Restaurant and POS terms, in plain English. Worth a read before your next POS demo.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 86 (eighty-six) | An item that has run out. "86 the salmon" means take it off sale. In a POS, 86-ing an item hides it on every channel. |
| Average check | Total sales divided by the number of checks (bills) in a period. |
| Bump | Marking a ticket as done on a kitchen display, often with a bump bar key. |
| Bump bar | A small keypad in the kitchen used to bump and recall tickets on a KDS. |
| Cloud POS | A POS that stores data online and runs on ordinary devices through a browser or app. |
| Comp | An item given free, for example to make up for a mistake. Usually recorded as a discount or waste with a reason. |
| Course | A stage of the meal (starters, mains, dessert). Coursing lets the kitchen cook each stage at the right time. |
| Cover | One guest. A 60-cover restaurant seats 60 people; covers served is the number of guests in a period. |
| Expo (expediter) | The person, or KDS view, that checks a whole order is complete before it leaves the pass. |
| Fire | Telling the kitchen to start cooking a held course. |
| Food cost percentage | The cost of ingredients divided by the menu price, shown as a percentage. |
| Handheld | A phone or small tablet servers use to take orders and payment at the table. |
| Hold and fire | Sending a course to the kitchen but holding it until the server fires it. |
| House account | A tab for a regular or company, settled later rather than at the time of the meal. |
| KDS (kitchen display system) | Screens in the kitchen that show orders instead of printed tickets. |
| KOT (kitchen order ticket) | The ticket that tells the kitchen what to cook. Common term in India and the Gulf. |
| Menu engineering | Analysing dishes by popularity and profit to decide what to promote, reprice or drop. |
| Modifier | A choice or change to an item, such as size, cooking temperature, extras or "no onions". |
| mPOS | Mobile point of sale: a POS running on a phone or small tablet. |
| Offline mode | A POS's ability to keep taking orders and payments without internet and sync later. |
| Par level | The minimum stock you want on hand before reordering. |
| PLU | Price look-up code. In delivery aggregators like Deliverect, the code that links an app's item to your POS item. |
| POS | Point of sale: the system where orders are taken and paid for. |
| Prime cost | Food and drink cost plus labour cost, usually as a percentage of sales. |
| QR ordering | Guests scan a code on the table to see the menu and order from their own phone. |
| Ready board | A screen showing which order numbers are ready to collect. |
| Recall | Bringing back a ticket that was bumped by mistake. |
| Service charge | A percentage added to the bill, often for dine-in or large groups. |
| SKU | Stock keeping unit: a code that identifies an item. Used to match items between systems. |
| Split check | Dividing one table's bill into several, by seat, item or amount. |
| Station | A section of the kitchen (grill, fryer, bar, pastry) that receives its own items. |
| Tab | An open order for a guest or group, usually at a bar, closed and paid at the end. |
| Table turnover | How many times a table is used by new guests in a period. |
| Ticket time | How long the kitchen takes from receiving an order to finishing it. |
| Tronc | A system, common in the UK, for sharing tips and service charge among staff. |
| Variance | The difference between the stock you should have and what you counted. |
| Void | Cancelling an item or order before payment, usually with a reason and manager approval. |
| X report | A mid-shift summary of sales and payments that doesn't close the day. |
| Z report | The end-of-day report that closes the day's sales, with totals by payment, tax, discounts and refunds. |