Thirty years of watching people open takeaways, and I can tell you the most common way it goes wrong. Not the food. Not the location. It's that somebody worked out the cost to open a takeaway in the UK by pricing up the fryers, the pizza oven and the chest freezer, added a bit for signage, and called that a budget.
Then the extraction quote landed.
I'm Andrew Pickersgill, Managing Director at eCatering. This is the conversation I'd rather have before you sign a lease than three weeks after. For the equipment side in isolation, our takeaway equipment checklist goes deep on spec, and our guide to what commercial catering equipment you actually need frames it by venue type.
This one is about money. All of it.
The short answer
For most first-time operators taking on a high-street unit, budget £40,000 to £120,000 all-in to open a takeaway and trade through the first few months.
Wide range, because the variables are wide:
- Lean (£25,000–£40,000) — a unit with compliant working extraction and a previous hot food consent, entry-level kit, a cosmetic refresh rather than a fit-out.
- Typical high street (£45,000–£90,000) — a former retail or café unit needing change of use, a new canopy and duct, a counter and servery, a full equipment list.
- Fish and chip shop (£70,000–£150,000) — the frying range alone runs £8,000 to £20,000, and chippies carry heavier extraction, power and fit-out than almost any other format.
- Prime location or ground-up conversion (£120,000+) — London rents, a new duct riser to roof level, a three-phase upgrade, the lot.
The framing we use internally is the 50/25/25 rule: roughly 50% of project spend on equipment, 25% on installation and services, 25% on fit-out. If a supplier quotes you £40,000 of kit, go and find £80,000. That's the number most business plans get wrong.
Premises and planning
The lease is where your money starts leaving before a single chip is fried.
- Rent — £1,000 to £3,000 a month for a secondary parade outside the South East; £2,500 to £5,000+ in London and prime city-centre pitches.
- Deposit — typically three months' rent. On a £2,000 unit that's £6,000 gone on day one.
- Legal and survey fees — £1,500 to £3,000. Don't skip the schedule of condition; it's the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy against a dilapidations claim.
- Planning permission — the one people assume away. A hot food takeaway is sui generis: it does not sit inside Class E. Converting a shop, café or office unit needs a full planning application, and it can be refused on odour, litter, parking or noise grounds. Budget the fee and 8 to 13 weeks.
- Business rates — Small Business Rate Relief gives 100% relief at a rateable value of £12,000 or below, tapering to nil at £15,000, and around 30% of hospitality premises sit under that threshold. From April 2026 the temporary 40% retail, hospitality and leisure relief ended, replaced by lower permanent multipliers — 38.2p under £51,000 rateable value.
Confirm planning before you commit. And check the incoming electrical supply before you buy anything.
Extraction: the cost that catches everyone out
Every year I meet someone who has bought £12,000 of beautiful cooking kit and no idea their extraction quote will be bigger.
A bespoke stainless canopy with filters runs £2,500 to £6,000 on a small-to-mid takeaway. That's the canopy. The system is the expensive part:
- Ductwork to atmosphere — DW144 grade, routed to a discharge point the council will accept, usually roof level rather than out of the back wall. On a mid-terrace unit with no riser, this is where the money goes.
- Fan, attenuation, filtration and make-up air — odour control is frequently a planning condition on residential streets, and isn't cheap to buy or maintain.
- A complete installed system commonly lands £8,000 to £25,000+ where a new duct route is needed. Where one already exists, you might spend £1,500 having it surveyed, cleaned and certified.
The benchmark is DW172, the BESA specification for kitchen ventilation, and it's what environmental health officers and insurers assess against. If any cooking kit is gas you also need a BS 6173 gas interlock — gas will not flow unless extraction is proven running. Legal requirement, not a nice-to-have.
You also need landlord consent for a duct running up the outside of the building, and it isn't always granted. Keep TR19 grease cleaning records from day one, because your insurer will ask for them after a fire, not before.
Equipment costs by takeaway type
The part everybody starts with. These bands are equipment only, ex VAT — no installation, ducting, services or fit-out.
- Entry: around £6,000–£10,000. Countertop fryers, a compact grill or oven, a chest freezer, prep tables, sinks. Suits a small pizza, kebab or chicken shop with a tight menu.
- Mid: around £12,000–£20,000. Twin-tank floor-standing frying, a pressure fryer or twin-deck oven, hot holding, prep counters, undercounter and chest refrigeration.
- Premium: £25,000–£40,000+. Multi-line output, high-spec refrigeration, redundancy on the pieces you cannot afford to lose.
