Food and beverage control terms: a glossary for hotel teams
This glossary defines essential food and beverage control terms for hotel teams. Learn how to distinguish fire, zayi, and ikram to track value from purchase to report.
Contents
Key takeaways
- Every food and beverage control term names one step in the loop from purchase to report, so the vocabulary is a map of where value can leak.
- Purchases are not consumption: food cost is measured from opening stock plus issues minus closing stock, not from the invoice total.
- FIFO rotates by delivery date, FEFO rotates by expiry date, and perishable stores need FEFO.
- Fire, zayi, ikram and spillage are four different things, and each needs its own reason code and signature.
- Turkish and English control words live side by side in the same kitchen; a hotel should fix one meaning per concept and write it into its procedures.
Food and beverage control terms are the shared words a hotel uses to follow value from purchase to plate to report: requisition, par stock, FIFO, yield, fire, zayi, ikram, food cost. Each names a step where cost is created, measured or lost, so a team that agrees on the words can read its own numbers.
A storekeeper writes fire on a slip, the chef calls the same tray trim, the cost controller files it as waste, and the accountant asks whether it is deductible. One loss, four vocabularies, and no two people in the building mean the same thing. After reading this glossary you will be able to place each term at its step in the control loop, know who owns the number, and turn the vocabulary into forms your team actually signs.
Why does a hotel kitchen use both English and Turkish control terms?
Because the control loop was named in English by international hotel chains and in Turkish by the people who actually run the store, and both vocabularies survived. A working glossary has to hold both.
The loop has seven steps: purchase, receive, store, issue, produce, sell, report. Every term in this glossary belongs to one of them, and knowing which one tells you who owns the number. The storekeeper owns receiving, the chef owns production, the accountant owns the report. When a number is wrong, the step tells you where to look first.
Many concepts have two words that mean the same thing: FIFO and ilk giren ilk çıkar, par stock and asgari stok, food cost and yiyecek maliyeti. Choose one and use it in writing. Some words do not translate cleanly at all: ikram has no single English equivalent, and complimentary, comp and entertainment are all partial. Fire and zayi overlap in daily Turkish hotel speech, which is exactly why they need separate written definitions.
Terms also differ by hotel, by chain and by the software in use. A definition here is a common starting point, not a standard, and your own procedure is the authority.
NoteThis glossary gives common working meanings
Food and beverage control terms vary between hotels, chains and software systems. The meanings here are the common working ones; your hotel's own written procedure overrides them wherever the two differ.
The control loop in one line
Purchase, receive, store, issue, produce, sell, report. If you can place a term on that line, you know which department signs for it and which report it appears in. If you cannot, the term is doing no control work at all.
One term per concept, written down
The practical test of a glossary is a document: the purchasing procedure, the store requisition form and the recipe card should all use the same word for the same thing. When two departments use different words for one concept, the argument at month end is about vocabulary, not about cost, and the real variance stays unexamined.
Which purchasing and receiving terms should a hotel team know?
The words that decide what enters the building and at what price: requisition, purchase order, market list, receiving, and the three-way match that ties them together.
A purchase requisition (satın alma talebi) is the outlet or the store asking for goods. It is the first control point, because a request that is never written is never checked. A purchase order (satın alma siparişi) is the committed quantity and the agreed price; without it, the receiver has nothing to check the delivery against. The market list (günlük market listesi) is the daily fresh list, ideally priced before delivery so the receiver knows what the hotel agreed to pay.
Receiving (mal kabul) means count, weigh, check the specification and the temperature, then sign the delivery note (irsaliye). Signing first and counting later is how short deliveries become permanent. Blind receiving, where the receiver counts without seeing the ordered quantity, surfaces short deliveries that a receiver who can see the order will quietly accept.
The three-way match compares order, delivery note and invoice (fatura) on item, quantity and price. A mismatch is a price or quantity leak, and it is cheapest to fix at the door. The specification (şartname), the written description of size, grade, cut and packaging, is what makes two suppliers' prices comparable at all.
| Term | Turkish | Loop step | What it decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase requisition | satın alma talebi | outlet asks for goods | whether demand is written down |
| Purchase order | satın alma siparişi | commitment to a supplier | the quantity and price receiving checks against |
| Market list | günlük market listesi | daily fresh buying | what the hotel expects to pay today |
| Receiving | mal kabul | the door | what physically enters, at what quality |
| Delivery note | irsaliye | the door | proof of delivery, signed only after counting |
| Three-way match | üçlü kontrol | order, note, invoice | whether the invoice is paid as issued |
Contract price and market price
A contract price holds for an agreed period; a market price moves daily. Fresh produce, dairy and fish are bought at market price, which is why the market list is priced before delivery and the receiver checks the invoice against it, not against memory.
