Glossary
The Hospitality Operator's Glossary
The vocabulary of a modern restaurant: the floor terms, the metrics, and the guest-data language operators need to run a room on real technology rather than guesswork.
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ADR (Average Daily Rate)ADR, or average daily rate, is a hotel's rooms revenue divided by the number of rooms sold. A property that took $30,000 across 200 occupied rooms has an ADR of $150. It measures what an occupied room earned, so empty rooms never enter the calculation.Anonymous CoverAn anonymous cover is a guest a restaurant served but cannot identify. The visit counts toward the night's volume and adds nothing to the guestbook, so a guest on their fourth anonymous visit still looks like a stranger to the team.Attribution WindowAn attribution window is the period after a message during which a guest's booking or visit counts as its result. Thirty days is a common default. A longer window credits a campaign with more visits it did not cause, and a shorter one misses the guest who saved the invitation for a birthday next month.Auto-TaggingAuto-tagging applies a label to a guest profile from behavior rather than from memory. A rule watches spend, visit frequency, or what was ordered, and the tag applies itself whenever a guest matches. Unlike a tag typed in by hand, it stays current as the guest's behavior changes.Average CheckAverage check is a restaurant's sales divided by the number of checks, so it describes what a party spent. Sales divided by covers is the per-person average, which is a different number. The two differ by roughly the average party size, and they get used interchangeably far more often than they should.
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Back of House (BOH)Back of house is everything guests do not see, meaning the kitchen line, prep, the dish pit, and the offices, along with the culinary team that produces what the dining room serves. Front of house is the guest-facing half, and the pass is the border between them.BanquetteA banquette is the upholstered bench seating built along a wall, usually paired with chairs on the other side of the table. It faces the room rather than a wall, which makes it one of the most requested seats in a restaurant and one of the most commonly recorded guest preferences.BarbackA barback supports the bartenders, restocking ice, glassware, liquor, beer, and garnish, changing kegs, and keeping the bar clean and set so the bartenders never have to leave the well. It is the bar's equivalent of the busser, and usually the route into bartending.BEO (Banquet Event Order)A BEO, or banquet event order, is the document that specifies everything about one private event, covering the menu, the timing, the room setup, the headcount, and the billing terms. It is the working instruction the kitchen, floor, and accounting all read, produced by the events office once a booking is confirmed.Busser (Back Server)A busser keeps tables moving, clearing plates, refilling water, crumbing, and resetting a table for the next party as soon as one leaves. In fine dining the same position is usually called a back server and works under a captain, handling clearing, resetting, and water and bread service.BuyoutA buyout is the rental of an entire venue to one host for a private event. The restaurant closes to the public, the whole room runs on a single contract, and the night's revenue is a negotiated figure rather than whatever walks through the door. It is the largest format a restaurant sells.