Real numbers from our own ranges. On the budget Quattro line, the Quattro FCE008 twin countertop fryer is £189.99 ex VAT and the Quattro FCE004 13L single fryer is £114.81 ex VAT — that second one makes an ideal dedicated allergen pot, because sharing oil between fish, chicken, vegan and gluten-containing products is a problem waiting to happen. On the mid-range Contender line, the Contender FCE091 16L Pressure Chicken Fryer is £591.66 ex VAT, the Contender Twin Deck Pizza Oven (OVP012) is £1,261.15 ex VAT, and the Contender FZC020 485L chest freezer is £419.78 ex VAT.
Rather not build the list yourself? The Takeaway Kitchen bundle is £2,199.99 as listed — a Contender twin deck pizza oven, a KINN 4 Burner Electric Kebab Grill, a Contender kebab knife slicer and a Contender dough roller. Our equipment bundles run from around £700 to £2,200 and arrive on one delivery. Price your own list from the range of commercial fryers and commercial freezers, or start from our takeaway equipment hub.
Fish and chip shops sit outside these bands. A traditional frying range is a single £8,000–£20,000 line item, and it drives your power and extraction spec with it.
Delivery platforms: the ongoing cost nobody budgets for
Here's the number that turns a profitable takeaway into a busy one that makes nothing.
- Deliveroo — roughly 15% to 35% of order value, with most independents at 25–30% on platform-delivered orders.
- Uber Eats — published UK rates of 30% where Uber delivers, 13% where you deliver, 13% for pick-up, plus a one-off activation fee of £650 ex VAT.
- Just Eat — generally the lowest headline rate at around 14% to 25%, largely because its self-delivery tiers keep the driver cost in-house.
Rates are negotiable and vary by agreement, volume and location. But run the maths on a £20 order at 30%: £6 goes to the platform. Add 30% food cost and a pound of packaging, and there's very little left before rent, wages or the electricity that ran the fryer.
Does that mean don't use them? No. It means knowing which orders are which, and building a direct ordering channel from day one so the platforms are an acquisition tool rather than your whole business.
There's a compliance angle too, and it's a hard commercial one. Your food hygiene rating is load-bearing. The major aggregators signed the FSA's Aggregator Food Safety Charter and generally require a minimum FHRS rating of 3; a rating of 2 typically means removal from Just Eat and Deliveroo. A poor inspection doesn't just embarrass you, it switches off a revenue channel overnight. Which is why a proper cleaning and hygiene programme — commercial-grade chemicals, a written routine, and the records to prove it — belongs in the opening budget, not month six.
Then packaging. A thousand takeaway containers cost roughly £26.52 to £57.03 ex VAT, and compostable alternatives typically run 25–40% more.
The costs people forget
- EPOS — free basic software up to £50–£150+ per month for hospitality-grade systems, before hardware and card processing. Delivery-platform integration adds roughly £49–£99 per month unless it's native.
- Signage and shopfront — £1,500 to £4,000 for a decent illuminated fascia, plus possible advertisement consent.
- Waste oil disposal — often free or rebated at volume (some collectors pay for 100L+), but smaller sites can pay around £75 plus VAT per collection.
- Insurance — public liability, employers' liability, contents, business interruption, product liability.
- Opening stock — £1,500 to £3,000 for a lean opening; £3,000 to £6,000 is more typical, and chippies sit at the top of that.
- Utility deposits and connections — energy suppliers frequently want a deposit from new businesses. A three-phase DNO upgrade costs roughly £1,500 to £4,000 where the network has capacity, rising toward £15,000 where excavation is needed.
- Licences — food business registration is free but must be done at least 28 days before trading. A late-night refreshment licence is chargeable and varies by council.
- Contingency — £5,000 to £10,000. Something will surprise you. It always does.
Working capital before you break even
This is the one that closes takeaways in month five, and it has nothing to do with equipment.
Hold three to six months of running costs in reserve — typically £15,000 to £30,000 for a single site, on top of your setup budget. It has to cover:
- Wages — the National Living Wage rose to £12.71 an hour in April 2026, with the 18–20 rate at £10.85. Employer National Insurance sits at 15% against a £5,000 secondary threshold, so your true cost per head is well above the headline rate. Wages commonly run around 30% of revenue.
- Rent and rates — payable whether you're busy or not.
- Utilities — fryers, hot holding and extraction fans draw far more than most owners expect in month one.
- Stock and packaging replenishment — before the platform payouts land.
Ramp-up is real. Most takeaways take three to six months to reach steady volumes, longer if you're building a customer base rather than renting one from an aggregator.
How to fund it
Most operators shouldn't fund a takeaway one way. They should blend.
Buy outright where the asset has a long life and low technology risk — stainless prep tables, sinks, shelving, refrigeration. Finance or lease the high-value cooking and warewashing kit, so cash stays where it earns.
Through us that means:
- iwocaPay — orders from £150 to £30,000, interest-free. Pay now by bank transfer, or across three equal interest-free monthly instalments.
- Lease finance — generally requires 18+ months trading, homeowner status and good credit. New tenant businesses usually need a guarantor.
