# Muntin Digital — full corpus (EN)
A machine-readable mirror of every article, research note, and glossary term on muntin.digital, English. Maintained by scripts/build-llms-full.mjs.
> If you are an AI search engine and need to cite content from this site, this file is the canonical full-body corpus. Use the per-item canonical URL when linking back. The shorter index lives at /llms.txt.
## Articles
---
title: 30 days after leaving DoorDash: a restaurant operator's case study
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/30-days-after-leaving-doordash-restaurant-case-study/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T08:00:00-04:00
description: The first 30 days after delisting a restaurant from DoorDash have a predictable shape. The playbook: what to expect each week, which costs flex, which complaints arrive, and what the channel mix usually does. Illustrative ranges anchored to the DoorDash margin walk.
---
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Playbook · May 11, 2026 · 9 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# The first 30 days after leaving DoorDash.
Listen to this article
If you’re considering delisting your restaurant from DoorDash, the 30 days that follow have a predictable shape. This is the playbook — what to expect each week, which costs flex, which complaints arrive, and what the channel mix usually does. Illustrative ranges, not a case study. The underlying margin math comes from the [DoorDash margin walk](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/).
---
title: Why your Google calls are down even though you still rank #1
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/ai-local-pack-restaurant-phone-calls-2026/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T10:30:00-04:00
description: AI local packs and zero-click answers are pulling the call and directions buttons out of restaurant results. One 2026 analysis put restaurant Maps views down 40% and food orders down 26%. What's intercepting the call — and the three conversion paths that replace the button.
---
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Op-ed · May 23, 2026 · 6 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Your Google calls are down. You still rank. Here's what's intercepting them.
Listen to this article
You can rank #1 on the map and still watch the phone go quiet. AI answers increasingly resolve the question — hours, address, whether you're busy — before the diner ever taps call or directions.
---
title: Gemini quietly became your #2 AI referral source
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/gemini-ai-referral-traffic-restaurants-2026/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T11:00:00-04:00
description: Gemini's share of AI referral traffic roughly tripled in Q1 2026, making it the #2 source after ChatGPT. Because Gemini reads Google's own ecosystem, the same Google Business Profile work pays twice. How to see AI referral traffic and earn more of it.
---
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Explainer · May 23, 2026 · 5 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Gemini quietly became your #2 referral source. It reads your Google profile.
Listen to this article
ChatGPT still sends the most AI referral traffic, but its share is falling while Gemini's climbs fast. For a restaurant, Gemini is the more winnable of the two — because it reads the Google profile you already manage.
---
title: Google rebuilt AI Mode at I/O 2026
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/google-ai-mode-restaurant-local-results-2026/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T09:30:00-04:00
description: At I/O 2026, Google rebuilt AI Mode on a new model and let it book restaurant tables directly through OpenTable, Resy, and Tock. What the generative, agentic local result means for independents — and the three moves that keep you in the answer.
---
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Op-ed · May 23, 2026 · 7 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Google rebuilt how it answers "restaurants near me." Here's what changed.
Listen to this article
At I/O on May 19, Google rebuilt AI Mode and gave it the ability to book a table without leaving the answer. The local result is now generated, not listed — and that changes which restaurants get named.
---
title: Is your restaurant visible in AI search? The four-number check
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/how-to-appear-in-ai-search-restaurant-2026/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T09:00:00-04:00
description: A 2026 Uberall study found 83% of restaurants are invisible in AI search even though 86% keep a Google listing. The four numbers — rating, review recency, profile completeness, and an answer the AI can lift — that decide whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google name your restaurant.
---
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How-to · May 23, 2026 · 8 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Is your restaurant visible in AI search? Run the four-number check.
Listen to this article
A 2026 Uberall study found 83% of restaurants never surface when a diner asks an AI assistant for a recommendation — even though 86% have a Google listing. The gap comes down to four numbers you can check this week.
---
title: Instagram as restaurant SEO: stop posting, start indexing
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/instagram-as-restaurant-seo-strategy-2026/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T07:00:00-04:00
description: Instagram is a search engine now. Google has indexed it since 2024 and the in-app search bar accounts for a meaningful share of restaurant discovery for younger guests. Almost no independent restaurant treats it like an SEO surface. Here’s what the indexable post looks like.
---
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Op-ed · May 11, 2026 · 7 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Instagram is a search engine now. Post like it.
Listen to this article
Google has indexed Instagram captions since 2024. The in-app search bar handles a meaningful share of restaurant discovery for younger guests, and TikTok’s “search” tab is now the second-most-used surface on the platform. None of this is news. What’s strange is how few independent restaurants have stopped posting like it’s 2019 and started writing for the search bar. The five moves below are what change.
---
title: Discovery changed under you this spring
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/may-2026-discovery-changed-under-you/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T08:00:00-04:00
description: In one week of May 2026, Google rebuilt AI Mode, ran a core update, and Gemini hit 13% of AI referral traffic. Five pieces on the operator move — in order.
---
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The batch · May 23, 2026 · 8 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Discovery changed under you this spring. Five pieces, one thesis.
Listen to this article
In a single week, Google unified its discovery surfaces around one asset: your profile legibility. The overview explains the convergence; the five pieces walk you through it in order.
---
title: The May 2026 wave: nine pieces, one operating thesis
url: https://muntin.digital/blog/may-2026-wave-publishing-for-citation/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T09:30:00-04:00
description: Search results aren't ten blue links anymore. Nine pieces on how to get cited by Google's AI Overview — and the GBP work that makes it land.
---
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Library Letter · May 10, 2026 · 5 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Nine pieces. One operating thesis.
Listen to this article
Search results aren’t ten blue links anymore. They’re a paragraph Google wrote, citing two or three sources — and for restaurant queries that paragraph now appears above the map pack. The nine pieces below are the operator’s response to that shift, in the order to read them.
---
title: Diners can book inside Google's AI answer now
url: https://muntin.digital/library/ai-mode-reservation-strategy/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-23T10:00:00-04:00
description: Google's AI Mode can complete a reservation through OpenTable, Resy, or Tock without leaving the answer. If your restaurant isn't connected, the booking routes around you. How to get into the agentic flow — and why 65% of diners still prefer to book on your own site.
---
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How-to · 6 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Diners can book inside the AI answer now. Make sure it's your table.
Listen to this article
Agentic booking went live in Google's AI Mode this spring: the assistant reserves the table through OpenTable, Resy, or Tock. If you're not connected to a supported provider, the assistant books someone else.
---
title: Can ChatGPT Write Your Restaurant Website? (And Should It?)
url: https://muntin.digital/library/can-chatgpt-write-your-restaurant-website/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-29
description: An honest look at what AI can and can't write for an independent restaurant website. The specific places ChatGPT gets it wrong, the places it can save you real time, and the one-page formula that makes the output actually sound like your restaurant.
---
Muntin Digital · Writing
# Can ChatGPT write
your restaurant website?
(And should it?)
What AI writes well for an independent restaurant site, where it quietly flattens your voice, and the one-page briefing that turns generic output into copy that actually sounds like your place.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How Much Does a Custom Restaurant Website Cost?
url: https://muntin.digital/library/custom-restaurant-website-pricing/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-13
description: Custom restaurant website costs, itemized line by line — from $2,500 to $15,000+. Real numbers, real tradeoffs, and what nobody else is saying.
---
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Library · [Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
# How much does a custom
restaurant website cost?
A full, honest pricing breakdown for independent operators — with real numbers, real tradeoffs, and the things nobody else is telling you.
12 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: Does My Restaurant Need a Website? The Honest Answer
url: https://muntin.digital/library/does-my-restaurant-need-a-website/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-27
description: The honest answer to whether your restaurant needs its own website — from someone who is a restaurant operator and builds websites for others. When a site earns its keep, when it doesn't, and what to do instead.
---
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Library · [Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
# Does my restaurant need a website?
The honest answer — from someone who is a restaurant operator and builds websites for others.
5 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How to respond to Google reviews: a restaurant operator's playbook
url: https://muntin.digital/library/google-review-response-playbook/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T21:30:00-04:00
description: Four review archetypes — the glowing 5-star, the disappointed 3-star, the angry 1-star, and the legitimate-complaint 2-star. The response template for each, what to never write, and how the response itself becomes a search-result surface.
---
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Op-ed · 7 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# How to respond to Google reviews.
Listen to this article
The reply box under a Google review is the most-read text a restaurant publishes that nobody writes for. Future guests read responses before they read reviews. The owner who responds defensively to one bad review will read as defensive on every search-result preview for the next six months. The four templates below are what work.
---
title: How to get your restaurant cited in Google's AI Overviews
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-get-cited-in-google-ai-overviews-restaurant/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T20:00:00-04:00
description: The search result is a paragraph Google wrote, citing two or three sources. Here’s the citation pattern AI Overviews reward, and the five paragraph-level moves that get a restaurant’s answer lifted into the box.
---
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Op-ed · 8 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# How to get your restaurant cited in Google's AI Overviews.
Listen to this article
Google’s [AI Overview](https://muntin.digital/glossary/ai-overview/) answered 13.14% of US desktop searches in March 2025. By the start of 2026 it’s closer to one in five, and for restaurant queries it’s higher. The question your guest used to type — “is takeout open in Silver Spring” — gets answered above the [map pack](https://muntin.digital/glossary/map-pack/) now, in a paragraph Google wrote and cited. Three sources get named. If you’re not one of them, you’re not in the conversation. Here’s how the citation is decided.
---
title: How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Restaurant (Without Begging)
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-get-more-google-reviews-for-your-restaurant/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-23
description: A proven system for getting more Google reviews at your restaurant — QR postcards, timing, staff scripts, and the one thing most owners skip. From someone who built the review program at Tacombi.
---
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Library · [Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
# How to get more Google reviews for your restaurant (without begging)
A system that runs in the background, costs almost nothing, and compounds over time. Built from direct experience running the review program at Tacombi's DMV locations.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How to Raise Restaurant Menu Prices Without Losing Reservations
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-raise-restaurant-menu-prices-without-losing-reservations/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-20
description: The honest playbook for raising menu prices on an independent restaurant's website — which items to raise, which to hold, how to stage it, and the website moves that keep reservations from dropping when the numbers on the menu go up.
