency. When every two-bedroom unit shares the same kitchen spec, the workshop runs it as a batch and the install crew repeats a known sequence. The per-unit cost drops and stays down. Variation is where budgets leak — a one-off layout here, a finish change there, and the QS is suddenly chasing variations across the whole programme. Lock a small number of standard kitchen types early and you protect both the rate and your handover. There is a whole discipline to keeping the spec consistent across 30-plus units, and it pays for itself.
In practice that means resisting the urge to give every unit its own personality. A typical mid-size Auckland townhouse development might have three or four genuine kitchen types — a two-bed, a three-bed, a four-bed, maybe a corner unit that has to differ for planning reasons. That is plenty. Each new type you add is another setup in the workshop, another layout the install crew has to think about, and another line for the QS to track. The discipline is boring and it is exactly where the money is.
Repetition also protects you on quality and callbacks. When the crew has fitted the same three-bed kitchen forty times, the fortieth goes in clean and the snags are known and designed out. When every kitchen is different, every kitchen is the first one, and first ones are where the scribing goes wrong and the appliance gap is two millimetres off. Standardisation is not just cheaper to build; it is cheaper to finish and cheaper to hand over.
Price the install, not just the cabinets
A supply-only number is a trap on a feaso because it buries the trade coordination. Someone still has to measure, deliver, fit, scribe to walls that are never quite plumb, tie into the wider joinery programme and clear any callbacks. When that lands on the main contractor as a separate scope, it surfaces later as preliminaries, programme float and risk that never made the original kitchen line. Supply and install on one contract and one invoice puts the whole cost in a single number you can budget against, and it puts responsibility for getting it right in one place.
The split-scope problem is worst exactly when you can least afford it: at the back end of the job, near handover, when trades are stacked and everyone is chasing CCC. A supply-only kitchen that arrives flat-packed on a pallet now needs a fitter you have to find, on a programme you have to manage, scribing to a GIB lining that someone else hung. If the benchtop template was taken off the drawings instead of the built cabinets, the stone arrives slightly out and you are waiting again. There are good reasons builders outsource kitchens rather than fit them in-house, and one contract for supply and install removes that whole category of finger-pointing.
It also changes who carries the measure risk. When the same company manufactures and installs, the measure is theirs, the fit is theirs, and a door that does not sit right is theirs to come back and fix — not a three-way argument between the joiner, the builder and the QS over who got the dimension wrong. On volume work that single point of responsibility is worth real money over the life of the job.
A worked example: a 24-unit Flat Bush townhouse run
Take a typical job — 24 terraced units in Flat Bush, staged over three blocks of eight, built to a developer feaso with a fixed kitchen allowance per unit and a hard sales programme. The mix is twelve three-bed and twelve two-bed. The temptation at feaso stage is to drop a single round number per unit off a builder's mate's say-so and move on. Here is the sequence that actually holds the number.
At feasibility
Before drawings are locked, you send the unit mix and a representative layout for each of the two types, with the finish direction: laminate benchtop, melteca cabinetry on the two-beds, a step up to engineered stone and matte 2-pac on the three-beds to support the higher sale price. You get two per-type rates back, supply and install, plus GST. Now your feaso line is twelve at rate A plus twelve at rate B, not 24 times a guess. You can see immediately whether the allowance holds, and if it is tight, you know the first lever is the three-bed benchtop.
At design lock
Drawings firm up. The two types are confirmed, the appliance pack is decided — the developer supplies a standard pack and the kitchen company coordinates the openings. The per-type rates barely move because the brief did not move. This is the payoff for pricing against a defined spec early: design lock is a confirmation, not a renegotiation. The QS now has two firm lines to carry, and the variation risk is contained to anything the developer chooses to change from here. Tight scope is the cheapest way of reducing variations and RFIs on the kitchen package.