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Campaign (vs. Journey)A campaign is a marketing message a restaurant sends to a chosen segment on a chosen date, once. A journey sends itself whenever a guest's behavior meets a condition. The difference is who decides the timing: the operator picks the send date for a campaign, and the guest's own activity picks it for a journey.CamperA camper is a party that stays at the table long after the meal is finished and paid, holding a seat the book had already promised to someone else. The term is floor shorthand rather than a metric, and it surfaces on the busiest services, when one table running long delays every party behind it.CaptainA captain is the senior server who runs a section in a brigade-style dining room, guiding the menu, taking orders, and directing the back servers and food runners who support their tables. The captain owns the guest relationship for the section for the length of the meal.CDP (Customer Data Platform)A CDP, or customer data platform, is software that pulls customer records and behaviour out of a company's systems, resolves them into one profile per person, and makes those profiles available to other tools. The category grew up in ecommerce, where the behaviour it needs is generated on properties the company controls.Chef's TableA chef's table is seating inside or facing the kitchen, where guests eat within sight of the line and are often served by the cooks. Seats are few, so the chef's table is usually the hardest reservation in a restaurant to get and the one a house keeps back for the guests it most wants to reward.Chit (Ticket)A chit is the order ticket the point of sale sends to the kitchen the moment a server submits an order. It lists the table, the seats, the dishes, their modifiers, and the coursing, and it is the only per-table instruction the line works from. Kitchens also call it a ticket, a dupe, or a docket.ChurnChurn is the share of a restaurant's known guests who stop coming back. No event marks the moment, so churn only exists once a venue can identify guests and has chosen how long an absence has to run before it counts as gone. Choosing that window is part of the measurement.CompA comp is an item or a whole check given free of charge. Restaurants comp for two reasons: to recover from something that went wrong, and to recognize a guest, as with a glass of champagne on an anniversary. Comps are rung through the point of sale under a reason code and usually need a manager's approval.ConciergeA concierge is a hotel's guest fixer, handling restaurant reservations, tickets, transport, and local recommendations from a desk in the lobby or over message. For restaurants, the concierge desk is both a booking channel and a source of bookings placed by someone other than the guest who shows up.CoursingCoursing is the sequencing of a table's meal: which dishes come out together as a course, in what order, and how long the kitchen waits between rounds. The server sets it on the order, the kitchen fires each round on the call, and appetizers landing while the table is mid-entrée is a coursing failure.CoversA cover is one guest served at one seating. A four-person table paying on a single check is four covers, one check, and one table, which is why covers, checks, and tables are three different numbers. Operators count covers to measure volume, so "we did 180 covers" means 180 guests were served.
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Data EnrichmentData enrichment is the work of filling gaps in a guest record: a missing phone number, a real email address behind a platform's forwarding address, a birthday, a company name. In hospitality most of it comes from systems the restaurant already runs rather than from purchased datasets.Day UseDay use is the sale of a hotel room for daytime hours only. The guest checks in and out on the same day without staying overnight, and the room can still be sold for that night. Hotels use it to earn revenue from hours a room would otherwise sit idle.Dwell TimeDwell time is how long a party occupies a table, measured from seating to departure. It sets how many turns each table can do in a service, and it is the figure underneath reservation slot lengths, pacing caps, and the wait times a host quotes at the door.
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Eighty-Six (86'd)To eighty-six something is to pull it from service. Most often it is a dish the kitchen has run out of, announced to the floor so servers stop selling it; occasionally it is a guest who is no longer welcome. The eighty-six list changes through the night as stations run down.Expeditor (Expo)The expeditor, or expo, works the pass between kitchen and dining room. Expo reads incoming tickets, calls orders and fire times to the stations, checks each plate before it leaves, and assembles finished dishes into complete courses for runners to deliver. During peak service the role is often taken by a chef or a manager.Experience-Based LoyaltyExperience-based loyalty rewards repeat guests with access and recognition rather than discounts: a seat at the chef's counter, first call on a wine dinner, a table on a night the book is closed. The reward costs the restaurant little and cannot be bought anywhere else.
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Family MealFamily meal is the staff meal cooked for the whole team before service, usually eaten together an hour or so before doors. It is normally made from what the kitchen already has on hand rather than from the menu, and in many restaurants it runs straight into the pre-shift briefing.FireTo fire a course is to tell the kitchen to start cooking it now. Dishes are rung in when the order is taken but held until the call, so "fire table 12" means table 12's next course begins at that moment. The call usually comes from the expeditor or the server watching the table.First-Party DataFirst-party data is guest information a restaurant collects through its own operations and holds in its own systems: reservations, checks, visit history, preferences, and consent records. Provenance is the whole of what the term claims. Data can be first-party and still be duplicated, out of date, or unusable for marketing.Floor PlanA floor plan is the map of a dining room's tables and sections. Reservation platforms render it live during service, showing which tables are seated, finishing, or open, so hosts can assign parties and servers to sections. The same tables also exist in the point of sale, usually under different names.FolioA folio is the running account attached to one hotel stay. Room charges post to it, and so do restaurant checks, spa treatments, and minibar items signed to the room. It settles at checkout, which makes it the itemized record of what a named guest spent across the property.Food RunnerA food runner carries finished plates from the pass to the table. Seats at a table are numbered, and the ticket records which number ordered what, so the runner can land each dish in front of the right guest without asking. The role is the last leg of the relay between the kitchen and the dining room.Frequency CapA frequency cap is a limit on how often one guest can be messaged, set across every campaign and journey at once rather than per send. It exists because each message can be individually reasonable while the total is not, and because a restaurant's best guests qualify for the most segments.Front of House (FOH)Front of house is everything a guest sees and the team that works it: the door, the dining room, the bar, and the hosts, servers, captains, bussers, bartenders, and managers who staff them. It is also where a restaurant collects almost everything it knows about its guests.
