Is restaurant rent valued using Zone A like a shop?

Usually not. Restaurant space is more often valued overall — a rate per square foot across the trading area with allowances for back of house — because trade depends on covers and kitchen capability rather than window frontage. Where a unit could be let to either a retailer or an operator, both approaches may be tested.

Do delivery sales count towards a turnover rent?

It depends entirely on how gross turnover is defined in the lease. Older clauses drafted before delivery platforms often do not deal with it, which leaves room to argue. New leases should say explicitly whether platform sales, and the commission deducted from them, are in or out.

Can my landlord make me remove the kitchen extract at the end?

Only where the lease requires reinstatement and the landlord actually suffers the loss. If the unit is being re-let to another operator who wants the extract, or redeveloped, the Section 18(1) cap will often reduce or extinguish the claim.

Restaurant Lease Renewal & Rent Review Surveyor

What drives value here

Overall floor area and the sales-to-back-of-house ratio rather than pure zoning
Extract ventilation, grease management and the cost of installing or replacing it
Covers achievable, outside seating rights and pavement licences
Premises licence hours and any planning restrictions on class or opening
Turnover rent provisions, base rent level and what counts as gross turnover
Tenant fit-out and whether the review clause disregards it

Turnover rents that actually work

Turnover deals fail on definitions. Whether delivery and third-party platform sales are included, whether VAT and service charge come out, how gift vouchers are treated and what the base rent floor is set at can shift the annual bill materially without either party noticing at heads of terms.

Where turnover rents apply, the audit and certification machinery matters as much as the percentage. Loose drafting is expensive for years.

Rent reviews and the fit-out trap

Most well-drafted leases disregard tenant improvements at review, but restaurants sign a surprising number of leases that do not — meaning the operator pays rent on their own kitchen and fit-out. Establishing what is landlord's and what is tenant's, and evidencing it, is often the single biggest saving available.

Renewals and exits

At renewal, the argument is usually term length and break rights rather than rent alone: operators need flexibility, landlords want term certainty. On exit, dilapidations claims for extract removal, floor and drainage reinstatement and full redecoration are routinely capped by the diminution in value of the landlord's reversion.

Common questions

Guides for restaurants

Talk it through

Initial advice is free — tenant side only.

Send your lease or notice

Restaurants — tenant-side surveying