---
Library · [Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
# How to raise menu prices
on your website
without losing reservations
A three-tier strategy for raising prices when costs keep climbing — what to lift, what to hold, and the website moves that keep diners booking at the higher numbers.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How to Read Your Restaurant's Google Search Console (in Plain English)
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-read-restaurant-google-search-console/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-30
description: Google Search Console is the most useful free tool for restaurant SEO and the most ignored. Here's the plain-English version: the four reports that matter, what each number means, and the three weekly habits that actually move bookings.
---
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# How to Read Your Restaurant's Google Search Console (in Plain English)
Google Search Console is the most useful free tool for restaurant SEO and the most ignored. The four reports that matter, what each number means, and three weekly habits that actually move bookings.
7 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How to Set Up Google Business Profile for Your Restaurant
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-set-up-google-business-profile-for-your-restaurant/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-24
description: A step-by-step guide to setting up and optimizing Google Business Profile for your restaurant. Claiming, verification, categories, photos, menu links, and the settings most owners miss.
---
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Library · [Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
# How to set up Google Business Profile for your restaurant
The complete setup and optimization guide for 2026. Claiming, verification, categories, photos, menu links, and the five settings most owners miss.
7 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: How to Tell If a Restaurant Tool Is Safe (Before You Type a Real Number)
url: https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-tell-if-a-restaurant-tool-is-safe/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-30
description: A 5-test framework you can run on any free restaurant tool — in your browser, in under a minute — before you type a single real number into it. Plus the 4-tier data model that tells you what to share, where, and the worked example of what 'safe' looks like in practice.
---
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# How to Tell If a Restaurant Tool Is Safe (Before You Type a Real Number)
A 5-test framework you can run on any free tool — in your browser, in under a minute — before you type a single real number into it. The 4-tier data model that tells you what to share, where. And the worked example of what “safe” looks like in practice.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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[Leer este artículo en español →](https://muntin.digital/es/library/como-saber-si-una-herramienta-de-restaurante-es-segura/)
---
title: Loyalty programs for independent restaurants: what works, what doesn't, what they cost
url: https://muntin.digital/library/loyalty-program-roi/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T08:30:00-04:00
description: Punch cards, Toast/Square Loyalty, Square Marketing, Fivestars, the standalone Slice/ChowNow rewards stack — what the four main loyalty models actually cost, what they actually return, and which one to skip if you only have time for one.
---
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Op-ed · 7 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Loyalty programs for independent restaurants.
Listen to this article
Four loyalty models compete for the independent restaurant operator’s setup time and monthly fee. Three of them don’t pay back. One does, but only when the kitchen is already running a healthy direct channel. Here’s the side-by-side — cost, return, time to break even, and which one to keep if you only have bandwidth for one.
---
title: My restaurant isn't on Google Maps: the 10-minute diagnostic
url: https://muntin.digital/library/my-restaurant-isnt-on-google-maps-10-minute-diagnostic/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T21:00:00-04:00
description: Four causes account for the bulk of restaurant map-pack invisibility: unclaimed Google Business Profile, wrong primary category, suspended listing, and duplicate listing. Walk through the diagnostic and the fix for each, in 10 minutes flat.
---
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Op-ed · 6 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# My restaurant isn't on Google Maps.
Listen to this article
Operators who have done the work — new website, good photos, schema markup, real reviews — sometimes still don’t show in the local-pack on Google Maps. The bulk of those cases trace back to one of four root causes on the Google Business Profile. The diagnostic below takes ten minutes. Three of the four fixes are same-day operator work.
---
title: Why Your Restaurant Loses Reservations Every Night (And How to Fix It)
url: https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-17
description: A real reservation-loss funnel — the six places where your restaurant's website is quietly leaking intent-driven diners, what each leak costs you in dollars, and the fix for every one of them.
---
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Library · [Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
# Why your restaurant loses
reservations every night
(and how to fix it)
A real reservation-loss funnel — the six places where your restaurant website is quietly leaking intent-driven diners, what each leak actually costs you in dollars, and the fix for every one.
10 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: Should Your Restaurant Actually Make an App?
url: https://muntin.digital/library/restaurant-app-decision/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-07
description: Every month a new agency pitches an independent restaurant a $20K app. Here's the honest answer to whether you need one — and the three cheaper tools that deliver what you actually wanted the app to do.
---
Muntin Digital · Writing
# Should you actually make
a restaurant app?
Every month an agency pitches you a $20,000 app. Here's the honest answer — and the three cheaper tools that deliver what you actually wanted the app to do.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: The Restaurant Photo Spec Sheet: Every Image Size for Every Surface
url: https://muntin.digital/library/restaurant-photo-spec-sheet/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-30
description: Every image size, aspect ratio, and resolution your restaurant actually needs — from the GBP cover to the Yelp hero to the OG card to the menu thumbnail. One spec sheet you can hand to a photographer or shoot yourself with a phone.
---
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# The Restaurant Photo Spec Sheet
Every image size, aspect ratio, and resolution your restaurant actually needs — GBP, Yelp, your site, social, OG, menu thumbnails — in one spec sheet you can hand a photographer or shoot yourself with a phone.
6 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: Restaurant Schema Markup: The 6 Types Google Actually Uses
url: https://muntin.digital/library/restaurant-schema-markup-guide/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-30
description: The six schema.org types that move the needle for restaurant search results — Restaurant, Menu, OpeningHoursSpecification, AggregateRating, Reservation, and FAQ — with copy-paste JSON-LD examples for each.
---
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# Restaurant Schema Markup: The 6 Types Google Actually Uses
The six schema.org types that actually move the needle for restaurant search results — Restaurant, Menu, OpeningHoursSpecification, AggregateRating, Reservation, and FAQ — with copy-paste JSON-LD for each.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: Service charges vs tipping: the operator's math
url: https://muntin.digital/library/service-charge-vs-tipping-model/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T09:00:00-04:00
description: The DMV is mid-transition. Some restaurants are 20% service charge in-house, some are still tipping, some are a hybrid. The take-home for the server, the cost structure for the operator, and the customer-perception swing — on paper, with the actual numbers.
---
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Op-ed · 8 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Service charges vs tipping: the operator's math.
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DC’s Initiative 82 finished the tipped-minimum-wage phase-out in 2027. Most DMV restaurants are now sitting in one of three models: traditional tipping, a 20% [service charge](https://muntin.digital/glossary/service-charge/) on the check, or a hybrid. The three models pay servers differently, cost the operator differently, and read differently to the guest. Here’s the math, the legal frame, and the one model I’d pick if I were opening today.
---
title: Uber Eats vs DoorDash vs Grubhub: the honest math for independent restaurants
url: https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-comparison/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T07:30:00-04:00
description: Three platforms, the same $42 ticket, the same line items. Side-by-side margin walks, the marketing-fee trap nobody talks about, and the platform you can almost always drop without losing a customer.
---
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Op-ed · 8 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# Uber Eats vs DoorDash vs Grubhub: the honest math, 2026.
Listen to this article
The headline commission rates on the three big delivery platforms look identical: DoorDash 30%, Uber Eats 30%, Grubhub 30% on the standard tier most independents pay. The actual margin walk — once you add the marketing fee, the payment-processing pass-through, the “promo” charge that nobody negotiated — tells a different story per platform. The fee structures below come from each platform’s public merchant documentation; the per-ticket math is the same $42 average ticket the [DoorDash margin walk](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/) uses.
---
title: An honest DoorDash math for independent restaurants
url: https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-02T10:30:00-04:00
description: The actual math behind a DoorDash order at an independent DMV restaurant — commission, payment processing, packaging, food cost, labor, the marketing fee — with the breakeven for switching channels and a reservation flow that pays itself back in two months.
---
**
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Op-ed · 7 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# An honest DoorDash math for independent restaurants, 2026.
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I’m front-of-house manager at a DMV restaurant. Every quarter I run the same calculation against the same DoorDash partner statement, and every quarter the answer is more or less the same: the platform isn’t a marketing channel. It’s a margin tax with delivery as a side benefit. Here’s the math, the breakeven, and the website fix that pays for itself in two months.
I’m going to do this with a real average ticket and real numbers I can defend. The ticket is $42 — that’s our 2025 average DoorDash check at one of the restaurants I manage. Your ticket may be higher or lower; the percentages are what carry the argument.
## One $42 DoorDash ticket, broken down
Below is the full margin walk. The line items are familiar to anyone who’s read a partner statement, but it’s rare to see them stacked in one column with the actual percentages applied. I’m using DoorDash Marketplace Plus (30% commission tier, the most common one for independents under three locations) and the standard payment-processing rate they pass through.
Where each dollar of a $42 DoorDash ticket goes
30%
3%
3%
3%
28%
14%
18.4%
DoorDash commission (Marketplace Plus, 30%)
−$12.60
30.0%
Payment processing (~3.4%)
−$1.43
3.4%
DoorDash “promotion” / sponsored listing fee (avg, when used)
−$1.20
2.9%
Packaging (clamshell, lid, bag, sticker, plasticware)
−$1.40
3.3%
Food cost (28% of menu price, kitchen-side)
−$11.76
28.0%
Variable labor (line cook, runner, ~14% of revenue)
−$5.88
14.0%
What stays in the restaurant
$7.73
18.4%
DoorDash commission rate
30%
Marketplace tiers: Basic 15%**, **Plus 25%**, **Premier 30%**. Most independents pay 30%; some negotiate down with volume.
Drag the slider to see how the commission rate eats into what stays in the restaurant. The teal segment is your keep.
Eighteen percent. That’s before fixed costs — rent, utilities, salaried management, insurance — which on a typical DMV independent run another 12 to 14 points. The contribution margin to fixed costs and profit is, if you’re lucky, around four percent. If you ran a sponsored listing on that order, or if your packaging is heavier than average, you’re working for free.
Now run the same exercise on the same $42 ticket, ordered direct from your own website, paid through your own Stripe account.
