Sectors
Greater Montréal
Restaurant & Café Construction and Fit-Out in Greater Montréal
A restaurant is the most regulated space we build. The kitchen, the ventilation, the fire separations, the food-establishment permits, and the occupancy all have to resolve together — and a layout drawn without them in mind is the one that gets torn up and repriced. We design and build restaurant and café interiors across Greater Montréal so the front of house and the back of house are solved as one project.
A restaurant is a kitchen with a dining room attached
The kitchen drives the whole plan. Commercial cooking brings ventilation and hood systems, make-up air, grease management, and fire separations — and where those have to run dictates where everything else can go. Get the kitchen's requirements into the plan first and the dining room falls into place around it; ignore them and the layout doesn't survive its first review.
Three authorities, not one — and the inspector might not be who you expect
A Montréal restaurant clears three separate approvals, from two levels of government: a building permit from the borough; a certificat d'occupation, also from the borough and separate from the building permit; and a permis de restauration et de vente au détail from MAPAQ (the Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec), under the Loi sur les produits alimentaires.
Then there's inspection, which is the part that surprises people. On the island of Montréal, food inspection is carried out by the Ville de Montréal's Division de l'inspection des aliments, acting as MAPAQ's mandataire under a delegation agreement covering the agglomeration — so the permit is provincial but the inspector is municipal. Off-island — Laval, Longueuil, Vaudreuil-Soulanges — MAPAQ inspects directly. We work both sides, and which one you're in changes who you're dealing with.
We identify which approvals your project needs and coordinate them; the technical requirements behind each are confirmed with the authority per project.
Current as of 2026 — confirm your situation with the borough and MAPAQ.
Front of house is an acoustics and flow problem
The dining room is a design problem of seating density, circulation, and acoustics — a room that seats well but sounds terrible loses repeat business. We plan the seating, the service paths, and the sound treatment together, within the occupancy the space is allowed.
The layout is drawn knowing where the ventilation has to run
Because we design in-house, the kitchen exhaust, make-up air, and grease routing are planned into the layout from the first sketch — not discovered after the framing is up, when moving a hood means moving a wall. The people drawing the dining room are the people who know what the back of house physically requires, so the two are reconciled on paper, where changes are cheap. On work subject to the Architects Act an OAQ-member architect directs that part of the design from the outset; the interior fit-out work that stays outside the Act we carry in full. Our designers are APDIQ members; we build under our own RBQ licence.
The services behind this
Same services on every project — here's what changes for this one.
Frequently asked
Restaurants & Cafés — your questions, answered.
Do I need more than a building permit to open a restaurant in Montréal?
Yes — three approvals, from two levels of government. The borough issues the building permit and, separately, the certificat d'occupation; MAPAQ issues the permis de restauration et de vente au détail under the Loi sur les produits alimentaires. Inspection differs by location: on the island of Montréal the Ville de Montréal's Division de l'inspection des aliments inspects as MAPAQ's mandataire, while off-island MAPAQ inspects directly. We identify what your project needs and coordinate it; the technical requirements are confirmed with each authority. (Current as of 2026 — confirm with the borough and MAPAQ.)
Why is restaurant construction more complex than a regular fit-out?
The kitchen. Commercial cooking brings ventilation, make-up air, grease management, and fire separations that a standard office or retail fit-out doesn't, and they dictate the layout rather than fitting into it. Coordinating the back of house with the dining room, the permits, and the trades is what makes it a different kind of project.
Can you design the kitchen and the dining room as one project?
Yes — that's the point of a design-build studio. We plan the kitchen's ventilation and servicing and the front-of-house seating, flow, and acoustics together, so the two reconcile on paper before construction rather than colliding on site.
Start a project
Have a space in mind? Let's design and build it.
Tell us about your project — commercial, retail, or residential — and we'll walk you through what design-build can deliver. Consultations across Greater Montréal.
Direct
(514) 697-1742info@indesignconstruction.caService area
- Montréal
- South Shore / Rive-Sud
- North Shore / Rive-Nord
- Laval
- Vaudreuil-Soulanges
- West Island