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General Manager (GM)The general manager runs a restaurant day to day, covering hiring, scheduling, service standards, vendor and guest relationships, and the numbers the operation is judged on. In a group, the GM owns one venue and reports to an operations or regional director above them.Golden RecordA golden record is the version of a guest a restaurant treats as authoritative: one name, one phone number, one email, one visit history. It is what remains after records from several systems are matched to the same person and the conflicts between their values are settled field by field.Group BlockA group block is a set of hotel rooms held under one contract for a single group, such as a wedding, a conference, or a sports team, at a negotiated rate. Attendees book into the block individually, and rooms still unclaimed at the cutoff date return to general sale.Guest Data PlatformA guest data platform assembles one record per guest from every system a restaurant runs: reservations, point of sale, reviews, private events, messaging. It matches those records to the same person, holds the combined history, and sends recognition back out to the systems the floor actually works in.Guest JourneyA guest journey is the whole arc of a guest's relationship with a restaurant, from first discovery and booking through the visit, the follow-up, and the return. The same phrase also names the automated sequence a restaurant CRM runs along that arc, triggered by a guest's own behavior rather than by a send date.Guest of MemberA guest of member is a non-member admitted to a private club under a member's sponsorship. The member books the visit, takes responsibility for the guest's conduct, and normally absorbs the charges on their own account. Club bylaws usually cap how often the same person may visit as a guest.Guest ProfileA guest profile is the record a hospitality system keeps about one guest. Reservation platforms and point-of-sale systems each keep their own version, covering only what they saw. A restaurant CRM keeps the version that spans them, so visits, spend, preferences, and events sit on one record.Guest SegmentationGuest segmentation is grouping a restaurant's guests into sets defined by a shared condition, so a message or a service cue can be aimed at one group instead of the whole list. In hospitality the useful conditions come from visit history and check detail rather than from what a guest typed into a signup form.
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HostThe host is the first person a guest meets. The role covers greeting arrivals, working the reservation book and the waitlist, quoting waits, and seating parties against the floor plan. It is also the point where a restaurant either recognizes a returning guest or does not, since recognition has to happen before the party sits.House AccountA house account lets a named guest, member, or company charge visits to a running balance the venue bills later, instead of paying at the table. Standard at private clubs and common for a restaurant's corporate hosts and closest regulars, it also produces a fully identified record of every visit charged to it.House CountHouse count is the number of guests staying in a hotel on a given night, usually reported alongside occupied rooms, arrivals, departures, and stayovers. Every department plans against it: housekeeping boards, breakfast covers, front desk cover, and restaurant staffing all follow the count.
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Identity ResolutionIdentity resolution is the work of recognizing that records from different systems describe the same guest. A reservation name, a point-of-sale check, and an email signup become one person rather than three, which is what makes a guest profile possible.In the WeedsIn the weeds means past the point of catching up. A server in the weeds has more tables needing things at once than they can sequence; a station in the weeds has more tickets than it can cook in order. The phrase describes everything arriving at once rather than a heavy night in total.IncrementalityIncrementality is the share of a campaign's results that the campaign actually caused. A regular who was coming on Friday anyway will still book after receiving the email, and attribution credits the message for that visit. Measuring incrementality means withholding the message from part of the segment and comparing the two groups.