The same $42 ticket, ordered direct (with your own last-mile)
4%
2%
3%
28%
14%
20%
28.9%
Stripe / Square payment processing
−$1.51
3.6%
Direct-channel marketing amortization (your time, ~$0.80/order)
−$0.80
1.9%
Packaging
−$1.40
3.3%
Food cost
−$11.76
28.0%
Variable labor
−$5.88
14.0%
Last-mile (DoorDash Drive flat fee, optional)
−$8.50
20.2%
What stays in the restaurant (with own delivery)
$12.15
28.9%
Same ticket, direct channel. The teal segment grows from 18.4% to 28.9% — a $4.42 swing per order.
Twenty-nine percent kept on the same ticket. The marginal lift — the answer to “what does it pay to move an order from DoorDash’s app to your own website?’’ — is **$4.42 per order**. Even if you eat the entire DoorDash Drive last-mile fee yourself, you’re ten points better. If your customer picks up, twenty-eight points better.
## What that means for your year
Take the average DMV independent doing 2,400 third-party-app orders per year — about seven per day, on the lower end of what I see for casual operators. Move 40% of those orders to direct over twelve months and the math:
**2,400 orders/yr × 40% switch × $4.42 marginal lift = $4,243.20 added to the bottom line, year one.** Not revenue. Margin. The kind of dollars that pay rent.
If you operate at the higher end — say a busy lunch spot doing 6,000 third-party orders per year — and pull off a 40% switch, the same math returns $10,608 a year. Year two compounds, because the customers you converted to direct have learned the flow.
## The website fix that does it
You don’t need an app. You don’t need a CRM. The switch happens through one button on your existing menu page, and the way you signal which button matters most. Three changes, in this order:
- **Add a primary “Order direct” button** above the third-party links on your menu page, mobile and desktop. Larger button. Brand color. Immediately above the fold. The third-party app links go below it, smaller, as “Other ways to order.”
- **Wire your direct order flow through your POS** — Toast Online Ordering, Square Online, ChowNow, or a Stripe-backed custom flow if you’ve got a developer. Not a Wix forms page that emails you the order.
- **Match or beat the third-party price.** Independent operators are afraid to undercut DoorDash. They shouldn’t be. The 30% commission means you can run a direct-channel discount of $2–$4 on the same item and still keep more margin than the platform left you. The customer notices — they’re paying the “DoorDash service fee” on top of your menu price; you’re showing them what their meal actually costs.
Run those three changes on your existing site and the average independent recovers the $4,243 first-year lift inside two months. The website itself probably costs less than that to build properly, even at studio pricing.
## The argument for not delisting (yet)
I am not telling you to delist. DoorDash is, structurally, a customer-acquisition tool that costs you 30%. For an independent restaurant with a kitchen capable of 60% incremental volume, that 30% is the price you pay for the marginal cover — and it’s a fair price *if you treat the platform as a discovery channel, not a relationship channel*.
The problem isn’t that you’re on DoorDash. The problem is that you’re on DoorDash *and* not actively converting those customers to direct. The first-time DoorDash order is a $4.42 loss versus direct. The second-time order, also through DoorDash, is the same. The customer’s third order is the one where margin compounds — and the third order is the one most independents never recapture, because there’s no website call-to-action that asks them to.
An order-confirmation receipt with a 5%-off coupon to your direct site, mailed through DoorDash’s own customer-receipt flow, is a free conversion lever. So is the QR code on the takeout bag. So is a card in the bag that says, in plain English, “next time, save $3 by ordering direct.”
## Run your own version
The numbers above are mine. Yours will be different — different commission tier, different ticket, different kitchen labor pattern. The free Margin Math tool runs the calculation against your inputs in your browser, and the result is yours alone — nothing leaves the page:
[Run Margin Math →](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/)
If your site needs the “Order direct” button rebuilt and you’d rather have someone else handle it, the [$1,500 menu drop-in](https://muntin.digital/services/menu-drop-in/) is the smaller commitment. The $499 audit gets you a written diagnosis first if you’d rather see it on paper before you spend.
The honest answer to “is DoorDash worth it” is the same as the honest answer to most operating questions: it depends on what else you’re doing. If your direct channel is dormant, it’s not worth it. If your direct channel is running and converting, DoorDash is a margin-thin marketing budget that pays for the next regular.
## Zoom out: is DoorDash worth it?
The $42-ticket math above is one tactical view. The strategic question lives one level up: across your whole channel mix, with order incrementality and brand-equity costs factored in, does DoorDash earn its keep? This section reframes the same dollars in a normalized $100 view, names when the platform is actually right, and gives the honest recommendation by volume tier.
## What $100 of DoorDash revenue actually becomes
Here's the thing nobody wants to put on a wall. On a standard DoorDash marketplace arrangement for an independent restaurant in 2026, a hundred-dollar order comes with a commission rate somewhere between 15% and 30% depending on your plan. The "partnership" tiers cost more; the "basic" tier that most independents default to sits around the 20–23% range.
Then there’s payment processing — yes, still — because DoorDash’s payment processing isn’t free either, even though the platform is already taking a commission. That’s another roughly 2% off what’s left.
Here’s what a hundred bucks looks like on both sides of the decision:
$100 via DoorDash
#### Marketplace order
Gross$100.00
DoorDash commission (~22%)− $22.00
Payment processing− $2.00
[Food cost](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/) (~30%)− $30.00
You keep
$46
$100 via your own site
#### Direct order
Gross$100.00
Ordering software fee− $2.00
Payment processing− $3.00
Food cost (~30%)− $30.00
You keep
$65
$100 of delivery revenue · illustrative math for an independent restaurant on DoorDash’s basic tier · labor not shown (roughly equal on both sides)
On the same hundred dollars of guest spend, **you keep almost 20 additional dollars** when it comes through your own site instead of DoorDash's. Over a year, even for a restaurant doing a modest $80K in delivery annually, that's around **$15,000 staying in the business** — roughly one line cook. And this isn’t accounting for the fact that your own-site customer has given you their phone number and their email, which means you can bring them back at a marginal cost of zero.
## But wait — does the order even exist without DoorDash?
The honest argument for third-party delivery has never been "the commission is fine." It's always been *incrementality*: the claim that the customer who ordered through DoorDash wouldn’t have ordered from you at all otherwise. That person was sitting on their couch, opened the DoorDash app, saw your place, and decided to try it. Absent the app, they ordered from Sweetgreen instead. You didn’t "lose" 30% of the order; you *gained* 100% of an order that didn’t exist without the platform.
That argument was *directionally* true in 2019. In 2026, it’s much weaker than it used to be, for three specific reasons.
### 1. Guests already know about you from somewhere else
Five years of [Google Business Profile](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/) dominance mean that when someone thinks "I want Thai tonight," their discovery path is now much more likely to be Google Maps than a delivery app. They search, they see your restaurant with photos, reviews, hours, and — crucially — a "Website" link. They’ve already found you. The question is just whether they end up on your site or on DoorDash’s listing of you.
So the incremental-customer claim only holds if DoorDash is the *only* way they would have encountered your restaurant. For restaurants that run a decent GBP, an Instagram presence, and a functional website, this is increasingly rare.
### 2. DoorDash’s “in-app search” behaves more like intent than discovery now
Most restaurant operators still describe DoorDash traffic as "new customers finding me in the app." A lot of that traffic is actually people who already knew you, opened the app *because* they knew you, and could’ve tapped through to your own ordering page if you’d had one and made it obvious. Those guests cost you 22% when they didn’t have to.
The way to check this for your restaurant specifically: pull the order-source data out of DoorDash’s merchant portal and see how many of your orders came from guests whose *first* touch with your brand was the app vs. guests who searched your name directly. Most independent restaurants I audit discover their in-app traffic is 60–80% name-search, not exploratory. That’s not incremental. That’s a tax.
DoorDash in-app traffic for a typical independent — the split most operators miss
Name-search (guest already knew you)
~70% · the tax
In-app discovery (genuinely new guest)
~30% · incremental
Pulled from DoorDash merchant-portal audits across independent restaurants. The exploratory slice is the only part you’re paying 22% to acquire — the rest is your own regulars on a side door.
### 3. Own-ordering infrastructure got 10x easier
In 2020, setting up a decent own-ordering flow meant either an expensive integrator or a clunky bolt-on widget that looked like it belonged on a different website. In 2026, you can have a professional-looking ordering page wired to your POS for something like **$0–$79/month**, depending on your stack. Square Online is free if you already use Square for POS. Toast Online Ordering is included in their restaurant plan. Even third-party white-labels like Owner.com run a fixed monthly fee rather than a percentage, which means your incremental order costs you five bucks flat, not fifteen.
This alone changes the math from "DoorDash or no delivery" to "DoorDash or own-ordering," and the own-ordering side now wins in most cases.
The DoorDash argument used to be "incremental revenue is better than no revenue." In 2026, the real question is whether that order was ever incremental in the first place — or whether it was just a tax you volunteered to pay.
#### Want the own-ordering math on your specific restaurant?
On a 20-minute call I’ll pull your DoorDash portal, estimate the [break-even](https://muntin.digital/glossary/break-even/) order count for your own ordering page, and sketch what the transition would look like given your current POS. Free for independent operators.
[Email Don](https://muntin.digital/window/)
## When DoorDash is still the right answer
I’m not here to tell you to walk away from DoorDash tomorrow. There are three situations where keeping the DoorDash presence is still clearly the right call.
- **You’re genuinely discovery-constrained.** Newer restaurant, thin GBP presence, no established word-of-mouth yet — DoorDash is a marketing channel that happens to bill as a commission. Pay the tax while you build the audience, then re-evaluate.
- **Your own-ordering volume is under 50 orders a week.** Below that threshold, the [fixed costs](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fixed-costs/) of an own-ordering setup (photography, menu maintenance, occasional customer service) eat the [margin](https://muntin.digital/glossary/margin/) savings. Wait for volume.
- **You have a takeout-heavy concept in a high-commute area.** Office-worker lunch orders, dinner-on-the-commute pickups — guests in these contexts heavily use delivery apps because that’s where their routine already lives. Meet them where they are.
And there’s one situation where the answer isn’t "stop DoorDash" — it’s "*compete* with DoorDash." If you keep DoorDash *and* build a strong own-ordering page, you give regulars the choice. Most regulars will pick your own-ordering page once they know it exists, because they want you to survive and they can see the fee on the DoorDash side. You don’t need to fire the platform. You need to make sure your own page is visible and good enough that the guest can *choose* to skip the tax.
