Glossary
Food Service Supervisor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential food service supervisor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key food service supervisor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in food service supervisor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Cash drawer
- The register’s cash.
- Closing checklist
- Tasks to close the store.
- Cross-training
- Teaching staff multiple roles.
- Customer recovery
- Fixing a customer’s bad experience.
- Drive-thru time
- Time per car.
- Food safety
- Practices that prevent illness.
- Holding time
- How long food can be held.
- Opening checklist
- Tasks to open the store.
- Prep chart
- A guide for how much to prepare.
- Shift lead
- The person in charge during a shift.
- Shift report
- A summary of a shift.
- Speed of service
- How fast orders are completed.
- Station
- A work area such as fryer or register.
- Temperature log
- Records of food temperatures.
- Waste log
- A record of discarded food.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Food Service Supervisor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Food Service Supervisor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.