If you’ve heard someone in the restaurant business talk about covers, as in “How many covers did we do tonight” you may have wondered what in the world they are talking about. The restaurant industry is full of confusing jargon. You, the restaurant guest, are not meant to be privy to most of it. But the definition of a cover is easy to understand. A “cover” in a restaurant refers to one guest or one place setting. So the total number of covers a restaurant has refers to the total number of guests served. Covers are sometimes called setups.
A cover differs from a table. Restaurant servers describe tables based on the number of people they seat. A two-top or deuce seats two, a four-top seats four, and so on. A group of guests is in turn, called a top. A large table for a big party of people, especially one formed by pulling together a number of four-tops, might be called a big top. But regardless of how many people can sit at a table, each of them is a cover. So, a cover is simply a guest or a meal served. The group of tables assigned to a particular waiter is called a “station.”
In the restaurant business, covers are usually discussed regarding the number of guests served in a particular time frame. The number of covers alone is not the only important metric for how the restaurant is doing. Also important is “turn.”
Turn refers to how quickly the tables are used for each “top” or group of guests, how quickly they can be set up for the next group, and the top size, how many customers there are in each top. When customers linger at tables for long periods, they are called “campers.” Campers cause restaurants to lose money.
In well-run restaurants, scrutiny of covers, tops, and turn can help restaurants plan for each shift and improve cost control. Modern restaurants with point-of-sale systems (POS) can print out reports that tell the person in charge of inventory how many covers will need to be served, how popular each dish is, etc. This will help the restaurant know how much food to order and what to have close at hand for a given time period.
