Services · Tucson, Arizona
A restaurant build-out runs on three trades that usually mean three subcontracts — kitchen equipment power, refrigeration, and the hood and make-up air over the cook line. Arizona Electrical Solutions holds both the CR-11 electrical license and the CR-39 air-conditioning and refrigeration license, so the circuits, the walk-ins, and the hood interlocks are built and inspected under one contract, across Tucson and statewide. Request a bid →
Restaurant Electrical
A commercial kitchen is the densest electrical room most buildings will ever have. Every piece of equipment on the kitchen consultant's schedule needs a circuit sized and configured to its nameplate, the receptacles need GFCI protection where NEC 210.8(B) requires it, everything that makes heat under the hood has to shut down when the suppression system discharges, and the walk-ins have to hold temperature through a Tucson summer. We build all of it: the CR-11 license covers the power, and the CR-39 license covers the refrigeration and the make-up air — a combination an electrical-only contractor cannot offer.
Restaurant work sits inside our broader commercial & retail capability, with the mechanical half — hoods, make-up air, refrigeration — inside our HVAC & mechanical scope. For build-outs in occupied centers, where your neighbors are open for business while your space is under construction, see how we run a tenant improvement.
Dedicated circuits built from the kitchen consultant's equipment schedule — fryers, combi ovens, mixers, dish machines — with each item's voltage, phase, and receptacle configuration verified against the manufacturer's cut sheets before rough-in, so the receptacle behind every machine matches the plug that arrives with it.
The build-out process →Shunt-trip breakers tied into the hood's wet-chemical suppression system, exhaust and make-up air interlocks, and the fans and make-up air equipment itself — the electrical under CR-11 and the mechanical under CR-39, on one schedule instead of three.
HVAC & mechanical scope →Circuits for the evaporators, condensing units, door heaters, lighting, and alarms — plus the refrigeration side itself: line sets brazed under nitrogen, pressure-tested, evacuated, and charged by our own refrigeration technicians.
Refrigerant piping →Scoping It
Two restaurants with the same square footage can be entirely different projects. When we price one, these are the variables that move the number and the calendar:
The kitchen consultant's equipment schedule is the electrical design. Every late swap — a bigger dish machine, a different combi oven, one more fryer — changes circuits, and a change made after rough-in costs multiples of the same change made on paper. We flag the electrical implications of the schedule early so decisions happen before the walls close.
A second-generation restaurant space may hand you a usable service, a hood, and a walk-in box; a cold shell hands you nothing. The gap between the service the space has and the load a modern cook line draws is often the biggest single line item — kitchens are dense loads, and an undersized service should surface on day one of design, not day one of demo.
Hood packages, make-up air units, and walk-in boxes are made to order, and their lead times — not labor — set the critical path on most build-outs. We identify the long-lead items at bid time and push to release them with the equipment schedule, because no amount of manpower recovers a hood that shipped late.
A restaurant passes more inspections than almost any other tenant space — building, electrical, mechanical, the fire department's functional test of the hood suppression system, and the health department's review of the finished kitchen. Each one gates the next. We build that sequence into the schedule instead of discovering it at the end.
Hood & Suppression
NFPA 96 requires that when the hood's fire-suppression system discharges, the sources of fuel and electric power that produce heat under that hood shut off. The electrical half of that requirement is the shunt-trip breaker — a breaker with a remote trip coil wired to the suppression system's microswitch, so a discharge at the hood automatically opens the cooking-equipment circuits at the panel.
Getting it right takes coordination among the hood and suppression installer, the mechanical contractor, and the electrician. On our jobs, two of those three are the same company: we wire the shunt trips and interlocks under CR-11 and set the exhaust and make-up air equipment under CR-39, so the fire inspector's end-to-end test is a walkthrough rather than a discovery process.
Front of House
The kitchen is the technical heart of the job, but the dining room is where the design intent lives. We build zoned dimming with preset scenes — lunch, dinner, close — decorative and pendant fixture circuits coordinated with the designer's package, and controls that let a manager change the room from a keypad instead of a breaker panel.
