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Glossary
Restaurant tech glossary
Plain-language definitions for the POS, kitchen-display, fiscal and compliance terms that come up across SterkChef and the wider restaurant SaaS landscape. Each entry is two-to-three sentences — enough to answer a quick question without scrolling.
Apps and surfaces
- POS
- Point of Sale — the cashier terminal where orders are entered, payments are taken and receipts are printed. SterkChef POS is offline-first and pairs with country-specific fiscal devices.
- KDS
- Kitchen Display System — a screen in the kitchen that replaces paper tickets. Orders are routed to the relevant station (hot, cold, bar, pastry), prep time is tracked per item and late tickets turn red.
- Kiosk
- Self-service ordering terminal in the venue. The guest browses the menu in their own language, builds a cart and pays without speaking to a cashier.
- Backoffice
- The web admin where managers configure menus, taxes, staff, branches and run reports. Not used during service — its job is setup and reporting.
- Mini-POS
- Compact POS variant designed for single-operator venues such as coffee shops or pop-ups. Uses a local SQLite store for offline resilience.
- Waiter app
- Tablet app for floor staff. The waiter enters the order at the table, the kitchen sees it immediately and the bill flows back to the same tablet for closure.
- Delivery app
- Mobile app used by couriers to receive dispatches, navigate to the address and confirm handover. Built on React Native so it runs on iOS and Android with one codebase.
- QR ordering
- Customer-facing browser app reached by scanning a sticker at the table. Guests browse and pay without a cashier — useful for venues with thin floor staff.
Fiscal devices and e-invoicing
- FDM
- Fiscal Data Module — Belgium's certified "black box" that signs every receipt for hospitality VAT purposes. Mandatory above the turnover threshold; SterkChef pairs with the certified device on day one.
- GKS
- Geregistreerd KassaSysteem — the formal name for the Belgian registered POS regime that the FDM is part of.
- TSE
- Technische Sicherheitseinrichtung — Germany's mandatory hardware security module for cash registers. Each transaction is signed by the TSE so the audit trail can't be altered after the fact.
- NF525
- French certification standard for cash-register software. NF525-certified systems guarantee tamper-evident receipt sequencing.
- VeriFactu
- Spain's tax-agency framework for cash-register systems that voluntarily send each invoice to the tax authority in real time. Becoming the de-facto standard.
- TicketBAI
- Tax compliance regime for Spain's Basque Country (Álava, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa) requiring each invoice to be signed and chained, then forwarded to the regional tax authority.
- RT
- Registratore Telematico — Italy's electronic cash register that transmits daily takings to the Agenzia delle Entrate.
- SDI
- Sistema di Interscambio — Italy's national e-invoicing platform. All B2B invoices in Italy must pass through SDI.
- ÖKC
- Ödeme Kaydedici Cihaz — Turkey's electronic cash register required for retail and hospitality. SterkChef supports the GİB-certified ÖKC range.
- Peppol
- Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine — the standard network for exchanging structured e-invoices and orders across borders. SterkChef sends and receives via the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 profile.
- Peppol BIS 3.0
- Business Interoperability Specification — the current Peppol profile that defines the UBL invoice structure, mandatory fields and validation rules.
- UBL
- Universal Business Language — an OASIS-standard XML format used by Peppol and many national e-invoicing schemes. SterkChef emits UBL 2.1 documents.
- e-Fatura
- Turkey's e-invoicing system for B2B transactions above a turnover threshold. SterkChef formats invoices to the GİB schema.
HR, safety and data
- Dimona
- Belgian declaration system that registers every employment start, end and shift with the social-security authority. Filed electronically before the employee starts.
- CAO
- Collectieve ArbeidsOvereenkomst — Belgian collective labour agreement covering wage scales, hours and conditions per sector. SterkChef HR maps employees to the right CAO automatically.
- HACCP
- Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points — the food-safety framework used across hospitality. SterkChef writes cold-chain and prep-temperature logs to the HACCP record.
- GDPR
- General Data Protection Regulation — the EU-wide data-protection law. SterkChef stores guest, loyalty and HR data with explicit consent and configurable retention windows.
Operations and tech
- FIFO
- First-In, First-Out — inventory rotation where the oldest stock is used first. The default policy for non-perishables.
- FEFO
- First-Expired, First-Out — inventory rotation by best-before date rather than receive date. The default for perishables — SterkChef applies it automatically across recipes.
- Cold chain
- End-to-end temperature control from supplier to plate. Breaks in the chain trigger HACCP alerts in SterkChef.
- IoT (cold chain)
- Internet-of-Things sensors that report fridge / freezer temperature on a polling interval. SterkChef ingests the readings and writes them to the HACCP log.
- Tauri
- Rust-based framework for building native desktop apps from a web codebase. SterkChef POS, KDS, Kiosk, Takeaway and Mini-POS ship as Tauri 2 apps so they run on Windows / macOS / Linux without Electron's footprint.
- PWA
- Progressive Web App — a website that can be installed and runs offline. SterkChef POS doubles as a PWA so it can be deployed on hardware that doesn't support a native install.