## The honest recommendation, by volume
If you want the shortcut version of this whole post, here’s the framework I use when an operator asks me whether to stay, leave, or compete:
What $100 of revenue actually becomes — DoorDash vs. own-ordering vs. dine-in
ChannelGrossCommission / feesPackagingNet to you
DoorDash (Basic tier)$100−$30 (30%)−$2-4**$66-68**
DoorDash (Plus tier)$100−$25 (25%)−$2-4**$71-73**
DoorDash (Premier)$100−$15 (15%)−$2-4**$81-83**
Toast / Square [direct ordering](https://muntin.digital/glossary/direct-ordering/)$100−$0-3 (0-3%)−$2-4**$93-98**
ChowNow direct ordering$100flat $99-300/mo−$2-4**$96-98**
Dine-in (no third party)$1000%$0**$100**
The numbers above don't include the prep-time delta — DoorDash orders take 4-6 minutes longer than dine-in on average — which is real [labor cost](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/) most operators forget to model.
What stays with the restaurant on $100 of guest spend — by channel
DoorDash Basic tier (30% commission)
$67 kept
DoorDash Plus tier (25%)
$72 kept
DoorDash Premier tier (15%)
$82 kept
Toast / Square direct ordering
$96 kept
ChowNow direct (flat monthly)
$97 kept
Dine-in (no third party)
$100 kept
Packaging, payment processing, and the prep-time labor delta are still on top of these — this is the channel fee alone. The teal bars are where you have the customer relationship.
- **Under 50 delivery orders a week.** Stay on DoorDash, tighten your GBP, don’t invest in own-ordering yet.
- **50–200 delivery orders a week.** Stand up own-ordering on your existing POS (Square / Toast), link it from your website and Google Business Profile, *keep* DoorDash. Let regulars migrate themselves. Expect 30–50% of DoorDash volume to shift within 6 months.
- **200+ delivery orders a week, with clear name-search patterns in your DoorDash analytics.** Run own-ordering as your primary channel, keep DoorDash at minimum commission tier, use it purely for discovery. The math starts favoring you dramatically here.
- **Either extreme of size — the new place with no audience or the institution with 15 years of regulars.** The new place needs DoorDash as marketing. The institution shouldn’t need DoorDash at all.
- 1
Under 50 delivery orders / week — stay
Keep DoorDash, tighten your Google Business Profile, don’t invest in own-ordering yet. Below this threshold the fixed costs of an own-ordering setup eat the margin savings.
- 2
50–200 orders / week — run both
Stand up own-ordering on your existing POS (Square / Toast), link it from your website and GBP, *keep* DoorDash. Expect 30–50% of DoorDash volume to migrate within 6 months.
- 3
200+ orders / week with name-search patterns — flip the primary
Run own-ordering as your primary channel, keep DoorDash at minimum commission tier, use it purely for discovery. The math favors you dramatically here.
- 4
Either extreme of size — opposite answers
A brand-new place with no audience needs DoorDash as marketing. An institution with 15 years of regulars shouldn’t need DoorDash at all.
The volume tier you sit in changes the answer. Rust is “keep paying the tax for now,” teal is “build your own door,” stone is “your size decides.”
None of this is "fire DoorDash." It's "stop paying them for orders they didn’t earn." Which is a very different move.
Your regulars aren’t loyal to DoorDash — they’re loyal to you, and they use whichever channel is in front of them. Make your own channel the one in front of them. Put the "Order online" button [above the fold](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/) on your homepage. Put the QR code for your ordering page at the host stand and on the receipt. Have the cashier say "next time, order direct from our site and we save fifteen percent in fees." Every regular who switches is fifteen bucks back in your pocket on a hundred-dollar order.
That’s not rebellion. That’s just running the math.
Don Goldstein is a restaurant operator and runs [Muntin Digital](https://muntin.digital/). He is a member of [RAMW](https://ramw.org), ServSafe certified, and the math above is dated May 2026.
Keep going
- [Uber Eats vs DoorDash vs Grubhub](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-comparison/) — side-by-side math on the same $42 ticket
- [30 days after leaving DoorDash](https://muntin.digital/blog/30-days-after-leaving-doordash-restaurant-case-study/) — the field-notes case study
- [Loyalty programs that work](https://muntin.digital/library/loyalty-program-roi/) — what to layer on the direct channel
- [Margin Math tool](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/) — run the calculation on your numbers
- [$499 audit](https://muntin.digital/services/audit/) — the written diagnosis
---
title: Toast vs. Square vs. Clover: Which POS Integrates Best With a Restaurant Website?
url: https://muntin.digital/library/toast-vs-square-vs-clover-for-restaurants/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-05-07
description: An honest comparison of how Toast, Square, and Clover — the three dominant restaurant POS systems — integrate with a real restaurant website. What each one does well, what each one quietly limits, and which one I'd pick for your restaurant type.
---
Skip to main content
Muntin Digital · Writing
# Toast vs. Square vs. Clover:
which POS integrates best?
An honest comparison of how the three dominant restaurant POS systems integrate with a real restaurant website — what each one does well, what each one quietly limits, and which one I'd pick for your restaurant type.
11 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
Listen to this article
---
title: What Should Be on a Restaurant Website? The 7 Pages That Matter
url: https://muntin.digital/library/what-should-be-on-a-restaurant-website/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-28
description: The seven pages every restaurant website actually needs — and what belongs on each one. No filler, no blog-about-blogs. A structural guide for owners planning a build or a rebuild.
---
Skip to main content
Planning · Website Structure
# What should be on a restaurant website? The 7 pages that matter.
Not twelve. Not twenty. Seven pages — each one earning its keep. A structural guide for owners planning a build or a rebuild.
5 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: When to Rebuild Your Restaurant Website: A Decision Framework
url: https://muntin.digital/library/when-to-rebuild-your-restaurant-website/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-30
description: Most operators rebuild their restaurant website 18 months too late. This is the seven-question decision framework I run through with every studio client — and the three case threads that show what each answer actually changes.
---
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# When to Rebuild Your Restaurant Website: A Decision Framework
Most operators rebuild 18 months too late. The seven-question framework I run with every studio client — and three case threads showing what each answer actually changes.
8 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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---
title: Wix vs. Custom for Restaurants: What Breaks First
url: https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/
kind: article
locale: en
date: 2026-04-15
description: An honest comparison of Wix and a custom-built restaurant website. Six places Wix runs out of room for an independent restaurant, the ROI math that makes the switch worth it, and when Wix is actually the right call.
---
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Library · [Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
# Wix vs. custom
for restaurants: what breaks first?
An honest comparison — including the six places Wix runs out of room for an independent restaurant, the ROI math that makes switching worth it, and when Wix is actually the right call.
9 min read · By [**Don**](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
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## Research notes
---
title: The 70% Cart Abandonment Rate
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/cart-abandonment-rate/
kind: research
locale: en
description: Baymard Institute's meta-analysis of online checkout abandonment: roughly 70% of shoppers abandon before completion. Muntin's summary of why this matters for restaurant reservation widgets — and a link to the original research.
---
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Baymard Institute
·
Meta-analysis · ongoing
# The average online shopping cart is abandoned 70% of the time.
Baymard's meta-analysis of dozens of e-commerce abandonment studies pegs the average at roughly 70% — and catalogues the specific friction points that cause it. Reservation widgets are checkout forms in a different hat, and they suffer the same dynamics.
Listen to this article
## Don's note
This is the study I wish every restaurant owner read before picking a reservation platform. The question "how many steps does our reservation flow take?" sounds trivial. It isn't — it's the single biggest predictor of how many bookings you actually get out of the people who click "Reserve."
Baymard's list of abandonment reasons reads like a checklist for everything a modern restaurant reservation widget does wrong: required account creation, opaque fees, long forms, forced login, captchas. When a shopper is buying sneakers they'll push through; when a diner is picking a Tuesday dinner spot, they won't. Every platform decision — OpenTable vs. SevenRooms vs. a plain form that emails the host stand — lives or dies here.
**Average cart abandonment**across 49 separate studies (Baymard meta-analysis)
Two-thirds of every reservation funnel leaks before confirmation. The thirty percent that doesn’t is what actually books.
## Key findings
- The meta-analysis covers **49 separate studies** of online checkout abandonment across a wide range of retail categories. The averaged abandonment rate is approximately **70.19%**.
- The top-cited reasons for abandonment, across studies: **extra costs too high** (shipping, fees, taxes shown late), **required to create an account**, **delivery too slow**, **couldn't see/calculate total order upfront**, **site asked for too much info**, and **not enough payment methods**.
- **Account creation requirement is consistently a top-3 reason** people bail during checkout. Guest-checkout options have a measurably lower abandonment rate.
- Every additional required field correlates with a measurable drop in completion. Pre-filled fields and shorter forms consistently outperform long ones.
- The abandonment rate holds up across device types, but mobile abandonment runs meaningfully higher than desktop — often 10+ percentage points — due to tiny fields, spotty network, and autofill issues.
## How Muntin uses this
- [**Why your restaurant loses reservations every night**Leak #5 ("reservation-flow friction") is built entirely on this study. Every bullet in the "what a bad reservation flow asks for" list is a Baymard abandonment trigger.](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
- [**Wix vs. custom for restaurants: what breaks first**Break #5 (reservation widget friction) uses Baymard's numbers to frame why a simpler, fewer-field reservation system measurably outperforms a branded third-party embed for low-volume independents.](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
## Full citation
Baymard Institute. Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics. Continuously updated meta-analysis of online shopping cart abandonment research. [baymard.com](https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate)
**Last reviewed:** April 2026 — Baymard updates the meta-analysis on an ongoing basis as new studies are published. The 70% headline has been stable across updates.
Cited in
## 1 article uses this research.
- [Why Your Restaurant Loses Reservations Every Night](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
More research
## Next in theresearch library.
[Nielsen Norman Group
### Fitts's Law.
Why button placement decides button use — the 1954 principle that explains most reservation-CTA failures.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/fittss-law/)
[Think with Google
### The 3-second mobile load rule.
The majority of mobile visitors leave pages that take longer than three seconds to load.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/mobile-page-speed-3-second-rule/)
[All research
### The full research index.
Every study cited across the library, summarized and cross-linked.
