Commercial cabinetry & joinery fit-outs — Auckland

23+ years in trade · 2,000+ kitchens supplied & installed across Auckland · Laminex NZ fabricator

A commercial fit-out fails in ways a house never does, and not on day one — on day four hundred. Hinges go soft after eighteen months of staff shutting doors with a hip because both hands are full. Laminate lifts around the urn where steam got behind an unsealed edge. The toe kick rots out because nobody sealed the floor junction before the tenancy was handed over. Every one of those was decided months earlier, at quoting stage, by someone choosing a cheaper substrate or a domestic hinge.

What we fit out

• Office kitchens and tea points — staff kitchens, tea points and breakout benching for occupied buildings, repeated as a manufactured product across floors and installed after hours.
• Hospitality, front and back of house — café and restaurant counters, bar serveries, pass and barista benching, and the hard-back joinery that lives with heat, water and bleach.
• Clinical and healthcare joinery — GP and specialist treatment rooms, dental sterilisation bays, veterinary prep areas and kennel runs: dirty-to-clean flow, cleanable surfaces, lockable storage.
• Education and early childhood — school staffrooms, technology and hard-materials benches, ECE kitchens and child-height room joinery, done inside a term break where it has to be.
• Aged care and retirement villages — production kitchens and ward serveries back of house, independent-living unit kitchens by the block, on one programme.
• Community and clubs — wharekai, church and community halls, sports clubrooms and gym reception counters, built for volunteer crews and match-day throughput.

“Commercial grade” is four decisions, not a product

Substrate: moisture-resistant board anywhere near water, heat or a washdown. Surface: compact or high-pressure laminate as standard, with stone kept for what the public actually sees. Edges: matching ABS, glued and sealed on every wet-zone edge, because wet-zone joinery fails at the edge long before it fails at the face. Hardware: commercial-rated hinges and runners, in corrosion-resistant finishes on coastal and washdown sites. Add the floor junction — sealed before handover, or the kick rots out by the first lease review. Full detail: compliance, durability and lead times.

One floor plan, three different specs

Public front-of-house joinery is bought for appearance under public wear. The service band — pass, counter, barista — is hot and wet and in full view at the same time. The hard back, cookline and wash-up, is bought purely for cleanability, heat and water. Spec one grade across all three and you either overpay out front or get callbacks out back. Material choices per band: front-of-house vs back-of-house materials.

Consent, the Food Act and what actually applies

Not every fit-out needs a building consent; replacing joinery like-for-like inside an existing tenancy often does not. The moment you move a wall, touch fire separation, alter plumbing or drainage, or change what the space is used for, it does — and that timeline has to be in the programme from day one. Food premises carry a Food Control Plan on top, which wants smooth, cleanable, coved junctions and a food-contact surface schedule a verifier can read. Licensed childcare answers to the ECE licensing criteria first; a church or community hall may sit outside the Food Act entirely depending on how it is used; an aged-care site runs two briefs in one building.

Sectors we build for

• Offices and workplaces — Staff kitchens, tea points and breakout benching, installed after hours in occupied buildings. Office kitchen and tea-point fit-outs
• Cafés, restaurants and bars — Counters, bar serveries, pass and barista benching, and the hard-back joinery that lives with heat and washdown. Fitting out on a tight programme · Front-of-house vs back-of-house materials
• Medical, dental and veterinary — Treatment rooms, sterilisation bays, prep areas and kennel runs — built around the dirty-to-clean flow. Medical practice treatment rooms · Dental sterilisation bays · Veterinary prep areas and kennel runs
• Schools — Staffroom kitchens and technology-room benches, programmed to be finished inside a term break. School staffroom kitchens · Technology and hard-materials benches
• Early childhood centres — Licensing criteria drive the joinery: separation from nappy and play areas, handwashing, lockable chemical storage. ECE kitchens and licensing criteria · Child-height storage and nappy-change benches
• Aged care and retirement villages — A Food Act production kitchen out the back, accessible serveries and unit kitchens out the front. Aged-care kitchens and serveries · Independent living vs care wing
• Marae, churches and community halls — High-volume catering on volunteer labour, and a straight answer on where the Food Act applies. Wharekai kitchen fit-outs · Hall kitchens and the Food Act
• Sports clubs and gyms — Match-day throughput, a compliant bar servery, lockable stock, and reception joinery that survives a humid studio. Clubroom kitchen and bar joinery · Gym reception, retail and kitchenette
• Body corporates and building owners — Staged upgrades across a block, budgeted properly, residents left in a working kitchen throughout. Body corporate kitchen upgrades
• Facilities and maintenance contractors — Coded rates against work orders, photo evidence that closes a claim, and callbacks that actually get shut. Joinery through maintenance work orders · The defects liability period on joinery