What do FIFO, FEFO and par stock mean in a hotel store?
FIFO releases the oldest delivery first, FEFO releases the earliest expiry first, and par stock is the quantity that triggers a reorder. All three are rules the store applies without asking anyone.
FIFO (ilk giren ilk çıkar) is physical rotation by delivery date. It suits dry, stable goods where age matters more than a printed date. FEFO (önce son kullanma tarihi geçen çıkar) rotates by expiry date, and it is the correct rule for dairy, meat, fresh produce and anything with a short life. It is the rule most hotel stores actually need.
Par stock (par stok, asgari stok) is the quantity that covers demand until the next delivery plus a safety margin. It is a decision the hotel makes, not a number the system discovers. Requisition (depo talebi) and issue (çıkış) are the pair around it: the outlet asks, the store releases, both sides sign. This is the exact moment cost moves from the store to the outlet, and the moment most variances are created.
A transfer (transfer) is an item moving between outlets, for example from the main kitchen to the pool bar. Without a transfer note, one outlet is overcharged and the other is undercharged, and both numbers are wrong. A stock count (sayım) should be a blind count, taken by someone who does not run the store, because opening stock plus issues minus closing stock is the only honest basis for consumption. Writing the delivery date and batch on every opened item is what makes a problem traceable back to one supplier and one delivery.
ChecklistStore checks to run this month
- Every opened item carries a date and a batch label.
- Chillers rotate FEFO; the dry store rotates FIFO.
- No item leaves the store without a requisition signed by the outlet.
- Every outlet-to-outlet movement carries a transfer note.
- A blind count is taken monthly by a second person.
- Any variance beyond the hotel's own tolerance is investigated by reason code, not written off.
Requisition, issue and transfer: three different movements
A requisition is a request, an issue is a release, a transfer is a move between cost centers. They look similar on paper and they do different things to the numbers: the first creates a claim, the second moves cost, the third corrects which outlet carries it.
What is yield, and why does a portion cost need a standard recipe?
Yield is the share of a purchased item that actually reaches the plate, and a standard recipe is what turns that yield into a cost per portion. Without both, a menu price is a guess.
As purchased (AP) and edible portion (EP) are the kilos the hotel buys and the kilos it can sell. The difference is trim, bone, peel, cooking loss and, sometimes, error. A yield test (verim testi) closes the gap: weigh the item, trim it as the kitchen really trims it, weigh again. For meat this is often called a butcher or cutting test, and the result belongs to your kitchen, not to a supplier's brochure.
The conversion factor is the AP quantity needed to produce one EP portion, and it is the number that connects a supplier price to a plate cost. The standard recipe (standart reçete) fixes quantities, method and the number of portions. Without it, two cooks produce two different plates at two different costs, and neither can be checked. Portion control (porsiyon kontrolü) is the ladle, the scale and the count: a recipe is a promise, and the line is where the promise is kept or broken.
Recipe costing (reçete maliyeti) is quantity multiplied by the current unit price. When the supplier price moves, the plate cost moves with it, which is why costing is a routine, not a project. In the loop, this sits between issuing and selling. It is the only step where a store price becomes a menu price, and it is covered in more depth in standard recipes and portion cost in hotel kitchens.
TipRun one yield test this week
Buy a known weight of one item, trim it the way your kitchen trims it, cook it as the recipe says, weigh the saleable output and divide. The figure you get is your hotel's own; do not borrow it from another property, because knives, skills and suppliers differ.
AP, EP and the conversion factor
For example, if 10 kilograms of raw product yields 6 kilograms of saleable portions, the yield is 60 percent and the conversion factor is about 1.67: the kitchen must issue 1.67 kilograms for every kilogram the plate needs. Every supplier price is multiplied by that factor before it reaches the menu.
What is the difference between fire, zayi, ikram and spillage?
They are four different things: fire is loss created in preparation and storage, zayi is stock that spoiled or became unusable, ikram is food and drink given away on purpose, and spillage is what leaves the glass or the bottle.
Fire covers trim, over-production, burning and over-portioning: value lost while the kitchen works. It is a production number, and the kitchen owns it. Zayi (spoilage) covers expired, spoiled, broken or returned stock: the item had value and no longer does. It is a storage and handling number, and the store owns it. Turkish hotels often use fire and zayi interchangeably, which is exactly why a hotel should fix one meaning for each in the loss form, or the two numbers will keep swapping places.
Ikram (complimentary) is a deliberate gift to a guest. It is a planned cost, not a loss, and it must be posted to a cost center with a reason and an approver, or it becomes an invisible discount. The mechanics of posting are covered in front office terms explained: folio, posting and routing. Spillage (dökülme) is the bar's version: over-pouring, breakage, free-pouring without a measure. The standard check is bottles issued against bottles sold, by brand.