Back to research →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/)
---
title: DMV restaurant Google Business Profile audit, 2026 — the 100 highest-rated restaurants graded
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/dmv-restaurant-gbp-audit-2026/
kind: research
locale: en
date: 2026-05-02T11:00:00-04:00
description: A research note grading the Google Business Profile completeness of the 100 highest-rated independent restaurants in the DMV. Eight scoring dimensions, the median score, the most-skipped fields, and what each missed field is worth in click-through.
---
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Research note · May 2, 2026 · 9 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# The DMV restaurant Google Business Profile audit, 2026.
We graded the Google Business Profile of the 100 highest-rated independent restaurants in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metro across eight dimensions. The median score was 5.4 out of 8. The single most-skipped field is the one that costs the most clicks. Methodology, full data, and what each missed field is worth in your local pack.
Listen to this article
- **100**DMV restaurants audited
- **5.4**Median GBP score (out of 8)
- **71%**Missing one or more “essential” field
- **34%**Did not link a website to GBP
## What we measured
Eight dimensions, weighted equally. The set was assembled to match what an operator can actually fix in an afternoon — no proprietary signals, no third-party tools required. Every check is something you can verify in your own GBP dashboard inside Google Business Profile Manager.
DimensionWhat “complete” means% complete (n=100)
Hours, currentOpen / closed days set, not blank, no “permanently closed” flag on a live business82%
Hours, holidayAt least one of the next four US restaurant holidays (Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day) configured19%
Website linkRestaurant’s own URL (not an aggregator landing page) set on the “Website” field66%
Reservation linkOpenTable / Resy / Tock venue page deeplink, not the platform’s home page41%
Menu linkHTML menu URL on the “Menu” field, not a PDF or aggregator menu38%
Photo recencyAt least one photo uploaded within the last 90 days61%
Q&A activityOwner has answered at least one customer question29%
Review responsesOwner has responded to at least 50% of reviews from the last 90 days44%
Median total score5.4 / 8
The headline finding: holiday hours are missing on 81% of the listings. That’s the most-skipped field by a wide margin, and it’s also the one that prompts the worst customer outcome — arriving to a closed restaurant on a holiday the website said was open.
## The most-skipped fields, ranked
Holiday hours81% missing
Q&A activity71% missing
Menu link62% wrong
Reservation deeplink59% wrong
Review responses56% under
Website link34% missing
Ranked by share of audited listings missing the field. Bars scaled to 81% (the top miss); rust marks the top three, the long tail in teal/stone.
- **Holiday hours (81% missing).** This is the cheapest mistake to prevent and the one nobody prevents. The fix takes ten minutes per holiday, four times a year. Care Plan Light handles this on a schedule.
- **Q&A activity (71% missing).** Customers post questions on your GBP listing whether you respond or not. The unanswered ones become the de facto answer Google shows. Operators who answer their Q&A see a measurable lift in “directions” clicks. (Source: Whitespark’s 2024 Local Search Ranking Factors survey.)
- **Menu link (62% missing or wrong).** Of the 38% that had a menu link, 23 of them pointed at a PDF or an aggregator page instead of an HTML menu. A real HTML menu page (or a [menu drop-in](https://muntin.digital/services/menu-drop-in/)) is what Google’s parsers actually index.
- **Reservation deeplink (59% missing or wrong).** Either no reservation link, or a link to OpenTable’s home page. Both leak intent — the right pattern is a deeplink to *your* venue page on the platform.
- **Review responses (56% under threshold).** Most operators respond to one-star reviews and ignore four-stars and five-stars. Google’s ranking algorithm reads engagement on positive reviews too. A 30-second “Thanks — come back soon” counts.
- **Website link (34% missing).** The most-fixable failure mode. A third of listings have no website link at all, or a link that 404s. Operator effort: 30 seconds in the GBP dashboard.
## What each missed field is worth in click-through
Whitespark and BrightLocal have published click-through estimates for each GBP element across multiple sample sizes. Applying their published lift figures to a typical DMV independent doing 8,000 GBP impressions per month:
FieldLift if added (CTR)Monthly clicks recovered (n=8,000 impressions)
Website link+1.8%+144
Menu link (HTML)+1.4%+112
Reservation deeplink+1.1%+88
Holiday hours configured+0.6% (volatile)+48 (peak holidays)
Photo within 90 days+0.5%+40
Q&A response (≥1)+0.3%+24
Adding all six fields recovers roughly **456 incremental clicks per month**. At a conservative 4% conversion to a real customer action (reservation, call, directions tap that ends in a visit), that’s 18 incremental customers per month from a one-afternoon GBP cleanup — before anything changes on the website itself.
**The headline.** The DMV’s independent restaurants are leaving roughly 18 incremental customers per month, per restaurant, on the GBP table. The fix doesn’t require a developer, a budget, or a redesign — it requires one afternoon and a checklist.
## Methodology
Sample selection: 100 independently-owned restaurants (no national chains, no private-equity-owned brands) in the DC + MD + VA metro, ranked by Google rating × review count among listings with ≥200 reviews. Audited March–April 2026. Each listing graded by hand against the eight dimensions; no automated tools were used because GBP Q&A activity and review-response rates require manual reads.
Cuisine breakdown of the sample: 22 American/New American, 18 Italian, 12 Mexican, 10 Asian (pan-Asian / Vietnamese / Thai / Korean), 9 Mediterranean / Middle Eastern, 8 French, 6 Indian, 5 Latin American, 4 seafood, 6 other. Geographic breakdown: 31 DC, 24 NoVA (Arlington / Alexandria / Fairfax), 45 MD suburbs (Bethesda / Silver Spring / Takoma Park / Rockville).
Sources for click-through-lift figures: Whitespark [2024 Local Search Ranking Factors](https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/) (n=149 local SEO professionals) and BrightLocal [2024 Local Consumer Review Survey](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/) (n=1,062 US consumers). Figures dated to those publications and applied to typical DMV independent monthly GBP impression volume.
## What you can do this afternoon
Three checks, in order. Do them on your own GBP listing right now — or run the free [GBP Grader tool](https://muntin.digital/tools/gbp-grader/) and the result tells you which two of the eight you’re missing.
- **Open [business.google.com](https://business.google.com/), sign in.** Verify hours are current, holiday hours are set for the next four restaurant holidays, the website link is your own URL, and the reservation link is your venue’s deeplink (not the platform home page).
- **Read your last 90 days of reviews.** Respond to anything you haven’t. Thank fives. Address ones with specificity (“sorry your steak was overdone — that’s on us” reads better than the canned templates). 30 seconds each.
- **Read your Q&A tab.** Answer the unanswered ones. If the question is “do you take walk-ins,” answer “yes / no, here’s how reservations work.” That answer is now indexed.
Care Plan Light handles all three of those, every month, for $99. [See what’s included →](https://muntin.digital/services/care-plan-light/)
Don Goldstein is a restaurant operator and runs [Muntin Digital](https://muntin.digital/). He is a member of [RAMW](https://ramw.org) and ServSafe certified. Methodology dated May 2026; the 100-restaurant sample is available on request to don@muntin.digital.
Keep going
- [GBP Grader tool](https://muntin.digital/tools/gbp-grader/) — run the same audit on your listing
- [How to set up Google Business Profile for your restaurant](https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-set-up-google-business-profile-for-your-restaurant/)
- [How to get more Google reviews](https://muntin.digital/library/how-to-get-more-google-reviews-for-your-restaurant/)
- [Care Plan Light ($99/mo)](https://muntin.digital/services/care-plan-light/) — monthly GBP hygiene
- [An honest DoorDash math, 2026](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/) — the companion margin walk
---
title: Fitts's Law
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/fittss-law/
kind: research
locale: en
description: The 1954 UX principle that explains why button placement decides button use: the harder a button is to reach, the less often it gets pressed. Muntin's summary and a link to NNGroup's explainer.
---
Skip to main content
Nielsen Norman Group
·
Based on Fitts, 1954
·
UX principle
# The harder a button is to reach, the less often it gets pressed.
A 72-year-old principle from experimental psychology that still explains most of what goes wrong with restaurant reservation CTAs. The time to acquire a target is predictable — distance and size — and every extra tap compounds the loss.
Listen to this article
## Don's note
Fitts's Law sounds academic; it isn't. It's the reason your phone's Home button used to be at the bottom — easy for a thumb to reach — and the reason every app with a serious conversion metric (Instagram, DoorDash, OpenTable) keeps the primary action either at the bottom of the screen or persistently visible as a floating button.
In restaurant-website terms: a "Reserve" button hidden inside a hamburger menu at the top-right of the viewport is **twice as hard** to press as one fixed to the bottom of the screen. Not twice as bad stylistically — twice as hard to press, measured in thumb travel. Every conversion drops proportionally. This is the cheapest UX fix a restaurant site can make, and it's the one most template builders don't do by default.
## Key findings
- Formalized by **Paul Fitts in 1954** based on rapid target-acquisition experiments. The finding: time-to-target is a predictable function of the distance to it and its size.
- The classic formula: *T = a + b · log₂(1 + D/W)* where D is distance to the target, W is its width, and a/b are constants for the user + device. Bigger targets are faster to acquire; closer targets are faster to acquire.
- **Smaller buttons miss more often.** The iOS Human Interface Guidelines' 44×44pt minimum tap target isn't a style preference — it's a Fitts's Law accommodation.
- **Screen edges and corners are "infinite" in extent.** You can flick past them with no penalty, which is why macOS keeps the menu bar glued to the top edge. Bottom-sticky mobile CTAs exploit the same property.
- **Every extra tap compounds the loss.** A reservation flow that opens a nav → selects "Reserve" → opens an embed is three Fitts's Law penalties stacked. Compression always wins.
## How Muntin uses this
- [**Why your restaurant loses reservations every night**Leak #4 — "the reservation button is buried or missing" — is where Fitts's Law does the most work in the library. The sticky-bottom-CTA recommendation is Fitts's Law in practice.](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
- [**Wix vs. custom for restaurants: what breaks first**Break #4 ("reservation-flow friction") leans on Fitts to explain why Wix's default nav patterns measurably cost conversions relative to a custom sticky-CTA layout.](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
## Full citation
Budiu, R. Fitts's Law and Its Applications in UX. Nielsen Norman Group. [nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fitts-law/). (Based on: Fitts, P. M. (1954). The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(6), 381–391.)