How a fit-out runs

Send the architect's set, the tenancy plan or a schedule — or meet us on site, where we measure off what is actually there after services rough-in. An itemised trade quote, GST exclusive, comes back within 24 hours against a written spec. Cabinetry is manufactured in our East Tamaki workshop to the signed spec, with long-lead items flagged the day the job is awarded. Our own Site Safe team installs around your access window, templates benchtops off installed bases rather than off paper, and closes the defects list properly.

What it costs, and why

Commercial work is priced per job off drawings, not off a rate card. We manufacture rather than resell, carry no showroom or sales team, and install with our own crew, so the retail markup is not in the figure. Our published kitchen price bands are a useful floor to sanity-check against; a commercial spec sits above them because the hardware and surfaces are a grade up. The costs that blow out commercial jobs are rarely the cabinetry — they are rework from ordering off a moving layout, equipment swapped after manufacture started, and services not coordinated before benches landed.

The numbers a brief turns on

• ECE and childcare — Children's basins sit 450–500mm off the floor for the youngest and 550–600mm for older children, while the adult bench stays at about 900mm. Water a child can reach must not exceed 40°C even though the cylinder is stored at 60°C or more to keep legionella down, so a tempering valve is part of the brief. The fridge cavity has to be ventilated enough to hold food at or below 5°C. Child-height storage and nappy-change benches
• Aged care and retirement villages — NZS 4121 puts everyday storage within roughly 1200mm of the floor with controls low enough to use seated, and the Building Code's Acceptable Solution wants a 1500mm manoeuvring circle. Aged-care kitchens and serveries
• Medical and dental — Vaccines need a purpose-built pharmaceutical fridge running between +2 and +8°C, so the joinery is a ventilated appliance cavity rather than a domestic under-bench slot. At the clinical basin the tap, the waste and the basin type all land in the same 300mm of benchtop. Medical practice treatment rooms
• Hospitality — The biggest cost blowout is rework, not material grade: a plumber moving the sink 150mm after the bench was ordered means the bench is remade. Lock the consent and the equipment schedule, then cut the board. Fitting out on a tight programme
• Schools — A hard-materials bench wants heavy braced timber — 90mm sections, cross-braced, with proper gussets. A standard 18mm melamine carcass doing structural work it was never designed for does not survive. Technology and hard-materials benches
• Offices — 20mm engineered stone is where both the price and the feel jump — worth it on a client-facing counter, rarely on a level-three tea point. Splitting supply from install buys a finger-pointing exercise the night the bench lands and the waste is 40mm off where the cabinet wants it. Office kitchen and tea-point fit-outs
• Handover and defects — Doors settle in their first weeks of use, and a 35mm clip-on hinge adjusts in three axes with a screwdriver in about five minutes. Most items logged in the final month are a 3mm hinge adjustment that was always going to be needed. The defects liability period on joinery

Watch: why commercial joinery is specced differently

A thirty-second film — an office tea point on handover day, the same tea point eighteen months and a few thousand door slams later, the four decisions that decide whether it survives, an after-hours install around a working building, and the sectors we cover. Captioned, no sound needed. Transcript:

1. Every commercial kitchen looks fine on handover day.
2. Eighteen months and a few thousand slams is the real test.
3. So the core, the edges and the hinges are specced for the abuse.
4. We fit out after hours, floor by floor, around a working building.
5. Offices, cafés, clinics, schools — one contract, quote back in a day.

Send drawings for a fixed commercial quote · Call 09 265 1172 · All commercial guides · Multi-unit & developer work