Welcome to the definitive guide to restaurant terminology, a comprehensive glossary designed to empower you with vocabulary from the world of hospitality and dining.
Whether you're a seasoned professional, a budding restaurateur, a new team member, or simply curious about the inner workings of your favorite dining spots, this resource is tailored for you.
Although many of the following terms overlap with the hospitality industry, we’ll be focusing on terms for restaurants, bars, and other types of dining concepts.
Use the index on the right to move between sections such as kitchen terminology, front-of-house terms, restaurant management terms, among others.
Explore common and uncommon restaurant terms, operational jargon, and crucial restaurant business metrics.
Must-know restaurant terms
Back-of-House (BOH): Refers to all areas of the restaurant not accessible to guests, typically including the kitchen, dishwashing area, storage, and staff-only facilities.
Front-of-House (FOH): Refers to all areas of the restaurant where guests are present, including the dining room, bar, host stand, and restrooms.
Guest: The preferred term for diners or visitors in hospitality, emphasizing a welcoming experience. It’s an alternative to the term ‘customer’ or ‘diner.’
Host/Hostess: Staff responsible for greeting guests, managing reservations and waitlists, and seating guests.
No-show: Guest who made a reservation but did not arrive.
Point of Sale (POS): A system for processing orders and payments. F&B POS systems often vary from retail and e-commerce POS systems.
Reservation: An advance booking for a table or event.
Runner: Staff member delivering food from the kitchen to tables.
Server/Waiter/Waitress: Staff responsible for taking orders, serving food and drinks, and attending to guests in the dining area.
Soft Opening: Limited opening for staff training and operational testing before the official launch.
Types of restaurants
Casual Dining: A restaurant concept that offers a relaxed atmosphere, moderate prices, and typically family-friendly options.
Fast Casual: Restaurants that offer higher quality food than QSRs but with counter service and a more casual atmosphere than full-service restaurants.
Fine Dining: A restaurant concept characterized by high-quality ingredients, elegant ambiance, and impeccable service.
Pop-up Restaurant: A temporary restaurant concept.
QSR (Quick Service Restaurant): Another term for fast-food establishments.
Front-of-house, back-of-house, and kitchen glossary
86 (Eighty-Six): Slang used to indicate that a menu item has run out.
Barista: A person who prepares and serves coffee, often in a cafe setting.
Busser: Staff responsible for clearing and resetting tables.
Chef de Cuisine/Head Chef: The chef in charge of all kitchen operations.
Dupe: A duplicate order ticket sent to the kitchen.
ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival): Tracking when guests are expected to arrive.
Expediter (Expo): The person in the kitchen who organizes and dispatches food to the servers, ensuring orders are complete and correct.
Fire: A command used in the kitchen to indicate that preparation should begin on a specific dish or order.
Line Cook: A chef responsible for a specific station on the kitchen line (e.g., sauté, grill, pantry).
Mise en Place: A French culinary term meaning "everything in its place," referring to the organization and arrangement of ingredients and equipment before cooking.
Pivot Point: System for tracking guest orders by seat position, improving service accuracy.
Pre-bussing: Clearing plates and utensils while guests are still present to speed up table turns.
Prix Fixe: A fixed-price menu, often multi-course (similar to Table d'Hôte, but Table d'Hôte often implies less choice).
Server/Waiter/Waitress: Staff responsible for taking orders, serving food and drinks, and attending to guests in the dining area.
Sous Chef: The second-in-command in the kitchen, assisting the Head Chef.
Walk-in: A guest who arrives without a reservation.
Restaurant management terms
A la Carte: A menu where each item is priced individually.
Banquet Round / Banquet Setup: Group seating arrangements for events
Check/Bill: The document presented to the guest for payment.
Cover: One paying guest (For example, "20 covers" means 20 guests).
Cover Fee: Charge per guest, sometimes for special events or premium reservations. Often, the use of third-party booking platforms or channels results in a cover fee per booking.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): This is a system for managing guest data, preferences, communication, and marketing. A restaurant CRM will differ from other types of CRMs, particularly in how a guest profile appears, along with the different filters and segmentation options.
Guest Feedback/Surveys: Post-visit surveys to collect guest feedback and improve service. Restaurants that use a reservation management system can use automated guest surveys for faster operations.
Guest Notes: Specific information about a guest (e.g., seating or dietary preferences). Restaurants should log guest notes into their CRM to personalize future visits.
Guest Profile: A profile for each guest, showing their preferences, visit history, allergies, birthdays, special requests, and other notes.
Integration: This covers systems you can connect. Often you can connect a table management system to your restaurant point-of-sale (POS), PMS, and marketing tools. The aim is to ensure seamless operations.
Inventory: The process of counting all ingredients and supplies.
Marketing Automation: Automated emails, SMS, or WhatsApp messages to guests, often based on CRM data.
PAX: Shorthand for "persons" or "guests," indicating party size.
Par Level: The minimum quantity of an item that must be on hand at all times.
PMS (Property Management System): Software for managing reservations, check-ins/outs, and billing (often in hotels).
Reservation management system: This is a type of software that helps restaurants manage online and offline reservations. A reservation management system can help you collect and increase online reservations, build your restaurant CRM, and improve overall guest experiences and relationships.
Segmentation: Grouping guests for targeted marketing and personalized service.
Table management system: Another term for a reservation management system or seating management software. It helps you manage your restaurant’s floor plan, merge and combine tables to seat large groups, and ensure smooth flow during peak days and hours.
Table Sharing: Seating multiple parties at the same or adjoining tables to maximize space.
Top: Number of guests in a party (e.g., "four-top" means a table for four).
Turn and Burn: Slang for quickly turning over tables to seat more guests during busy periods.
Upselling: Encouraging guests to purchase higher-priced items or add-ons.
Waitlist: List of guests waiting for a table when the restaurant is at capacity. Many reservation management systems come with waitlist management features.
Restaurant and business metrics
Break-Even Point: The point at which total costs and total revenues are equal.
Costs of Goods Sold (COGS): One of the most important restaurant metrics is COGS. It is the direct costs attributable to the production of the goods sold by a company. For restaurants, this is primarily food and beverage costs.
Dynamic Pricing / Demand-based Pricing: Adjusting menu or reservation prices in real time based on demand or events.
Food Cost Percentage: The ratio of the cost of food sold to food sales revenue.
Labor Cost Percentage: The ratio of labor costs to total sales revenue.
Prime Cost: The combined cost of labor and COGS, typically the largest expenses for a restaurant.
P&L (Profit and Loss Statement): A financial statement that summarizes the revenues, costs, and expenses incurred during a specific period.
Revpash (Revenue Per Available Seat Hour): Key metric: revenue generated per seat per hour.
ROI (Return on Investment): A measure of the profitability of an investment.
Table Turn / Table Turnover Rate: Number of times a table is seated and reset in a service period. A restaurant will often try to improve its table turnover rate to improve profitability.
Nada Sobhi
Operations