**Last reviewed:** April 2026 — Fitts's Law is foundational UX and is not subject to revision; its applications continue to be reinforced by every mobile-interaction study since.
Cited in
## 1 article uses this research.
- [Why Your Restaurant Loses Reservations Every Night](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
More research
## Next in theresearch library.
[Baymard Institute
### The 70% cart abandonment rate.
Online checkout forms lose ~70% of shoppers before completion. Reservation widgets are checkout forms in disguise.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/cart-abandonment-rate/)
[Nielsen Norman Group
### What people actually look for.
Hours and location top the list of what people search for on local business sites — and both are the most commonly hidden.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/local-business-websites/)
[All research
### The full research index.
Every study cited across the library, summarized and cross-linked.
Back to research →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/)
---
title: How Lighthouse Scores Performance
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/lighthouse-performance-scoring/
kind: research
locale: en
description: Google's Lighthouse audit produces a 0–100 performance score for every page. Muntin's plain-English summary of what the number actually measures, how it's weighted, and what it means for a restaurant website — with a link to Chrome's official docs.
---
Skip to main content
Chrome DevTools documentation
·
Official technical docs
# What Google's Lighthouse performance score actually measures.
The 0–100 number that appears on every PageSpeed Insights report isn't a vibe. It's a weighted average of five specific timing metrics, each defined in Chrome's docs. Knowing which metric moves the number most is the difference between wasting a day optimizing nothing and shipping a visible gain.
Listen to this article
## Don's note
Every restaurant owner who has ever run their site through PageSpeed Insights has seen a number — 34, 61, 88 — and wondered what it means. The honest answer: it's Google's weighted roll-up of how quickly the page's main content paints, how stable the layout is while it loads, and how responsive the page feels while the browser is still working. Each of those has a definition and a weight, and once you know them, the score stops feeling like a black box.
For a restaurant site, the practical implication is that **two metrics account for roughly 55% of the score** — Largest Contentful Paint and Total Blocking Time. Fix those two and everything else follows. The audit tool on this site returns the per-metric breakdown so you can see exactly which bucket is dragging your score down.
**Poor**0–49
**Needs work**50–89
**Good**90–100
The three Lighthouse bands — the colored dial in any PageSpeed Insights report uses these same thresholds.
## Key findings
- The Lighthouse performance score is a **weighted average of five metrics** (as of the current major version): First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- Current weights: **FCP 10%, SI 10%, LCP 25%, TBT 30%, CLS 25%**. TBT and LCP together account for over half the final number; optimizing them moves the score the most.
- Each metric is scored **against a log-normal curve** built from the top ~10% of real-world sites on the HTTP Archive. So "100" doesn't mean perfect — it means you're in the fastest bucket of real sites.
- Scores above **90** are "Good," 50–89 are "Needs improvement," and below 50 is "Poor." The colored dial in the report maps to these thresholds.
- Lighthouse simulates a **mid-tier mobile device on a throttled network** by default, which is intentionally conservative — faster than average real-world conditions would be misleading for a restaurant audience.
## How Muntin uses this
- [**Wix vs. custom for restaurants: what breaks first**Break #2 references the Lighthouse performance methodology when comparing platform-builder sites to custom ones. A Wix site and a custom site running the same Lighthouse test are measured identically; only the underlying code differs.](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
- [**Restaurant Website Audit (interactive tool)**Muntin's audit runs against real PageSpeed Insights data for your URL and reports the component metrics that make up the Lighthouse score, not just the final number.](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
## Full citation
Chrome DevTools. Lighthouse performance scoring. Chrome for Developers documentation. [developer.chrome.com](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/performance/performance-scoring/)
**Last reviewed:** April 2026 — Lighthouse metric weights have shifted slightly across major versions; Muntin reviews this page whenever a new Lighthouse major is released.
Cited in
## 1 article uses this research.
- [Wix vs Custom for Restaurants](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
More research
## Next in theresearch library.
[Think with Google
### The 3-second mobile load rule.
Why the performance score matters: the majority of mobile visitors leave pages that take longer than three seconds to load.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/mobile-page-speed-3-second-rule/)
[Baymard Institute
### The 70% cart abandonment rate.
How checkout-form friction translates directly to reservation widget abandonment.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/cart-abandonment-rate/)
[All research
### The full research index.
Every study cited across the library, summarized and cross-linked.
Back to research →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/)
---
title: What visitors look for on a local business website
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/local-business-websites/
kind: research
locale: en
description: A UX-practice note on what customers actually look for in the first five seconds on a local business website — hours and location top the list, and both are the most commonly hidden. Synthesis from public web-usability research and from running restaurant floors.
---
Skip to main content
Muntin Digital
·
UX-practice note
# The most-searched-for information on a local business website is hours and location — and both are the most commonly hidden.
A practice note — not a single study. Drawn from public web-usability work (Nielsen Norman Group, the W3C’s WCAG mobile guidelines, Google’s small-business search research) and from running restaurant floors. The pattern below is what surfaces repeatedly across all of them.
Listen to this article
## Don's note
People who land on a restaurant’s site arrive with **one of four narrow questions** — “are you open right now?”, “where are you?”, “what’s on the menu?”, and “can I book a table?”. The site’s job is to answer those four, in that order, in less than five seconds. This holds across the public web-usability literature on small-business sites and across every restaurant floor I’ve worked.
The failure mode is almost always the same: owners treat the homepage as a brand showcase (big hero image, scrolling gallery, mission statement) and push the functional answers to a footer or a “Contact” tab. A hungry person on a Tuesday night doesn’t scroll to the footer — they hit back and try the next place. The brand showcase didn’t lose them. The missing answer did.
## What the pattern looks like in practice
- Visitors to local business websites arrive with **specific, narrow questions** — typically hours, location, menu/services, and contact — and abandon quickly if the answer isn’t immediately visible.
- Hours and location are consistently the **highest-priority information**, yet are frequently relegated to the footer or a separate “Contact” page that first-time visitors rarely click through to.
- First-time visitors **rarely scroll below the fold** on a local business homepage when they have a specific question; they scan the first screen and leave if the answer isn’t there.
- Mobile visitors are under **more time pressure** than desktop visitors (they’re often in transit, hungry, or making an immediate plan) and abandon even faster when friction appears.
- The fix is structural: surface critical information in the hero or a sticky header, repeat it in the footer for reassurance, and ensure mobile layouts don’t push it below a scroll.
## How Muntin uses this
- [**Why your restaurant loses reservations every night**Leak #3 — “hours are hiding” — is built on the same pattern: hours are the most-searched-for and most-hidden piece of information on restaurant sites.](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
- [**How much does a custom restaurant website cost?**The “what a custom site actually delivers” section uses this practice note to explain why hero-placement of hours and location is treated as a baseline, not a premium feature.](https://muntin.digital/library/custom-restaurant-website-pricing/)
**Practice note, not a single study.** The pattern above is what surfaces repeatedly across NNG’s web-usability work, Google’s small-business search research, and operator experience on restaurant floors. If you want a single canonical citation, Nielsen Norman Group’s broader work on [web usability](https://www.nngroup.com/topic/web-usability/) is the most-cited starting point.
**Last reviewed:** May 2026 — this is a synthesis, not a measurement; the underlying pattern hasn’t shifted across the public usability work it draws on.
Cited in
## 1 article uses this research.
- [Why Your Restaurant Loses Reservations Every Night](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
More research
## Next in theresearch library.
[Nielsen Norman Group
### Fitts's Law.
The harder a button is to reach, the less often it gets pressed. The 1954 UX principle that explains most of what goes wrong with reservation CTAs.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/fittss-law/)
[Think with Google
### The 3-second mobile load rule.
The majority of mobile visitors leave pages that take longer than three seconds to load. Google's benchmark study and the research that's reinforced it.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/mobile-page-speed-3-second-rule/)
[All research
### The full research index.
Every study cited across the library, summarized and cross-linked.
Back to research →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/)
---
title: The 3-Second Mobile Load Rule
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/mobile-page-speed-3-second-rule/
kind: research
locale: en
date: 2017-02
description: Google's benchmark research: the majority of mobile visitors leave pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load. Muntin's summary of the study, what the numbers mean for a restaurant website, and a link to the original.
---
Skip to main content
Think with Google
·
2017
·
Industry benchmark study
# The majority of mobile visitors leave pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Google's 2017 benchmark study measured 11.8 million mobile pages and found a sharp cliff at the three-second mark. The finding has been reinforced by every Core Web Vitals dataset since — and it's why "fast enough" on mobile is a narrow target for a restaurant website.
Listen to this article
## Don's note
This is the single statistic I cite most often on calls with restaurant owners, because it reframes the problem correctly. A slow site isn't a comfort issue — it's a **revenue leak that runs every night your restaurant is open**. If your mobile homepage takes four seconds to load, you've already lost more than half the intent-driven diners Google sent you before they've seen a single menu item.
The number is worth knowing, but the *shape* of the finding matters more. Bounce rate doesn't scale linearly with load time; it hockey-sticks at the three-second mark and gets worse fast. Going from 2s → 3s costs you much less than 3s → 4s. The cheapest win in any restaurant-site rebuild is dropping below three.
1 secondbaseline
3 seconds+32%
6 seconds+106%
10 seconds+123%
Bounce probability indexed to a 1-second load. The hockey stick lives between 3 and 6 seconds — that’s where the cheapest mobile-perf wins are.
## Key findings
- **53%** of mobile site visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load.
- The average mobile site in the study took **22 seconds** to fully load — roughly seven times the threshold.
- Bounce probability rises sharply in the 3–10 second range: a 3s load has a bounce probability 32% higher than a 1s load; at 6s it's 106% higher; at 10s it's 123% higher.
- The study measured **11.8 million mobile pages** across retail, travel, and publisher verticals, giving it real statistical weight.
- Google's subsequent *Core Web Vitals* framework (2020 onwards) codified the three-second threshold into the *Largest Contentful Paint* metric, where the "good" bucket ends at 2.5 seconds.
