We pour concrete for restaurants, hotels and event venues in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and we build it for the traffic those buildings actually take. That means kitchen slabs, dumpster pads, loading areas, patio flatwork and the sidewalk carrying every guest from the parking lot to the front door. Stamped concrete shows up often on the guest side, where an entry walk or a patio is part of what people see before they sit down. As a concrete contractor working a city of 30,954, we handle both halves of a hospitality property: the service yard nobody photographs and the frontage everybody judges.
Commercial slabs fail differently than residential ones. Grease, hot water, pallet jacks and delivery trucks work a floor every day, and concrete poured light on thickness or short on rebar shows it inside a season or two. A crack across a dining patio is a look problem. A crack across a kitchen floor or a dock apron shuts down part of a working business until somebody fixes it, usually at the worst time of the week. So we size the base, the steel and the joint layout for the load the space carries. That decision, made early, is most of the difference between a slab that holds and one that gets torn out.
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Commercial concrete for a restaurant or a hotel is mostly the surfaces nobody looks at until they fail. Dumpster pads that take a loaded truck twice a week. Loading approaches. Entry landings. The concrete sidewalk that runs the length of your frontage and carries every guest who walks through the door. Patio slabs, sometimes stamped concrete for a courtyard or a bar deck, sometimes a plain broom finish where the tables go. Grease trap lids and cleanouts get set into all of it. This work takes weight, water and traffic that a home driveway never sees.
Layout comes first, because the slope decides everything after it. Water has to run away from the building, not toward it, and on a patio that pitch still has to stay flat enough to keep a four-top level. We cut the grade, compact the base, set forms, and tie rebar where the load calls for it. Any work in the public right of way, the sidewalk especially, goes through City of Lawrenceville permitting before we pour. Then we place, finish, and cut control joints while the slab is still green.
Failures usually start underneath. A slab poured over soft fill or a base that was graded and hoped for will crack no matter how clean the finish looked on day one. Thin pours in a truck path break at the edges first. Stamped surfaces that never got sealed lose their color under grease and pressure washing. Joints cut too late let the concrete crack where it wants to rather than where you put the line. Bad drainage is the quiet one: a low spot by the back door holds water and never dries.
Getting it right is thickness, steel and patience, in that order. A dumpster pad wants a heavier slab and a rebar mat rather than wire mesh, over a base built up and compacted in lifts. Stamped work needs proper release, sealer, and a cure that nobody walks across early. Pours get staged so an entry or a section of patio stays usable while the rest sets up. A concrete contractor who skips those steps saves himself a week and costs you the slab. Call for a free estimate.
Restaurant and hospitality slabs across metro Atlanta sit under conditions a residential driveway never sees: grease, constant foot traffic, rolling carts, delivery trucks cutting the same corner every morning. We pour patios, service walks, dumpster pads, entries and kitchen approach slabs for places that cannot close for long. Much of the commercial and mixed-use fabric here grew up alongside the housing, where the median home dates to 1987, and concrete from that era is now well past its easy years.
Older flatwork tells you what it needs. A patio that has settled toward the building, a sidewalk with a lip that catches shoes, an entry slab spalling where salt and dish water have worked on it for decades. We look at what is under the failure before quoting the fix, because a slab that cracked from a bad base will crack again on top of new concrete. Sometimes the answer is a tear-out. Sometimes it is a section.
Finish matters more on a hospitality site than most owners expect. Stamped and colored concrete reads well on a patio and carries a brand, though it has to be sealed and maintained or it goes chalky within a few seasons. Exposed aggregate holds up under wet feet. Broom finish is honest and cheap to repair. We set rebar or wire mesh according to what will roll across the slab, not to a default, and we build joints where the concrete wants to crack anyway. Call for a free estimate.
We walk the property and look at what the concrete has to sit on. Grades, drainage, where trucks and delivery vans turn, how the back door traffic moves during service hours. We measure the pad, check the depth of existing slab at the edges, and find the soft spots underfoot. Old sidewalks that heaved usually tell us the base failed, not the mix. That gets noted before anything else.