Tucson restaurants live on their patios for most of the year, and patio power is its own scope: weather-rated devices with in-use covers per NEC 406.9, GFCI-protected receptacles, and circuits for misting pumps, patio heaters, fans, and string lighting that were designed in — not extension-corded later.
Self-Performed
On most restaurant jobs the electrician waits on the mechanical contractor, and both wait on the hood installer. When the CR-11 and CR-39 scopes belong to the same company, that standoff disappears — one superintendent sequences all of it.
Conduit, circuits, and duct move through the ceiling on one coordinated plan — so the hood chase, the make-up air duct, and the cook-line feeders aren't fighting for the same cavity a week before inspection.
The exhaust fans, make-up air equipment, and refrigeration condensers land on the roof under our CR-39 license, with the power and controls beneath them under CR-11 — set, wired, and started by the same company.
FAQ
The honest drivers are decisions and deliveries, not labor hours. The schedule is set by when the kitchen equipment schedule goes final (it is the electrical design), the lead times on the hood package, make-up air unit, and walk-in box, the condition of the shell you are starting from, and the inspection sequence at the end — building, electrical, mechanical, fire, and health department, each gating the next. Lock the equipment schedule early and release the long-lead equipment with it, and the rest of the job tends to hold its dates.
NFPA 96 requires that when the hood's fire-suppression system discharges, the sources of fuel and electric power that produce heat under that hood shut off. For electric cooking equipment, that is done with a shunt-trip breaker — a breaker with a remote trip coil wired to the suppression system's microswitch, so a discharge at the hood automatically opens the circuits at the panel. The fire inspector tests the whole chain at final, which is why we wire and verify the interlock ourselves instead of hoping three subcontractors met in the middle.
Often, yes — with phasing. Our crews start at 6 a.m., which suits restaurant work unusually well: on a remodel or an equipment change in an operating restaurant, the loud and disruptive work happens in the hours before you open, and the space is cleaned up and handed back before service. Larger scopes get phased area by area, with any shutdowns scheduled around your service periods rather than dropped on them.
Both sides of it. The CR-11 license covers the circuits — evaporator fans, condensing units, door heaters, lighting, and temperature alarms — and the CR-39 license covers the refrigeration itself: line sets brazed under nitrogen, pressure-tested, evacuated, and charged, with the controls set so the box holds temperature. One contract and one warranty conversation, with no gap between trades where a warm walk-in becomes everyone else's fault.
Yes — that is the normal arrangement, and we prefer it. The kitchen consultant's equipment schedule and utility plan are the basis of the electrical design. We verify each item's voltage, phase, and receptacle configuration against the manufacturer's cut sheets before rough-in, flag conflicts and late substitutions in writing, and coordinate directly with the consultant and the equipment supplier so the rough-in matches what actually ships.
We carry our share and sequence around the rest. The electrical and mechanical inspections are ours to schedule and pass; the fire department's functional test of the hood suppression system runs through our shunt-trip and interlock wiring, so we are on site for it; and the health department's review looks at the finished kitchen — equipment in place, walk-ins holding temperature, adequate lighting — which our scopes have to support. We build that sequence into the schedule from the start.
It is driven by the equipment schedule (the count and size of the cooking equipment sets the circuit count), the shell (a second-generation space with a usable service prices very differently than a cold shell), whether the existing service can carry what a modern cook line draws, the number of hoods and walk-ins, and the finish level of the dining-room lighting. We don't price restaurants from a square-foot rule of thumb — send us the equipment schedule and the floor plan, and we'll come back with a scoped, line-item bid covering the power, the hoods, and the refrigeration together.
Related Services
One contractor carries the whole scope. See every service we self-perform.
Safe-off and demo, panel changes, lighting, data, and fire-alarm coordination.
Equipment, ductwork, refrigerant piping, controls, ventilation, and start-up.
Start-up, test and balance, commissioning, retrofits, and preventive maintenance.
The full commercial electrical scope, self-performed across the Tucson metro.
Send us the kitchen consultant's equipment schedule and your floor plan. We'll scope the circuits, the hood interlocks, and the refrigeration together and come back with a line-item bid.
Request a Bid Call (520) 308-6235