- PayPal Credit — no interest for the first four months on orders over £99.
Full details are on our finance options page. Speak to an accountant about how any of this sits in your own numbers — we sell equipment, we don't give tax or financial advice.
Seven ways new takeaway owners overspend
- Signing the lease before checking planning. A hot food takeaway is sui generis. If the council says no, you own a lease on a sandwich shop.
- Budgeting for the canopy but not the duct. The canopy is the visible bit and the cheap bit. The route to atmosphere, the fan and the odour control are where the money is.
- Buying one big fryer instead of two smaller ones. One pot is an allergen problem and a peak-recovery problem. Friday-night temperature drop is the classic bottleneck.
- Over-specifying refrigeration on day one. People buy for the menu they hope to have in year three. Buy for the menu you're opening with.
- Treating delivery platforms as free growth. At 25–30% commission, a platform-only takeaway can be busy and broke at the same time.
- Skipping the cleaning and hygiene programme. Your FHRS score is earned in week one, and a 2 gets you removed from the major platforms. A revenue decision dressed as a housekeeping one.
- Leaving no working capital. I've seen more takeaways fail with a beautiful kitchen and an empty bank account than the other way round.
When to bring in a Key Account Manager
There's a point where a shopping basket stops being the right tool. If you're specifying extraction alongside cooking kit, or working out whether your supply will carry the load, get a person on it.
The mistake isn't buying the wrong fryer — it's buying any fryer before anyone's looked at the room. We'd rather spend twenty minutes on site in Bolton or Birmingham before you've spent a penny than take a phone call three weeks after the kit's landed and the duct won't route.
Our Key Account Managers do this every week for operators in Bolton, Birmingham and Cardiff — sizing fryer capacity to realistic Friday-night peaks and stopping people buying a three-phase machine for a single-phase unit. Find the team on our meet the team page.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to open a takeaway in the UK?
Budget £40,000 to £120,000 all-in for most first-time takeaways, covering premises, extraction, equipment, fit-out and working capital. A lean opening in a unit with existing compliant extraction can be done for £25,000–£40,000. Chippies typically run £70,000–£150,000.
How much does takeaway extraction cost?
A bespoke canopy for a small-to-mid takeaway costs £2,500 to £6,000, but a full installed system with ductwork to atmosphere, fan, filtration and odour control commonly reaches £8,000 to £25,000+ where a new duct route is required. Systems are specified against DW172, with a BS 6173 gas interlock on gas appliances.
Do I need planning permission for a hot food takeaway?
Yes, in almost all cases. A hot food takeaway is a sui generis use — it sits outside Class E — so converting a shop, office or café requires a full planning application. Applications can be refused on odour, litter, parking or noise grounds, so confirm the position before committing to a lease.
What commission do delivery platforms charge?
Deliveroo charges roughly 15–35% of order value, with most independents at 25–30%. Uber Eats publishes 30% for platform delivery and 13% for self-delivery and pick-up, plus a £650 ex VAT activation fee. Just Eat is usually lowest at around 14–25%. Rates are negotiable.
How much working capital does a takeaway need?
Hold three to six months of running costs — typically £15,000 to £30,000 for a single site, on top of your setup budget. It covers wages (the National Living Wage is £12.71 from April 2026, plus 15% employer NI), rent, rates, utilities and stock replenishment while trade ramps up.
Can I finance takeaway equipment?
Yes. iwocaPay covers orders from £150 to £30,000 interest-free, paid now by bank transfer or across three equal monthly instalments. Lease finance is available for businesses trading 18+ months with homeowner status and good credit. PayPal Credit gives four months interest-free on orders over £99.
Where to go next
Work through it in this order: confirm planning, confirm the electrical supply, get an extraction quote, then price the kit.
- Spec the equipment list — our takeaway equipment checklist covers fryers, hot holding, refrigeration and consumables
- Compare by venue type — the commercial catering equipment framework covers takeaways, cafés, pubs and restaurants
- Different format? See what it costs to open a café in the UK
- Shop the range — everything you need to run a takeaway, or start from a complete kitchen bundle
- Fund it sensibly — interest-free and lease finance options
Get the boring things right — planning, power, extraction, working capital — and the fun part looks after itself. Get them wrong and no amount of good food rescues it.
— Andrew
Equipment prices quoted are ex VAT and correct as of 9 August 2026. Bundle prices are as listed on site. Prices, specifications and availability are subject to change — check the current product page before ordering.
Property, planning, extraction, utility, platform commission and staffing figures are indicative UK ranges gathered from published 2025–2026 sources and our own project experience. Actual costs vary significantly by location, unit condition, local authority and commercial agreement. Obtain written quotations for your own site.
This article is general information for UK hospitality operators and is not financial, tax, legal or regulatory advice. Consult a qualified accountant, solicitor or your local authority's planning and environmental health teams before making commitments.
