What It Costs to Open a Restaurant in Lahore in 2026

A mid-size dine-in in Lahore costs roughly Rs 5–12 million to open; a small fast-food setup runs Rs 1.5–4 million, and premium concepts start around Rs 15 million. Those are the totals — and totals are the least useful numbers in the budget. Ask three owners what they spent and you'll get three figures, none itemised, at least one quoted from 2021 prices. What you need before signing anything is the breakdown: which lines are fixed, which are estimates, and which one quietly decides whether you're still open in eighteen months.

How much does it cost to open a restaurant in Lahore?

The ranges above come from Dostyy's Lahore cost guide, and MezbanPOS's 2026 guide lands in the same territory at the low end: Rs 5–20+ lakh for fit-out plus equipment on a small cafe or dhaba. All of these are market estimates — your contractor and your landlord produce the real numbers. But the shape of the budget is consistent across sources, and it looks like this.

What are the line items?

1. 1

   Property advance and rent

   DHA and Gulberg run Rs 200,000–600,000 a month; Johar Town and Bahria Rs 120,000–350,000; Township and local markets Rs 60,000–150,000. Landlords typically want 2–6 months as advance and deposit — in DHA, 3–6 months is common. That's market convention, and it's cash gone before you serve a single plate.

2. 2

   Fit-out and furniture

   Rs 5–15 lakh gets a basic fast-food interior; a mid-size dine-in runs Rs 2–5 million; premium builds cross Rs 8 million. Furniture adds Rs 3–8 lakh for a small setup, up to Rs 4 million for larger rooms. This is the line that blows budgets, because every choice here feels reversible on paper and turns out permanent in practice.

3. 3

   The kitchen

   Roughly Rs 0.5–2 million for a full commercial kitchen: cooking range Rs 150,000–400,000, commercial fridge Rs 120,000–300,000, freezer Rs 80,000–200,000, plus Rs 1–3 lakh in utensils and tools. A chef you trust will tell you which half of this list is optional in year one.

4. 4

   Licences and paperwork

   The Punjab Food Authority licence itself is modest: Rs 10,000–20,000 a year on the official schedule, renewed annually, with the fee now set through PFA's online calculator based on investment, seating, rent and staff. Budget Rs 50,000–200,000 for the full legal paperwork — and weeks, not days, for the health NOC, fire permit and signboard approval.

5. 5

   Opening stock

   No reliable public figure exists for first-month inventory, so treat it qualitatively: enough for two lean weeks, reordered fast. Overbuying in week one is the classic way to turn cash into waste.

6. 6

   Staff float

   Bank at least two months of payroll before opening. The legal floor is Rs 40,000 a month for unskilled workers in both Punjab and Sindh since 1 July 2025 — and some published market ranges for waiters and cleaners still sit below that, which tells you how much of the sector pays informally. Budget legally. Chefs run Rs 60,000–150,000 at market rates.

7. 7

   Contingency

   Ten percent of everything above, minimum. The generator, the ventilation the inspector wants moved, the wall your contractor discovers. Nobody has ever regretted an unused contingency.

What will it cost every month once you're open?

Before you sell a single karahi, a mid-size Lahore restaurant carries a fixed base: rent, payroll, utilities at Rs 50,000–120,000 a month, and marketing at Rs 30,000–100,000. Karachi follows the same structure, with the same Rs 40,000 wage floor under Sindh's 2025–26 notification — paid by bank transfer or cross-cheque, as the Sindh Payment of Wages Act requires. Whatever your projected sales, this base gets paid first, every month, in cash.

Which two numbers decide whether you survive?

First: rent as a share of sales. MezbanPOS's guide advises keeping rent to 10–15% of revenue once stable; aim for the low end. Run it backwards before signing — a Rs 300,000 Gulberg rent needs roughly Rs 3 million in monthly sales to sit at 10%. If your covers-times-average-bill maths can't plausibly reach that, the location is wrong no matter how good the footfall looks on a Saturday evening.

Second: prime cost — food and labour together, as a share of sales. No reliable Pakistani benchmark is published, so the discipline matters more than any threshold: measure it from week one and watch the trend. What kills new restaurants is rarely the fit-out bill; it's a rent ratio locked in on day one and a prime cost nobody measured until month six. Both only help if you check them weekly — the kind of number Seated Analytics is built to keep in front of you without a spreadsheet.

The budget is half the job; sequencing is the other half — which licence to file when, how to hire, when to soft-launch. That part lives in our eight-step guide to opening a restaurant in Pakistan (/journal/how-to-open-a-restaurant-in-pakistan). And once the doors are open and you're counting real covers instead of estimates, Seated RMS is built for exactly that stage. Book a demo and we'll walk through it on your own numbers.