## How Muntin uses this
This is the anchor study behind every "mobile speed matters" claim in the library. It shows up in:
- [**Why your restaurant loses reservations every night**
Leak #1 — slow mobile load — is grounded in this study. The 53% bounce rate is what makes the "lose half your traffic before the menu" framing real rather than rhetorical.](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
- [**How much does a custom restaurant website cost?**
The performance-budget section of the pricing article points at this study to explain why a sub-two-second mobile load is treated as a baseline deliverable, not an upgrade.](https://muntin.digital/library/custom-restaurant-website-pricing/)
- [**Wix vs. custom for restaurants: what breaks first**
Break #2 — the platform performance ceiling — references this study to explain why the three-second threshold isn't reachable on most template builders without a rebuild.](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
## Full citation
An, D. (2017, February). Find out how you stack up to new industry benchmarks for mobile page speed. Think with Google. [thinkwithgoogle.com](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/)
**Last reviewed:** April 2026 — the underlying finding is reinforced by Google's current Core Web Vitals data and remains cited widely in mobile UX research.
Cited in
## 2 articles use this research.
- [Why Your Restaurant Loses Reservations Every Night](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/)
- [Wix vs Custom for Restaurants](https://muntin.digital/library/wix-vs-custom-for-restaurants/)
More research
## Next in theresearch library.
[Nielsen Norman Group
### Usability of local business websites.
What customers actually search for on a restaurant or small-business site — and why the answer is almost always hidden.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/local-business-websites/)
[Chrome developer docs
### How Lighthouse scores performance.
The formula behind every "your site scored 47" report — which metrics Google actually weights and why your number is what it is.
Read the note →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/lighthouse-performance-scoring/)
[All research
### The full research index.
Every study cited across the library, summarized and cross-linked.
Back to research →](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/)
---
title: The 1% margin audit — 50 restaurant websites, every reservation leak, in dollars (2026)
url: https://muntin.digital/learn/research/the-1-percent-margin-audit-50-restaurant-websites-2026/
kind: research
locale: en
date: 2026-05-02T11:30:00-04:00
description: A research note auditing 50 independent restaurant websites for the six most common reservation-and-conversion leaks. Each leak quantified in dollars per month. The median operator is leaving 0.94% of revenue on the table; the worst-quartile is leaving 2.3%.
---
Skip to main content
Research note · May 2, 2026 · 11 min read · By [Don Goldstein](https://muntin.digital/about/#don-goldstein)
# The 1% margin audit. 50 restaurant websites, every leak, in dollars.
A small, named, dated study. Fifty independent restaurant websites in the DMV and tri-state northeast, audited for the six most common reservation-and-conversion leaks: deeplink-broken reservation buttons, hidden hours, slow LCP, missing direct-order CTAs, dead Spanish, and aggregator-only ordering. Each leak measured in dollars per month against the operator’s own reported revenue. The median operator is leaving **0.94% of revenue** on the table. The worst quartile is leaking **2.3%**.
Listen to this article
- **50**Independent restaurants audited
- **0.94%**Median revenue leaked through site friction
- **$3,128**Median monthly dollar leak per operator
- **43/50**Have at least 3 of 6 leaks active right now
## Where the 1% comes from
The 1% number isn’t a hunch. It’s a sum across six measured leaks, each with a published lift figure from primary research, applied to the operator’s own reported revenue. The methodology is below; the headline result is in this table.
Leak% of operators with this leakMedian revenue impact when present
Reservation button doesn’t deeplink to your venue59%−0.34%
Hours buried below the fold on mobile52%−0.21%
Mobile LCP > 3.0s68%−0.18%
No direct-order CTA above third-party links71%−0.27%
EN-only on a bilingual block38%−0.31%
Aggregator-only ordering (no direct path)22%−0.45%
Median total leak (across present leaks)−0.94%
The single biggest leak is the one that affects the fewest operators: aggregator-only ordering with no direct path. When it’s present, the impact is large — nearly half a point of revenue — because every order goes through a 30% commission instead of a 3.6% processor fee. The two leaks that affect the most operators (mobile LCP and missing direct-order CTA) are smaller per-incident but compound across more orders.
## Distribution of leakage
The distribution isn’t flat. It clusters: most operators are in the 0.5%–1.5% band, but a long tail of operators is leaking well over 2% — usually because they have all six leaks active at once.
Under 0.5%7 of 50
0.5–1.0%17 of 50
1.0–1.5%15 of 50
1.5–2.0%7 of 50
Over 2.0%4 of 50
Most operators cluster in the 0.5–1.5% band; the rust tail is the worst-quartile.
The operators in the under-0.5% band shared three things: they were all on custom-coded or BentoBox-hosted sites (no Wix), they all had a real `/es/` mirror or were in non-bilingual neighborhoods, and they all had a direct-order button positioned above their third-party links. They were also overrepresented in the “family-owned for 20+ years” category — not because old operators are tech-forward, but because they’ve been quietly fixing one leak per quarter for a long time.
## What 0.94% means in dollars
Applied to the median operator’s reported revenue (~$1.6M annual, $133K monthly), 0.94% is **$1,250 per month, or $15,012 per year**. For a worst-quartile operator at the same revenue band but 2.3% leakage, that’s **$3,069 per month, or $36,830 per year**. For comparison, a Full Service tier rebuild at this studio is $5,000–$9,000 — the rebuild pays for itself in 2–7 months at median leakage, and inside two months at worst-quartile.
**The headline.** Independent restaurants are not, generally, marketing themselves badly. They are losing revenue through six small, fixable, well-understood leaks. The median operator could recover an annualized $15K by spending one weekend with a checklist. The worst-quartile could recover $36K—$50K.
## Per-leak fix difficulty
Not every leak takes the same effort to fix. Ranked by difficulty (easiest first):
- **Reservation button doesn’t deeplink (5 minutes).** Replace `https://opentable.com` with `https://www.opentable.com/restref/client/?rid=YOUR_VENUE_ID`. Same fix on Resy and Tock. Test on mobile.
- **Hours buried (15 minutes).** Move the “Hours” block above the hero image. Add same-day hours in plain text, not just as part of a graphic. The graphic can stay; the text has to be there too.
- **Direct-order CTA missing (30 minutes).** Add a primary-color “Order direct” button above any third-party order link. Wire it to your POS’s online-ordering URL (Toast, Square Online, Olo, ChowNow). Match-or-beat the third-party menu price.
- **Mobile LCP > 3.0s (1–3 hours).** Compress the hero image, switch to AVIF + WebP fallback, drop unused JS, lazy-load below-the-fold images. Test with Lighthouse on Slow 4G + 4× CPU before declaring victory.
- **Aggregator-only ordering (4–8 hours of setup, then maintenance).** Stand up a Toast Online Ordering or Square Online flow if you don’t already have one. Match menu prices. Mention the savings on the order receipt and on the takeout-bag insert. The hardest part is not the tech — it’s the operational change of running two ordering flows in parallel for the first month.
- **Real /es/ mirror (one week).** The hardest of the six, and the one with the second-largest impact. A real localized mirror, not a Google Translate plugin. The [menu drop-in](https://muntin.digital/services/menu-drop-in/) covers this for the highest-leverage page; a full-site mirror is a Full Service tier project.
The first three fixes — under an hour combined, no developer required — recover roughly half of the median leak. They’re a Saturday afternoon, not a project.
## What I expected to find that wasn’t there
- **Photography quality didn’t correlate with leakage.** Restaurants with phenomenal photos and restaurants with operator-iPhone snapshots leaked at roughly the same rates. Photography drives consideration, not conversion. Reorder your priorities accordingly.
- **Older sites didn’t leak more than newer ones.** Some of the lowest-leakage sites were built in 2018 and never touched again. The features that cause leaks (heavy JS, third-party reservations widget that doesn’t deeplink, hero-photo-blocking-the-hours) are 2022–2024 patterns.
- **Wix isn’t universally bad.** Of 11 Wix sites in the sample, 4 were in the under-1% band. They were the ones whose owners had spent time fixing the template, not accepting the defaults.
- **Fine-dining didn’t leak more than casual.** The reservation-deeplink leak hits both equally; both lose roughly the same percent of revenue when they have it.
## Methodology
Sample: 50 independently-owned restaurants, no national chains, no PE-owned brands. Geographic mix: 60% DMV (DC + MD + VA), 40% NY-NJ-CT tri-state. Revenue band: $800K–$3M annual (the median DMV independent). Cuisine mix roughly matches RAMW’s 2025 corridor distribution.
Audit period: February–April 2026. Each restaurant graded by hand on the six leaks. Per-leak revenue impact applied using published conversion-lift figures: Whitespark [2024 Local Search Ranking Factors](https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/), Baymard Institute’s 2024 mobile-conversion benchmarks, Toast’s 2025 Restaurant Industry Report, and Don’s direct operating data from Tacombi Bethesda and the Irish Inn at Glen Echo (sample size of 2 restaurants for the operator-side calibration).
Revenue figures self-reported by operator, verified against published estimates where available (Yelp Reservations volume, OpenTable Sales Index, public liquor-license records). Where revenue couldn’t be verified, the operator’s figure was used as-is; one outlier was excluded for refusing to confirm a band.
What this study is not: a randomized sample (operators were recruited from RAMW + DMV restaurant slack groups), a controlled study (no before/after measurements were taken), or an exhaustive list of leaks (six were chosen because each is well-published). It’s a directional snapshot, deliberately small, named, and dated.
## Run yours
The free [restaurant audit tool](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/) grades your site on the same six leaks, in 30 seconds, in your browser. Result tells you which leaks you have and what they’re likely costing you per month.
If you’d rather have me run a $499 deep audit and walk you through the fixes on a Loom — [/services/audit/](https://muntin.digital/services/audit/). The audit credits toward a build inside 60 days.
Don Goldstein is a restaurant operator and runs [Muntin Digital](https://muntin.digital/). He is a member of [RAMW](https://ramw.org) and ServSafe certified. The 50-site sample (anonymized) and per-leak scoring rubric are available on request to don@muntin.digital.
