Restaurant fit-out approvals in Dubai: the sequence explained

An office fit-out in Dubai answers to the landlord, the authority for the plot and Dubai Civil Defence. A restaurant or cafe answers to all of those and, in general terms, to the food safety and licensing bodies as well. The extract route decides where the cooking line can go; the cooking line decides where the suppression goes; the suppression and the hygiene review decide what the ceiling and walls are made of. Taking the steps out of order is how a kitchen gets built twice, in a city where rent often starts before the business can trade and a mall restricts contractor hours. Our guide to the commercial fit-out process in Dubai covers the stages every leased unit goes through; this page follows the approvals a food outlet adds. Our restaurant and hospitality fit-out team plans the dining room, the counter and the back of house together and applies for the approvals the job needs.

The building's consent usually comes before anything goes to an authority, and for a food unit the building's rules are often the tightest. In a mall or a tower the landlord typically issues a fit-out guide and reviews the drawings before giving its no-objection certificate; our page on the building management and community NOC explains that consent and why there is no single Dubai-wide version of it.

• Read the fit-out guide before the lease is signedIt tells you whether the unit has a kitchen extract riser, where a grease interceptor can sit, and what the base build provides for gas, water and cooling. A former shop or office may have no extract route at all, and that is a lease question rather than a design question.
• What the guide tends to coverWorking hours, protection of the common areas, the route for deliveries and waste, the materials allowed on the shopfront, the ceiling zone the landlord keeps for its own services and the drawings it wants to see.
• What the NOC application needsTypically a layout, a services plan showing extract, gas, drainage and cooling loads, a shopfront elevation and the contractor's details. The landlord's consent is often needed before the authority permit can be applied for, which is why it goes first.
• Outlets inside hotelsA restaurant inside a hotel may answer to the operator's technical team as well as the owner; where the operator has design or technical standards the design is drawn to meet them, as on our hospitality interior design page.

Fire and life safety sits with Dubai Civil Defence, which refers to the UAE Fire and Life Safety Code of Practice as the guide for its requirements. Our page on Dubai Civil Defence approval covers the services DCD lists. In general terms, these are the parts of a restaurant a fire and life safety review tends to look at.

These reviews run alongside the building and fire approvals, and an office fit-out never meets them. They are described in general terms only; the authority's own guidance applies, and your licensing body sets the order in which it wants its documents.

• The food safety reviewIn general terms, the kitchen layout, the finishes and the hygiene arrangements of a food outlet are reviewed by the food safety authority against its own published requirements. The design is usually expected to show the flow from delivery to service, separation between raw and cooked work, hand-wash points, washable surfaces, pest-resistant detailing and the waste route.
• Finishes that pass and finishes that do notHygiene reviewers generally look for surfaces that can be cleaned: coved junctions between floor and wall, sealed joints, impervious wall finishes behind the cooking line and the wash-up, and ceilings that do not shed. Exposed timber, open-grained stone and fabric belong in the dining room, and Dubai's dust makes open shelving in a store a cleaning problem as well. Agree the line where dining-room finishes stop and kitchen finishes start.
• Signage and the shopfrontThe external sign and any change to the shopfront usually go through the landlord's design review and may need the authority's signage approval as well. Mall guides often fix the sign zone, the illumination and the materials, so the sign is ordered after the drawings are approved.
• The trade licence and its timingThe licensing authority for the unit, mainland or free zone, issues the trade licence that names the activity, and the approvals are generally expected to match the activity and the address on it. Some steps may need the licence, or whatever preliminary consent your licensing body issues, in hand; others can run on the lease and the landlord's consent. Check with your licensing body which it wants first.
• The completion certificate and handoverOnce the works are inspected, the building authority issues its completion certificate and the landlord takes its own handover of the unit. The licensing and food safety bodies take their own final step from there. Build the opening date from this certificate, not from the day the furniture arrives.

Many delays in a Dubai restaurant fit-out come from doing a sensible thing at the wrong moment. These are the places where the order usually breaks.

We apply for the approvals our fit-outs need: the landlord's NOC, the building authority permit, the Dubai Civil Defence approvals and the further approvals a food outlet usually needs. The operator provides what only the operator can: its licence and company documents, the lease, the kitchen equipment list from its supplier and the signatures the applications call for. Which approvals apply depends on the location, the building and the type of business, so we confirm the list at the free site visit and tell you what we need from you. Check the order of your licensing body's own steps with that body; we build the programme around it.