On site, staged
Block one's eight units reach lining and floor. With capacity for ten-plus kitchens a week, all eight go in across a single tight window once the floors are down and the walls are lined — a 5 to 7 day run for the block rather than a fitter trickling through over a month. The crew repeats a known sequence, so block two and block three go faster again. Deliveries are planned to the construction programme so the kitchen is never the long pole holding up the painter and the CCC inspection. Site Safe qualified crews mean the developer is not managing kitchen-fitter compliance on top of everything else.
The result is the number you put in the feaso is the number on the final invoice, and the kitchens did not dictate the programme. That is the whole game. Not the cheapest possible rate on a spreadsheet, but a rate that survives contact with a real staged build.
Protect the rate by protecting the programme
Five levers set the per-unit cost.
A firm price only holds if the kitchens land when the build needs them. Late delivery forces resequencing, idle trades and rushed calls — the exact conditions that breed variations and stall sign-off ahead of your Code Compliance Certificate. We run capacity for 10-plus kitchens a week, with 23-plus years and 2,000-plus installs behind us, so we plan deliveries to your construction programme and the kitchen never becomes the long pole. We are Site Safe qualified, which keeps our crews compliant on your site without you having to manage it. Getting kitchen lead times right against the construction programme is what keeps the firm number firm.
Programme protection is also about ordering at the right moment. Order the benchtops off drawings too early and a wall that moves on site leaves you with stone that does not fit. Leave it too late and the stone is the thing everyone waits on. A supplier who measures off the built cabinets and runs their own fabrication knows where that window is and books into it. On a staged release that rhythm matters even more, because each block has its own window and a miss on one pushes straight into the next.
On volume jobs the kitchen rarely blows the budget because it was expensive. It blows it because the number was soft and the delivery ran late. Sort both early and the line behaves itself.
Residential and small-run work plays by different rules
Not every feaso is 24 units. A Ponsonby villa reno or a single high-end replacement is a different animal, and pretending it follows volume economics is its own mistake. There is no repetition to bank, the layout is bespoke, the finishes are usually a step up, and you are often working around heritage constraints, an awkward villa footprint, or a cross-lease arrangement that limits what you can touch. The per-kitchen cost is simply higher, and the levers are the same ones — finish, stone, complexity — just pulled toward the premium end.
The honest framing for a single residential kitchen is a wide range, because the spec range is wide. A straightforward melteca kitchen with a laminate benchtop sits at one end; a 2-pac kitchen with a full-height stone splashback, a separate scullery and integrated appliances sits a long way up from it. The number is driven almost entirely by what you choose, not by some fixed market rate, which is why a real quote against a real layout beats any rule of thumb. If you are pricing a one-off, the 2026 guide to what a kitchen costs in Auckland is a better starting point than a per-unit developer rate. Where MTN's volume work helps the one-off is the workshop behind it — the same East Tamaki manufacturing that runs developer batches builds the residential job, so you are not paying showroom overhead for a single kitchen.
Office and commercial tea-points and fit-outs
Commercial fit-outs are their own category and they tend to be under-scoped at budget stage because people picture a domestic kitchen and price accordingly. An office tea-point or a staff kitchen has different drivers: durability under heavy shared use, laminate or solid-surface benchtops chosen for wear rather than looks, plumbing and joinery that has to coordinate with the base-build services, and a fit-out programme that is usually brutal — the space has to be ready for a move-in date that does not move. The detail on office kitchen and tea-point fit-outs in Auckland sets out what changes.
The cost levers shift accordingly. Finish prestige matters less; robustness and the services coordination matter more. The programme risk is sharper because a commercial tenancy fit-out is a tight, sequenced job with a lease clock running. The same supply-and-install logic applies, only harder: a single party responsible for manufacture, delivery and fit, planning to the fit-out programme, is the difference between handing the space over on time and explaining to a tenant why their tea-point is not in yet.
What goes wrong
The failures on kitchen lines are repetitive, which is good news — you can design them out. The most common is pricing the feaso off a showroom quote or a single bespoke residential number and multiplying it across the development. That number carries markup and a one-off mindset, so it is both too high in some ways and missing the volume coordination in others. It feels conservative and it is just wrong-shaped.