You get the scope in writing: square footage, slab thickness, reinforcement, finish, joint layout, and what we haul away. We list the parts that change the number so nothing surprises you later. Permit paperwork gets pulled and inspections scheduled before demo starts. Restaurants tend to need staging around dumpster pads and grease line access, so we set the sequence around your open hours and put it on paper.
Old slab comes out in sections and goes straight into the truck. Under it we want compacted graded aggregate base, usually four inches, run over with a plate compactor or roller until it stops moving. Soft subgrade gets dug out and replaced, not just covered. Forms get set to a slope that carries water away from the building. Skipping this step is why driveways crack in the middle within two seasons.
Forms go in staked and strung to line. For a dumpster pad or a drive lane we use rebar on chairs, typically number four on a grid; light foot traffic sidewalks can run wire mesh held up off the base. Concrete installation happens early when we can, so the mix is not fighting afternoon heat. Trucks get placed and screeded in one continuous pour where the pad allows.
Finish depends on where it lives. Broom finish for a concrete driveway and back-of-house walkways, exposed aggregate or stamped and colored work out front where guests see it. Control joints get cut early, roughly a quarter of the slab depth. Curing compound goes on the same day. We walk the job with you, check joints and edges, and tell you when to keep vehicles off.
Two slabs of the same square footage can land far apart on price. Most of the difference comes from conditions you can walk out and look at yourself, before anyone writes a number down.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Old asphalt, a buried grease line or an abandoned footing under the pour | costs more | All of it comes out and gets hauled before any base goes down. |
| A mixer can back within a chute length of the work | costs less | No pump, no wheelbarrow runs across finished surfaces. |
| Thickness and rebar the use calls for, not wire mesh | costs more | Delivery trucks and dumpster pads carry loads a walkway slab never sees. |
| Existing concrete that has to be broken and carried off | costs more | Demolition, loading and disposal stand on their own. |
| Ground that already falls away from the building | costs less | Less grading, and fewer drains set into the flatwork. |
| Stamped or colored finish rather than broom | costs more | Slower placement, release and sealing. |
| Soft or saturated subgrade | costs more | Compacted stone goes in first or the slab moves. |
Compare bids line by line: slab thickness, rebar size and spacing, base depth, joint layout, and whether demolition and haul off sit inside the number or arrive later.
It depends on the mix, the thickness and what goes on top. A standard slab takes on foot traffic in a few days and reaches most of its strength over the first month. Coatings and toppings add their own cure schedule. We pour in sections where the layout allows, so part of the house keeps working while the rest sets. We tell you the real timeline before we start.
Kitchens need a floor that sheds water, resists grease and does not turn slick when wet. A hard troweled slab sealed for chemical resistance handles most of it. Where the health of the joint depends on drainage, we slope the flatwork to the drains and keep the surface tight enough to clean. Exposed aggregate and stamped concrete belong out front, not behind the line.
Inspectors look for surfaces that are smooth, nonabsorbent and cleanable, with coving where the floor meets the wall and positive drainage to every floor drain. We pour to those conditions. That means a dense finish, sealed joints, no birdbaths holding standing water, and coved transitions instead of square corners that trap grease and food.
Yes, in most cases. A patio pour is separate from your kitchen, so the disruption is mainly access, noise and the concrete truck. We can form and set rebar or wire mesh ahead of the pour, then place early and finish while you are closed. Fresh concrete still needs protection from traffic, so the patio itself stays roped off longer than one shift.
Yes. Deliveries, trash pickup and grease service all need a clear path, and we plan the work around them rather than the other way round. Tell us your standing windows and we sequence forming, pouring and saw cutting so the dock stays reachable. On a tight site near Duluth or anywhere else we work, that scheduling matters as much as the concrete itself.
Yes. Trap lids, cleanouts and drain bodies all need concrete formed tight around them and set at the right elevation, or you get a lip that catches a mop and cracks. We box out for the trap, set the frame flush, and pitch the surrounding slab so water runs to the drain instead of pooling at the edge.