Terms & definitions
The numbers a café, restaurant or shop runs on — what they mean, how to work them out, and what to do about them.
A
C
Cash-up (end-of-day report)
Closing the till at the end of the day: counting what is there and checking it against what the sales say should be.
Cost of goods sold (COGS)
What the stock you actually sold cost you to buy or make — the cost that sits against your sales.
Customer lifetime value (CLV)
How much a typical customer spends with you over the whole time they keep coming back.
Customer retention
How many of your customers come back — usually measured as the repeat customer rate.
D
E
F
G
K
L
M
Margin vs markup
Two ways to describe the same profit: margin divides it by the price, markup divides it by the cost.
Menu engineering
Sorting every dish by how often it sells and how much it earns, to decide what to promote, re-cost or cut.
Modifiers
The options a customer can add to or change in an item — oat milk, an extra shot, no onions, a size — and the price and cost that come with them.
N
P
Par level
The amount of an item you want on hand to get through until the next delivery, with a little to spare.
Prime cost
Your cost of goods sold plus your total labour cost — the biggest controllable cost in a restaurant.
Purchase order (PO)
A written order to a supplier for what you want delivered, at what price — and the record you check the delivery against.
Q
R
S
SKU (stock keeping unit)
A unique code for each product you sell — down to each size and colour — so every one can be counted and tracked.
Staff rota
The schedule of who works when — built around when you actually trade, and shared with the team in advance.
Stock variance (shrinkage)
The gap between the stock your records say you have and the stock you count — in retail, often called shrinkage.
Stocktake
Counting everything you have on the shelves, so your records — and your costs — match reality.
V
W
Every number here, worked out for you.Free to start.
DUMA costs your recipes, counts your stock and builds the reports — food cost, prime cost, labour and menu engineering — from the sales you are already taking.