The second is supply-only creep. The kitchen line looks tidy in the feaso because it is only the cabinets, and the install cost migrates into the main contract where it grows a margin and a layer of risk. The third is finish drift — the developer or the sales team upgrades benchtops or doors halfway through to chase a better presentation, and nobody reruns the per-unit rate, so the variation only surfaces at final account. The fourth is letting every unit be a little different, which quietly kills the repetition saving that made the volume rate attractive in the first place.
The fifth is timing. Ordering benchtops off drawings before the cabinets are in and the walls are measured, or leaving the kitchen so late that it becomes the item holding up CCC. Both are programme failures that show up as cost. None of these are exotic. They are the same five mistakes on most jobs, and a supplier who has done 2,000-plus installs has seen all of them and will flag them before they bite.
What to ask before you commit a number
When you are sizing the line and choosing who to price it with, the questions below separate a real trade price from an allowance dressed up as one. Put them to any supplier you are considering — and if you are running a staged job, the wider question of how to choose a kitchen supplier for a staged development is worth working through in full.
- Is this supply and install on one contract and one invoice, or supply only with install left to the main contractor?
- What exactly is in the per-unit rate — cabinetry, benchtop, splashback, appliances, or just the boxes?
- How many kitchen types are you pricing, and what does adding or removing a type do to the rate?
- Who takes the final measure, and is it off the built cabinets or off the drawings?
- What is your weekly install capacity, and can you stage deliveries to our construction programme block by block?
- Are your install crews Site Safe qualified, so we are not managing your compliance on our site?
- If the brief changes — finish, benchtop, an extra unit — how fast do we get a revised rate, and how is it tracked to final account?
- How long does firm trade pricing take from a schedule and a sample layout, and what do you need from us to start?
Frequently asked questions
How early can you give us a per-unit kitchen rate?
As soon as you have a unit mix and a representative layout per type, even rough — you do not need full consent drawings. We price off the schedule and a sample layout and confirm a per-type rate inside 24 hours, and if the brief holds, so does the rate.
Can you hold the price if our staged release slips?
Within reason, yes. A staged programme is normal and we plan deliveries block by block around your construction sequence, rebooking the install window if a block runs late. A slip of a few weeks does not move the price. What does is a change in spec or unit count, or a delay long enough that material costs genuinely shift — and either way we re-price it with you at the time, not at final account.
Why not just go supply-only and have our builder fit them?
On a one-off it can make sense, but on volume work it usually costs more than it looks. The install, measure, scribing and callbacks still happen — they just move into the main contract where they pick up a margin and the measure responsibility gets blurry, whereas supply and install on one contract puts the whole cost and the responsibility in one place.
What is the single biggest lever on the per-unit cost?
Usually the benchtop, closely followed by the appliance pack and the cabinetry finish. Moving from engineered stone to a quality laminate, or from matte 2-pac to melteca, shifts the rate more than almost anything else, with repetition the quiet fifth lever — the fewer types, the lower every rate.
Do you do high-end residential and one-off kitchens too?
Yes. The same East Tamaki workshop that runs developer batches builds residential and one-off kitchens, from melteca through to 2-pac, timber and natural stone, so you get the manufacturing depth and trade pricing without showroom overhead. The economics differ because there is no repetition to bank, so the right number comes from a real quote against your actual layout.
Send us the brief and lock your number
We are the head-contractor kitchen supplier to Spencer Henshaw, so we are used to working to a developer's numbers and a QS's level of detail. If you are sizing a feasibility now, send us your unit count and a brief — even a rough schedule of kitchen types, a sample layout, your finish direction. We will come back inside 24 hours with firm trade pricing per unit, supply and install, plus GST, that you can build the feaso around.
The earlier it lands with us, the tighter the number you can commit to and the more levers are still in your hands to hit the target. Send the drawings or the schedule, tell us the programme, and we will give you a rate you can hold from feaso through to handover.