TL;DR: A&T Group Interiors is a Dubai fit-out contractor founded in 2009, working mostly in F&B and hospitality: TATEL, Roberto's DIFC, LEÑA and the Talabat headquarters sit in its credited portfolio. It publishes no rates. For restaurants and hotels it is a credible shortlist entry; for apartments and villas, residential specialists usually cost less.
Who A&T Group Interiors is
The company was founded in 2009 by Atti Abu Assi and Tareq Khalafawi, and its Dubai office is in Api World Tower on Sheikh Zayed Road. There is a second office in Riyadh, which matters if your project runs across both markets and you would rather not manage two contractors.
Most of the numbers attached to the firm come from the firm. By its own count it has completed more than 350 projects, employs over 250 people and runs a 30,000 sqft joinery facility. Those figures sit on its own site and in business directories that scrape it. Treat them as positioning rather than audited fact, the same way you should treat every headline number on every contractor website in this city, ours included.
One outside signal does exist. A&T has appeared in Commercial Interior Design magazine's Power List of leading regional fit-out firms, which is an editorial selection by a trade publication rather than a client review. It tells you the company is visible to the industry press and delivering work that other contractors notice. It does not tell you how the last three projects went on programme or on budget.
What the portfolio is built on
The centre of gravity is food and beverage, and it is obvious from the credited work: TATEL Dubai, Roberto's in DIFC, LEÑA, Gigi Rigolatto. Add the regional headquarters for Talabat, work with Emaar and Nakheel, Address Hotels, and a project at Abu Dhabi airport. That is a hospitality and commercial book, not a residential one.
F&B is a specific discipline and the buyer should understand why. A restaurant fit-out carries a commercial kitchen, extraction ducting to roof level, grease interception, gas approval, drainage falls under the floor, acoustic separation and a Civil Defence scope that a clothing shop never touches. The design is the visible half. The engineering above the ceiling and below the slab is the half that decides whether you open on the date printed on your lease.
The in-house joinery claim is worth a second look for the same reason. On a bar, a reception desk or a bespoke banquette run, joinery is the long pole in the programme. Imported Italian joinery routinely runs eight to fourteen weeks in Dubai and locally fabricated work four to eight. A contractor cutting its own panels controls that clock instead of queueing behind another factory's order book. If A&T's workshop is as stated, that is a real operational advantage on a fast-track venue, and a fair question to ask on the first call: what is your current factory lead time on my joinery package.
What the work costs, and what the market charges
A&T does not publish rates. Neither does most of the premium end of this market, and the reason is not evasion. Two restaurants of the same square footage can differ by a factor of three depending on kitchen scope, ceiling height, base build condition and how much stone is in the specification. A published rate card would be wrong for nearly every enquiry.
What you can do is price the job against market bands before the first meeting, so you know whether a proposal is in the right postcode. From our own fit-out cost per square foot breakdown, F&B in Dubai commonly runs AED 500 to 750 per sqft at a standard specification and AED 800 to 2,000 or more at the premium end. Office work sits lower, roughly AED 350 to 550 standard and AED 600 to 1,500 premium. Those are market observations, not a quote from A&T or from us.
Design fees are a separate line. Per-square-foot rates in Dubai run around AED 200 to 400 for standard work and AED 400 to 600 for premium, with luxury and bespoke above that. Percentage arrangements land at 10 to 20% of project cost, and a further 10 to 20% is common where the same firm also runs project management. The full picture is in our guide to how design fees are structured in Dubai.
Two costs that rarely appear in an early conversation: approvals at roughly 3 to 5% of construction value across Dubai Municipality or the relevant free zone authority, Civil Defence and DEWA, and your own contingency at 5 to 10%. On a mall or hotel unit, add the landlord's rules on top. Night-only working around trading hours, landlord-appointed MEP specialists for tie-ins, hoarding and access charges, plus a refundable deposit that is decided by building management rather than by your contractor.
What the public record does not show
Being clear about the difference between a weakness and missing information matters here, because they get conflated in comparison articles and it is unfair to the company.
Nothing in the public record suggests A&T does poor work. What the record does not contain is a published rate structure, a meaningful body of independent client reviews, or portfolio entries that state a budget, a programme and whether the handover date held. The portfolio shows finished photography of finished venues. Every fit-out contractor's portfolio does.
That is a transparency gap rather than a performance problem, and the fix sits with you rather than with them. Ask for two references you can call on projects of your type completed in the last eighteen months, and ask each one whether the final account matched the contract sum and whether the handover slipped. Ask for the trade licence number and check it on the public Department of Economy and Tourism register. Ask what the contract says about delay: is there a penalty per day, and at what rate. Any established contractor will answer those, and the answers tell you more than a Power List entry does.
Who they fit, and who should look elsewhere
They fit an operator opening a restaurant, a lounge, a hotel outlet or a branded workplace, where design intent is heavy, joinery is bespoke and the venue has to open on a fixed date. That buyer is served well by a contractor whose weekly work is exactly that, and by a Riyadh office if the concept is rolling out across the GCC.