Personel yemeği (staff meal) is a real cost with its own line. Left inside food cost without a line of its own, it looks like unexplained waste forever. Every loss needs a reason code and a signature: a loss that is only subtracted from stock is a loss nobody manages, and the same loss repeats next month. Whether fire and zayi are deductible for tax is a question for the hotel's accountant, and the answer depends on documentation the storekeeper may never see; confirm your own case with an accountant or legal adviser.
| Term | Meaning | What it covers | How it is recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| fire | preparation loss | trim, over-production, burning, over-portioning | production loss form, kitchen signature |
| zayi | spoilage | expired, spoiled, broken, returned stock | store loss form with batch and date |
| ikram | complimentary | deliberate gift to a guest | posted to a cost center, reason and approver |
| spillage | bar loss | over-pouring, breakage, free-pouring | bottle issue against bottle sales, by brand |
| personel yemeği | staff meal | planned meal cost for staff | its own cost line, not inside food cost |
Why a reason code beats a write-off
A write-off closes the number; a reason code keeps the question open. "Six kilos of chicken, over-production, Saturday" can be fixed next Saturday. "Six kilos, adjustment" cannot be fixed at all.
How do food cost, beverage cost and cost per guest-night differ?
They differ in what is counted and what it is divided by: food cost compares food consumed with food revenue, beverage cost does the same for drinks, and cost per guest-night spreads a cost over the nights sold.
Food cost (yiyecek maliyeti) is the cost of food consumed divided by food revenue. Consumed means opening stock plus issues minus closing stock, so a full store at month end lowers the number and an empty one raises it. Beverage cost (içecek maliyeti) is the same formula on a separate revenue line. Merging the two hides which one moved, and drink cost and food cost rarely move for the same reason.
Potential cost (theoretical cost) is what the standard recipes say the food should have cost; actual cost is what the stock count says it did. The gap is where fire, zayi, ikram, spillage and portion drift live. Cost per guest-night (misafir gecesi başına maliyet) is total F&B cost divided by guest-nights, and it is only readable when the revenue basis is stated, because in all-inclusive the meal sits inside the room rate, a distinction covered in ADR in all-inclusive hotels. Cost per cover (kuver başına maliyet) is a restaurant measure; applying it to a whole hotel mixes banquet, à la carte and breakfast into one meaningless average.
No cost percentage is universal. A banquet-heavy city hotel and a beach resort cannot share one target, and a target copied from another property is not a control. The report closes the loop: it sends the reader back to purchasing, because a variance that appears in the report was created at the door, in the store or on the line. The wider framework is covered in food and beverage cost control in hotels.
Key pointPurchases are not consumption
A month of large invoices with a full store is not a high food cost, and a month of small invoices with an empty store is not a low one. The stock count decides.
Consumed, not purchased
Consumption is opening stock plus issues minus closing stock. The invoice total is a cash-flow number; only the consumption figure belongs in a cost percentage.
Choosing the denominator
Revenue, covers or guest-nights: each denominator answers a different question, and the report should say which one it uses. A percentage without a stated basis cannot be compared with last month or with the budget.
What to do next
Take the glossary into one document this week: pick the ten terms your hotel actually uses, write one meaning for each into the purchasing and receiving procedure, and check that the store, the kitchen and the monthly report use the same word. A glossary only pays back when it becomes the form people sign.
Frequently asked questions
Are fire and zayi the same thing?
In daily Turkish hotel speech they are often used interchangeably, but they describe different moments: fire is loss created during preparation and production, zayi is stock that spoiled, expired or broke in storage. A hotel should fix one meaning for each on its loss form. Whether either is deductible for tax is a question for the hotel's accountant.
What is the difference between FIFO and FEFO?
FIFO releases stock by delivery date, oldest first. FEFO releases stock by expiry date, earliest first. For dry and stable goods the two usually give the same answer; for dairy, meat and fresh produce they diverge, and FEFO is the safer rule.
Does food cost include staff meals?
It depends on the hotel's own definition, and either choice can work as long as it is written down and applied every month. The practical recommendation is to give staff meals their own cost line, so that a planned cost is never confused with unexplained waste.
What is a good food cost percentage for a hotel?
There is no universal figure: it depends on the concept, the menu, the guest mix and whether meals sit inside an all-inclusive rate. The useful comparison is a hotel against its own potential cost, calculated from its standard recipes and stock counts, not against another property's number.
Is par stock the same as minimum stock?
Many hotels use the two as synonyms, meaning the level that triggers a reorder. Some separate them: a minimum that triggers the order and a maximum, or order-up-to, level that sets how much arrives. Whichever convention the hotel uses should be written on the store's own stock sheet.