FOH stands for Front of House and BOH stands for Back of House. These are the two halves of every restaurant operation. The front of house includes everything guests see and interact with, from the dining room to the bar to the parking lot. The back of house covers everything behind the scenes, primarily the kitchen, storage areas, employee spaces, and the manager’s office.
What the Front of House Covers
The front of house is the guest-facing side of the restaurant. It includes the entry, waiting area, hostess station, dining room, bar, outdoor seating, restrooms, and parking lot. If a customer can see it, walk through it, or sit in it, it’s FOH territory. The look, feel, cleanliness, and energy of these spaces shape how guests perceive the restaurant before they ever taste the food.
FOH staff are the people guests interact with directly. Common roles include:
- Host or hostess: Greets guests at the door, manages the waitlist, and seats tables.
- Server: Takes orders, answers menu questions, and manages the guest experience from start to finish.
- Bartender: Prepares drinks ordered by guests at the bar or through servers.
- Bar-back: Assists the bartender by restocking supplies, clearing glassware, and keeping the bar area clean.
- Busser: Clears dirty dishes, wipes tables, and resets them for the next party.
- Food runner: Brings completed dishes from the kitchen to the correct table so hot food arrives quickly.
- Sommelier: A wine specialist found mostly in fine dining, responsible for curating the wine list and helping guests with pairings.
- FOH manager: Oversees all front-of-house employees, handles scheduling, and resolves guest complaints.
The skills that matter most in FOH work are interpersonal. Servers and hosts need to read body language, stay calm when a guest is unhappy, and juggle multiple tables at different stages of their meal. The physical demands are real but different from the kitchen: you’re on your feet for hours, carrying heavy trays, and moving quickly through a crowded dining room.
What the Back of House Covers
The back of house is everything the guest never sees. The main space is the kitchen, but BOH also includes the delivery area where supplies arrive, dry and cold storage, the employee break area, and the office where managers handle payroll and ordering.
BOH roles revolve around food production, kitchen management, and support:
- Executive chef or head chef: The most senior kitchen position, responsible for menu creation, food quality, and overall kitchen operations.
- Sous chef: Second in command, reporting directly to the head chef and often running the kitchen during service when the head chef is off.
- Line cook: Works a specific station on the kitchen line, such as grill, sauté, or fry. Most kitchens have several line cooks running different stations simultaneously.
- Expeditor: Organizes completed dishes by table so that everyone at a table gets their food at the same time. This role sits at the pass (the window between kitchen and dining room) and acts as the communication link between cooks and servers.
- Dishwasher: Operates dishwashing equipment and keeps a constant supply of clean plates, pans, and utensils flowing to the line.
- Kitchen manager: Handles staffing, inventory, food costs, and day-to-day BOH operations.
BOH work is physically intense. Cooks stand over hot surfaces for entire shifts, move heavy pots, and work in a loud, fast-paced environment where timing is measured in seconds. The core skills are technical: knife work, understanding cooking methods, managing multiple dishes firing at once, and maintaining food safety standards. Speed and consistency matter more than conversation.
How FOH and BOH Work Together
A restaurant only functions well when both halves communicate clearly. The critical handoff point is the pass, the counter or window where finished plates move from the kitchen to the dining room. When a server enters an order, the kitchen receives it as a ticket. Cooks prepare each component, and the expeditor assembles the full table’s order and checks it for accuracy before calling a food runner or server to pick it up.
The expeditor role exists specifically to prevent miscommunication. Instead of multiple servers shouting modifications into a busy kitchen, the expeditor acts as a single point of contact. Servers come to the expeditor with special requests or order changes, and the expeditor relays the information to the right cook. When the kitchen runs out of an item or a dish is delayed, the expeditor tells the server so they can update the guest. This one role eliminates a huge number of the disagreements and errors that can derail a busy service.
A 2023 National Restaurant Association workforce report found that 72% of restaurant employees ranked team communication as essential to their job satisfaction. That number reflects how much tension can build when the two sides aren’t in sync. A server who doesn’t communicate an allergy clearly puts a guest at risk. A kitchen that doesn’t alert the floor about a long cook time leaves a server blindsided at the table.
How Pay Differs Between FOH and BOH
The biggest structural difference between the two sides is how people get paid. FOH employees, especially servers and bartenders, earn a significant portion of their income from tips. Under federal law, employers can pay tipped workers a direct cash wage as low as $2.13 per hour, as long as tips bring total earnings up to at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The gap between $2.13 and $7.25 is called the tip credit. Many states set higher minimum wages for tipped workers, so actual base pay varies widely by location.
BOH employees typically earn a flat hourly wage or salary with no tips. Dishwashers and line cooks rarely interact with guests, so they haven’t traditionally been part of tip pools. This creates a noticeable pay imbalance on busy nights: a skilled server at a popular restaurant can out-earn an experienced line cook by a wide margin, even though the cook’s job requires years of technical training.
Tip pooling rules have evolved to address this gap. Federal law allows two types of tip pools. A traditional tip pool, used when the employer takes a tip credit, can only include workers who customarily receive tips, like servers, bartenders, bussers, and food runners. A nontraditional tip pool is allowed when the employer pays all workers at least the full federal minimum wage (not the reduced tipped rate). In that case, tips can be shared with BOH workers like cooks and dishwashers. Under both arrangements, managers and supervisors are prohibited from taking any portion of the pool.
The General Manager’s Role
One position bridges both sides: the general manager. The GM oversees the entire restaurant, from kitchen operations to guest experience to finances. In smaller restaurants, the GM may also function as the FOH manager or even step onto the line during a rush. In larger operations, the GM delegates daily oversight to a FOH manager and a kitchen manager, then focuses on big-picture decisions like hiring, budgeting, and maintaining standards across both departments.
Understanding FOH and BOH as distinct but connected operations is the foundation of how restaurants run. Whether you’re applying for your first restaurant job, moving into management, or opening your own place, knowing what each side handles and where they intersect gives you a practical framework for how the business actually works.