They are probably the wrong tool for a three-bedroom apartment in Marina, a villa refresh in The Meadows or a landlord getting a unit ready to rent. Not because a hospitality contractor cannot do residential work, but because the overhead built into an organisation of that size is priced for commercial programmes with commercial contingencies. A 150 sqm apartment does not need a project structure built for a 400-cover restaurant, and you pay for the structure whether you use it or not.
The same logic runs in reverse, and it costs us work to say it. Our own record is residential and boutique commercial: a fur boutique in Dubai Hills Mall, units at City Walk, Platinum Tower in JLT, a spa in Media City, apartments in Dubai Creek Address, Bluewaters and Palm Jumeirah. If you are building a signature restaurant with a 200-cover kitchen and a named chef attached, a specialist hospitality contractor is the better hire, and A&T is a legitimate name on that shortlist.
Alternatives in Dubai by project type
Sorting by project type is more useful than ranking firms, because the same contractor can be excellent on one brief and expensive on another.
- High-concept F&B and hospitality. Bishop Design, XBD Collective and A&T itself all work in this space. What you are buying is kitchen and MEP coordination under a fixed opening date, plus a design language strong enough to survive Instagram. Check who employs the site team and who holds the Civil Defence submission.
- Luxury residential, villas and signature apartments. ALGEDRA works in ornate classical residential, ANARCHITECT in restrained architecture-led interiors. Match the studio's default aesthetic to yours before anything else, because a firm designs what it already knows how to build.
- Offices and workplace. Summertown Interiors, Motif and similar mid-to-large commercial contractors handle Cat A to Cat B work at scale. The deciding factors are usually programme control and how the jurisdiction is handled, whether that is DM, DDA, Trakhees, DMCC or DIFC.
- Apartments, villas and small commercial units under one contract. This is where we sit. Our own crew rather than one-off subcontractors, a Russian-speaking team, an estimate fixed by contract with no additions after mobilisation, a one-year warranty and a percentage penalty for each day past the agreed handover. Completed work is on our projects page.
Verify each firm independently. Trade licences lapse, teams turn over, and a portfolio from four years ago may have been delivered by people who no longer work there.
What to verify before you sign
Five checks, in the order they save you the most money. The first four apply to every contractor in Dubai and the fifth applies to anyone quoting hospitality work.
- 1. Trade licence. It must be current and its activity must cover fit-out contracting or interior decoration. The register is public. A contractor who hesitates over the licence number has answered the question.
- 2. Jurisdiction and approval route. Your address decides it, not your licence. Submitting a valid drawing set to the wrong authority costs four to six weeks and the consultant fee twice.
- 3. A line-item breakdown. Civil, MEP, joinery, finishes and preliminaries stated separately, with the MEP line carrying AC tonnage and sprinkler counts. A quote 30% below the field is almost always thin in MEP, which is the part you cannot reach after handover.
- 4. Payment tied to milestones, and the delay clause. Mobilisation, structural, MEP rough-in, finishing, handover. A large upfront payment with no milestone schedule removes your leverage on the day you need it.
- 5. Kitchen and Civil Defence scope in writing. On F&B, confirm who submits, who pays authority fees, and who owns the extraction and gas approvals. This is the single most common source of a delayed opening.
Twelve months of Defects Liability is standard here, so confirm what it covers and who answers the phone in month eleven. Scope, price and dates should be fixed by contract before anyone mobilises, which is how we structure our own agreements and how any credible contractor should structure theirs.
FAQ
What does A&T Group Interiors specialise in?
Food and beverage and hospitality fit-out, with commercial and retail work alongside it. The credited portfolio includes TATEL Dubai, Roberto's DIFC, LEÑA, Gigi Rigolatto, the Talabat regional headquarters and work with Emaar, Nakheel and Address Hotels. Residential appears in its service list but is not where the visible record sits.
Does A&T Group Interiors publish its prices?
No, and that is normal at this end of the market. Premium fit-out pricing depends on kitchen scope, base build condition and specification, so a public rate card would misprice most enquiries. Price your own job against market bands first, then read any proposal against a line-item breakdown rather than a single figure.
How much does a restaurant fit-out cost in Dubai?
Market bands run roughly AED 500 to 750 per sqft for a standard F&B specification and AED 800 to 2,000 or more at the premium end, before FF&E and kitchen equipment. Approvals typically add 3 to 5% of construction value, and you should hold 5 to 10% as your own contingency. These are market observations, not any one contractor's rate.
Is a hospitality contractor the right choice for a villa or apartment?
Usually not, on cost rather than on capability. A firm structured around commercial programmes carries overhead priced for that work, and a 150 sqm apartment does not need it. Residential and mid-size commercial specialists generally deliver the same finish for less, and our own cosmetic work starts from AED 1,500 per sqm with capital renovation from AED 3,000.
What should I check before signing with any Dubai fit-out contractor?
The trade licence and its activity, the correct approval authority for your address, a line-item quote with MEP broken out, a payment schedule tied to site milestones, and a written delay clause. Then call two references on comparable projects finished in the last eighteen months and ask whether the final account matched the contract sum.