The first pop-up budget a brand writes has four lines: rent, build, stock, staff. The final invoice has about twenty. The gap is not overspend — it is six categories that are genuinely easy to miss because none of them are part of the idea.
Here they are, with realistic numbers for a 30-day run in a 120 m² high-street or shopping-centre unit.
1. Strip-out and reinstatement — €3,000–€8,000
Everything you installed has to come out, inside the access window, usually overnight. Then the unit has to be handed back in its original condition: walls made good, floor undamaged, fixings removed and filled, rubbish gone.
Brands budget the build and forget the reverse. Assume strip-out costs 25–35% of the build, and that a contested reinstatement is worse than both. Photograph the unit on the day you take the keys — every wall, the floor, the shopfront, the back-of-house — and email the set to the landlord with a date stamp.
2. Connectivity — €400–€1,500
A temporary unit rarely has a usable line. You will need a business connection installed (lead time up to three weeks) or a bonded 4G/5G router with a data plan. Card payments, stock lookups and any screen content depend on it.
The fallback matters more than the primary. Budget a second connection on a different network, and test the offline card flow before you open.
3. Waste — €300–€900
Packaging, pallets, and the daily waste of a trading shop. Shopping centres charge for waste streams and will not accept trade waste in the general bins. On build-up week the volume is large and the disposal is chargeable.
4. Insurance and certification — €500–€2,000
Public liability at the landlord's required limit, employer's liability if you are staffing it, goods-in-transit for stock, and — often overlooked — the contractor's certificates. Electrical work in a temporary unit needs a test certificate, and the landlord will ask for it before they let you open.
5. Standby and overtime staffing — €1,200–€4,000
Two different costs wearing one name:
- Standby — the cover you need when someone is ill on a Saturday. A pop-up has no bench. Budget 10–15% above the published rota.
- Build-up overtime — the crew working the night before opening because a delivery slipped. This is the pop-up equivalent of trade fair overtime and it happens almost every time.
6. The things that make it look finished — €1,500–€5,000
Not the fit-out. The last 5%: window vinyl, floor protection, a decent entrance mat, hangers, tissue paper, carrier bags, a till surround that hides the cables, plants, a sound system, and lighting that is better than what the landlord left.
This category has no owner on most projects, so nobody prices it, and then it is bought in a panic in the last week at retail prices.
The honest total
| Category | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Strip-out & reinstatement | €3,000 | €8,000 |
| Connectivity | €400 | €1,500 |
| Waste | €300 | €900 |
| Insurance & certification | €500 | €2,000 |
| Standby & overtime | €1,200 | €4,000 |
| Finishing | €1,500 | €5,000 |
| Total | €6,900 | €21,400 |
On a project whose "real" budget was €45,000, that is 15–30% on top. It is not a contingency — a contingency is for things you did not foresee, and all six of these are foreseeable.
The one that saves money
Of the six, the cheapest to control is strip-out, and the lever is the design. Free-standing fixtures, nothing bonded to the landlord's fabric, a floor finish that lays over rather than sticks down, and graphics on panels rather than direct-to-wall. Specify the build so it can be undone, and the last week costs a third of what it would otherwise.
Related reading: the pop-up store checklist is the twelve-week sequence these costs sit inside.