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Lapsed GuestA lapsed guest is one who used to visit and has now been absent longer than their own pattern suggests. A restaurant gets no cancellation notice, so lapsing is never an event a system observes. It is a threshold somebody chooses, which is why the same guest can read as lapsed in one report and active in another.Lifetime Value (LTV)Lifetime value is the total revenue attributed to one guest across their whole relationship with a restaurant or group. In hospitality it is normally a historic sum of matched checks rather than a forecast, so it counts only the visits a system managed to attach to that guest.Line CheckA line check is the chef's station-by-station inspection of the kitchen before service. It covers tasting sauces, checking holding temperatures, counting prep and backups, and confirming each station has what the night's menu requires. Shortages found on the line check become the eighty-six list announced at pre-shift.
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Maître d'The maître d' (maître d'hôtel) runs the front door and the dining room, greeting guests, working the book, assigning tables, and setting the tone of service. The role is defined by knowing who is in the room, and the best ones are known for remembering guests by name and by preference.Manager on Duty (MOD)The manager on duty is whoever holds the floor for a given service, empowered to solve guest problems, approve comps, and make decisions in the moment. Most services run with one designated MOD so staff and guests know who decides, though a large operation may have several managers working under one of them.Match RateMatch rate is the share of a restaurant's checks that can be tied to a known guest. If 300 of 500 checks link to a profile, the match rate is 60%, and the other 200 are volume the guestbook cannot account for.Member EventsMember events are the programmed calendar a private club runs for its members, from wine dinners and holiday parties to speaker nights, tournaments, and family days. They are the recurring reasons a member comes in beyond everyday dining, and attendance is one of the clearest signals of whether a membership is healthy.Member TierA member tier is a level of membership at a club, such as full, social, junior, or corporate, each carrying its own dues, access rights, and guest privileges. Tier determines what a member may book, which events they are invited to, and how staff are expected to treat them.Minimum SpendA minimum spend is the amount a host or member commits to spending, per event in private dining or per period at a club. Food and beverage usually count toward it while service charge and rental fees usually do not, and a shortfall is normally billed anyway.
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On the BooksOn the books is everything already reserved for a future date. "120 on the books for Saturday" means 120 covers are committed before a single walk-in arrives. Operators read the book to set prep, ordering, and staffing, which makes it a forecast rather than a count of who will sit.On the FlyOn the fly means the kitchen needs a dish immediately, ahead of every other ticket on the board. It is called when a plate has to be replaced or was never sent: a remake, a dropped dish, a forgotten item at a table already eating. The call normally goes through the expeditor.Open Rate (vs. Conversion)Open rate is the share of delivered messages that registered as opened. It measures whether a subject line drew attention, and it is inflated by mail clients that load images before a person reads anything. A restaurant's equivalent of a conversion is a booking or a visit, and open rate cannot see either.OverbookingOverbooking is deliberately taking more reservations than the room can seat, on the expectation that no-shows and cancellations will bring the night back down to capacity. Hotels have priced the practice for decades. In restaurants it is usually a small informal cushion on peak services rather than a written policy.
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PacingPacing is the limit a restaurant sets on how many covers can be seated in each interval, usually fifteen or thirty minutes. Reservation platforms enforce it by closing slots once the cap is reached. The purpose is to end up with a full book the kitchen and floor can absorb in waves rather than all at once.PII (Personally Identifiable Information)PII, or personally identifiable information, is any data that identifies a specific guest: name, phone number, email address, birthday, and the notes attached to them. Privacy law governs how a restaurant collects, stores and uses it. Consent is one lawful basis among several, required for marketing texts and not for keeping a reservation record.PMS (Property Management System)A PMS, or property management system, is the software a hotel runs its rooms business on: reservations, rates, check-in, room assignment, housekeeping status, and the folio each guest's charges post to. It is the hotel's system of record, and the place a guest's stay history lives.POS (Point of Sale)A POS, or point of sale, is the system a restaurant takes orders and payments on. It holds every check: the items ordered, when each course was sent, discounts applied, the tip, and the table it closed on. That makes it the most detailed record a restaurant keeps of what guests actually did.POS IntegrationA POS integration is a connection into a restaurant's point of sale that pulls closed checks out of it automatically: the total, usually the items, sometimes the guest's contact detail. What a given POS hands over differs, and that difference sets the ceiling on what a guestbook can know about spend.Pre-ShiftPre-shift is the short meeting a restaurant holds before service begins. The team covers menu changes, eighty-sixed items, specials, and the night's reservations, including which guests are regulars, which are VIPs, and which tables are celebrating something. It is where guest data reaches the floor.Preference TagA preference tag is a label on a guest profile recording something the guest wants, such as the banquette, no cilantro, or Burgundy over Bordeaux. It holds something the guest stated rather than something a system observed. That is what separates it from a tag derived from spend or visit history.Private Dining Room (PDR)A private dining room, often shortened to PDR, is a separate space inside a restaurant sold for private events. It has its own contract, its own set menu, and usually its own minimum spend, and it runs alongside normal service rather than replacing it. Most restaurants' events revenue comes from here.PX / SoignéPX and soigné are the marks a restaurant puts on a reservation to tell the team a guest must be treated exceptionally. PX is usually expanded as personne extraordinaire; soigné is French for cared for. Both are instructions for one specific service rather than permanent labels on a guest.
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Reciprocal ClubA reciprocal club is a partner club whose members may use your clubhouse, and whose clubhouse your members may use, under a negotiated agreement. A visiting reciprocal member is usually introduced by their home club in advance, and their charges are billed back to that club rather than settled on site.RecognitionRecognition is acting on what a restaurant already knows about a guest: the name at the door, the usual drink, the allergy nobody had to be reminded of. It is the form of loyalty built on being known rather than being discounted, and it happens during the visit rather than after it.RegularsRegulars are a restaurant's returning guests, and the word only becomes reportable once somebody sets a threshold. A common default is three visits within a year, adjustable per venue, because the visit rhythm of a neighbourhood bar and a destination dining room have almost nothing in common.Repeat RateRepeat rate is the share of a restaurant's guests who have dined before. It is calculated more than one way and the versions are not comparable: a guest-based rate answers whether guests come back, while a visit-based rate answers how much of a night's business is returning trade.Reservation PlatformA reservation platform is the software that takes bookings, holds the book, and manages the floor during service. Resy, OpenTable, SevenRooms, and Tock are the main ones. Each keeps its own guest record built from bookings made through it, so it knows who is coming and what they asked for, not what they spent.Restaurant Marketing AutomationRestaurant marketing automation is messaging that fires from a guest's own activity rather than from a marketing calendar. A first visit, a ninety-day lapse, or a birthday booking triggers a message for that guest at that moment. The triggers come from the reservation book and the point of sale, so the automation depends on guest records that span both.RevPAR (Revenue per Available Room)RevPAR, or revenue per available room, is a hotel's rooms revenue divided by every room in the house, sold or not. It equals average daily rate multiplied by occupancy, so a $200 rate at 70% occupancy is a RevPAR of $140. Rooms revenue only, nothing the guest spent elsewhere.RFM SegmentationRFM segmentation scores every guest on three axes: how recently they visited, how often they visit, and how much they have spent. It comes from catalogue direct marketing and transfers cleanly to restaurants, because those three fields sit on any unified guest record. All three depend on visits being matched to a guest first.
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Seating PreferenceA seating preference is where a guest likes to sit, whether that is the banquette, a window, the bar, or away from the kitchen door. It is one of the most commonly recorded facts about a guest and one of the cheapest forms of recognition a restaurant has, because honouring it costs nothing once it is known.Second-Visit RateSecond-visit rate is the share of first-time guests who come back for a second visit inside a set window. Unlike a general repeat rate, it isolates the one transition in a guest relationship where a restaurant knows exactly who is at risk and exactly when.ServerA server owns the guest experience at one table, greeting the party, guiding them through the menu, taking and firing the order, pacing the meal, and closing the check. In most restaurants the server is also the person who learns the most about a guest during a visit.Service PeriodA service period is one defined block of operation, such as lunch, brunch, or dinner, planned, staffed, and measured as a single unit from first seating to last table. Restaurants think in services rather than days, so Saturday dinner is its own event with its own book, prep list, and roster.Single Source of TruthA single source of truth is the one record a restaurant treats as authoritative for a given fact about a guest. It does not require every system to hold the same data. It requires each field to have one system that owns it, and for the rest to read from that system rather than keeping a private version.SommelierA sommelier runs a restaurant's wine program, building the list, buying and managing the cellar, training the floor, and working tables to recommend, pair, and serve wine. The floor half of the job depends on reading a guest's taste and budget quickly, often from very little information.Suppression ListA suppression list is the set of guests a send must skip. It holds the unsubscribes and opt-outs a business is legally required to honor, alongside guests excluded for hospitality reasons: an open complaint, a message three days ago, a table seated tonight. It applies to every campaign rather than to one.
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Table TurnA table turn is one complete seating cycle: party seated, served, departed, table reset for the next party. "Two and a half turns" means the average table served two or three parties across the service. Turns count seatings and covers count guests, so the two numbers answer different questions.Tasting MenuA tasting menu is a fixed multi-course meal composed by the chef, where every table eats the same progression rather than ordering from a list. Courses are small and numerous, wine pairings are often offered alongside, and the price is set per person before anyone sits down.Tiered LoyaltyTiered loyalty is a program structure where guests move up named status levels as they visit or spend more, and each level carries better recognition and privileges. Thresholds are set on visits or spend inside a rolling window, so status can be earned and also lost.Top (Two-Top, Four-Top)A top is a table described by the number of people at it: a two-top seats two, a four-top seats four. The word covers both the table and the party, so "the six-top on 14" means a party of six sitting at table 14. A two-top is also called a deuce.Turndown ServiceTurndown service is the second housekeeping visit of the day, made in the evening while a guest is out, that prepares the room for sleep. The bed is turned back, curtains drawn, lights dimmed, and a small amenity is often left behind. It is a hallmark of luxury properties.
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VIP AmenityA VIP amenity is the gift a hotel places in a flagged guest's room before arrival, such as a bottle of wine, a plate from the kitchen, or a handwritten card. It is recognition the guest walks in on rather than something staff have to say, and it is drawn from the day's arrivals list.VIP FlagA VIP flag marks a guest whose arrival should change how a team behaves. Every reservation platform offers one, and it is the least standardised label in hospitality, because a single flag is usually carrying several unrelated meanings that each call for something different from the floor.
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WaitlistA waitlist is the queue of parties waiting for a table, each one named, quoted a wait time, and seated as tables turn. Reservation platforms run it as a floor tool. It is also one of the few moments in service when a guest with no booking volunteers a name and a mobile number.Walk-InA walk-in is a guest who arrives without a reservation. Walk-ins fill the gaps in the book and, at bars and neighborhood rooms, can be most of the business. They also arrive with no record attached, so unless someone captures a name, a number, or a card, the visit closes with no guest to attribute it to.Win-BackA win-back is outreach to a guest who has stopped coming, sent to restart the relationship before it ends by default. In a restaurant it has to fire on visit history rather than on email activity, so the trigger is a guest's last recorded visit across the reservation book and the point of sale.
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