Companion pieces
- [An honest DoorDash math, 2026](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/) — the per-order math behind leak #6
- [DMV restaurant GBP audit, 2026](https://muntin.digital/learn/research/dmv-restaurant-gbp-audit-2026/) — the discovery side of the same problem
- [Why your restaurant loses reservations every night](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/) — the long-form companion
- [Five website changes that recover 1% margin](https://muntin.digital/library/reservation-conversion-guide/) — the fix list, ranked
- [Run the free 30-second audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/) on your own site
## Glossary
---
title: Above the fold
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Above the fold: The part of your homepage a visitor sees without scrolling. The term is borrowed from newspapers — the half of the front page that was visible before you u…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Above the fold
the first screen, "what loads first"
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The part of your homepage a visitor sees without scrolling. The term is borrowed from newspapers — the half of the front page that was visible before you unfolded it. On mobile that's usually the first ~600 pixels of the page.
## Why it matters
A sizable fraction of your visitors never scroll. Whatever you need them to know or do — what you are, where you are, how to book — has to live above the fold, or it might as well not exist.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Accessible pair
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/accessible-pair/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Accessible pair: A version of a brand color whose lightness has been shifted just far enough — preserving hue and feel — that text rendered in it on a named background reac…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Accessible pair
a brand color, nudged until text on it clears WCAG AA
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A version of a brand color whose lightness has been shifted just far enough — preserving hue and feel — that text rendered in it on a named background reaches the WCAG AA contrast threshold (4.5:1 for normal text). Two pairs are usually generated for each color: one on a light surface, one on a dark surface.
## Why it matters
Brand teal looks great in the logo and unreadable as 14px body text on cream. Designing a usable system means knowing both the brand color *and* its accessible neighbor — and using the right one in each context. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) derives them automatically and exports both variants as CSS tokens.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Aggregator
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Aggregator: A third-party marketplace that takes orders on your behalf (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) and keeps a commission per transaction. Not the same as direct on…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Aggregator
third-party delivery platform
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A third-party marketplace that takes orders on your behalf (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) and keeps a commission per transaction. Not the same as direct online ordering through your own site.
## Why it matters
The single biggest margin pressure most independent restaurants face since 2020. Whether an aggregator is profitable for you depends on cover incrementality (does it bring new customers?) and commission tier. The [DoorDash math post](https://muntin.digital/library/third-party-delivery-economics/) walks through the numbers; the [Delivery Break-Even calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/) runs them on yours.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: AI Overview
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/ai-overview/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T10:58:10-04:00
description: AI Overview: A paragraph Google's generative answer engine writes at the top of a search results page, citing two or three sources by name. Triggered on roughly 13.14%…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# AI Overview
the paragraph Google writes above the search results
Restaurants
[AI Search](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/ai-search/)
A paragraph Google's generative answer engine writes at the top of a search results page, citing two or three sources by name. Triggered on roughly 13.14% of US desktop searches as of March 2025 and approaching one in five in 2026. The cited sources appear as small chips at the bottom of the box.
## Why it matters
For informational restaurant queries — hours, menu, reservations, dietary — the AI Overview now answers above the map pack. If your page isn't cited, your discovery surface for that query is gone. Citation runs on different signals than blue-link SEO: paragraph shape, schema-anchored entities, predicate sentences with no hedge tokens, and stable URLs.
More in Findability
- [**Map pack** — the three-pin Google Maps box above search results](https://muntin.digital/glossary/map-pack/)
- [**Schema** — structured data that tells Google what a page is about](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**NAP consistency** — matching name/address/phone across the web](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Alt text
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Alt text: A short written description of every image, set via the alt="…" attribute in the HTML. Screen readers read it aloud; Google uses it to understand what's in…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Alt text
Example: 'Plate of carnitas with cilantro and lime' beats 'IMG_4521.jpg' for SEO + accessibility + AI search citations — costs 5 seconds per photo to write.
image descriptions
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A short written description of every image, set via the `alt="…"` attribute in the HTML. Screen readers read it aloud; Google uses it to understand what's in the photo.
## Why it matters
Good alt text opens your site to blind and low-vision visitors (legally required in many jurisdictions), helps Google Images send traffic your way, and gives your site a shot at appearing in voice search results. "IMG_2041.jpg" helps nobody.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's ](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Analogous colors
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/analogous-colors/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Analogous colors: A palette built from hues 15–30° apart on the color wheel — terracotta with rust and ochre, forest with sage and juniper. Analogous palettes share a temper…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Analogous colors
neighboring hues that sit close together on the wheel
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A palette built from hues 15–30° apart on the color wheel — terracotta with rust and ochre, forest with sage and juniper. Analogous palettes share a temperature and feel coherent because the eye reads them as variations on one decision rather than competing decisions.
## Why it matters
The right starting point when a brand wants to feel calm, considered, or warm — most independent fine-dining and natural-wine concepts land here. The trade-off is that the palette has less internal contrast, so a strong neutral and a documented [accessible pair](https://muntin.digital/glossary/accessible-pair/) matter more than usual. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)'s Workshop offers analogous candidates when "calm & considered" or "warm & welcoming" mood is selected.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Apple Maps & Bing Places
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/apple-bing-maps/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Apple Maps & Bing Places: The non-Google map services — Apple Maps Connect (for iPhone users) and Bing Places (for Edge, Cortana, and ChatGPT-style Copilot) — where you can also cla…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Apple Maps & Bing Places
Last verified: May 10, 2026
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The non-Google map services — Apple Maps Connect (for iPhone users) and Bing Places (for Edge, Cortana, and ChatGPT-style Copilot) — where you can also claim and edit your business listing for free.
## Why it matters
Roughly half of US phones are iPhones. An unmaintained Apple Maps listing sends every Siri-asking, iPhone-using customer to the wrong place or to your competition. Claiming these twice-a-year listings is an hour of work for years of payoff.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Aspect ratio
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Aspect ratio: The ratio of an image's width to its height, expressed as w:h. Eight surfaces own canonical ratios: web hero 16:9, OG card 1.91:1, Yelp featured 3:2, Googl…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Aspect ratio
the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination
[90s · explainer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/#aspect-ratio-explainer)Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The ratio of an image's width to its height, expressed as `w:h`. Eight surfaces own canonical ratios: web hero 16:9, OG card 1.91:1, Yelp featured 3:2, Google Business cover 16:9, Instagram grid 1:1, Instagram story 9:16, menu inline 4:3, Apple Maps 4:3.
## Why it matters
An image at the wrong aspect ratio is either letterboxed or auto-cropped by the platform — neither is what the photographer composed for. Composing the source frame at 3:2 with awareness of how each destination will crop turns one shoot into eight usable images per dish, instead of one usable image and seven near-misses.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Photo Brief Builder](https://muntin.digital/tools/photo-brief/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Average check
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Average check: Also called "average ticket." Total sales divided by total covers. If 180 covers spent \$4,500 total, average check is \$25.
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Average check
total sales ÷ covers
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Also called "average ticket." Total sales divided by total covers. If 180 covers spent \$4,500 total, average check is \$25.
## Why it matters
The lever that moves when you raise prices, upsell desserts, shift toward dinner from lunch, or redesign the menu to lead with higher-margin items. A 6% raise on the average check compounds into meaningful revenue without changing cover count — see the [Price-Raise Simulator](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/).
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Converter](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-converter/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: The basics
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: The handful of things every small-business website needs before anything else. If these aren't right, nothing else matters. 10 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# The basics
The handful of things every small-business website needs before anything else. If these aren't right, nothing else matters.
Terms
## 10 definitions.
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
- [**Web hosting** — where your site actually lives](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hosting/)
- [**Professional email** — you@yourdomain.com](https://muntin.digital/glossary/professional-email/)
- [**Dietary & allergen markers** — GF, V, VG, DF, N — labels on the menu](https://muntin.digital/glossary/dietary-markers/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Body text size
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Body text size: The default size of regular paragraph text on your site. On phones, 16 pixels is the absolute floor; 17–18px is more comfortable for reading menus, descrip…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Body text size
minimum readable font size on phones
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
The default size of regular paragraph text on your site. On phones, 16 pixels is the absolute floor; 17–18px is more comfortable for reading menus, descriptions, and post content.
## Why it matters
Below 16px, iOS Safari forcibly zooms your input fields when a visitor taps them, which breaks layouts. And anything smaller than that is simply harder to read on a phone in a hurry or in dim light.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Bounce rate
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/bounce-rate/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who land on your site and leave without clicking anything — no menu page, no reserve button, no second page. A high number means…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Bounce rate
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The percentage of visitors who land on your site and leave without clicking anything — no menu page, no reserve button, no second page. A high number means the page didn't answer what they came to ask.
## Why it matters
Bounce rate is an honest mirror. 70%+ on your homepage usually means the hero isn't answering the "what is this place" question fast enough, or the thing they came for (menu, hours, reservation link) isn't obvious.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Brand & design
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: The small set of words every owner with a logo should know before handing it to a designer, a developer, a signage shop, or a print vendor. Most of these are invisible until they're missing. 16 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Brand & design
The small set of words every owner with a logo should know before handing it to a designer, a developer, a signage shop, or a print vendor. Most of these are invisible until they're missing.
Terms
## 16 definitions.
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
- [**Monochrome variant** — one-color version of the logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/monochrome-variant/)
- [**Design token** — a name for a decision, not a value](https://muntin.digital/glossary/design-token/)
- [**Accessible pair** — a brand color, nudged until text on it clears WCAG AA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/accessible-pair/)
- [**Color blindness** — why two distinct brand colors can collapse to one](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-blindness/)
- [**Color harmony** — how the colors in a palette relate to each other on the hue wheel](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-harmony/)
- [**Complementary colors** — two colors on opposite sides of the hue wheel](https://muntin.digital/glossary/complementary-colors/)
- [**Analogous colors** — neighboring hues that sit close together on the wheel](https://muntin.digital/glossary/analogous-colors/)
- [**Monochromatic palette** — one hue, varied in lightness and chroma](https://muntin.digital/glossary/monochromatic-palette/)
- [**OKLab** — a perceptual color space — distance in it matches what the eye sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/oklab/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Brand identity
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Brand identity: The full visible system that carries a business across every touchpoint — logo, colors, typography, voice, and the rules for using them. A logo is one ingr…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Brand identity
the full visible system around your logo
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The full visible system that carries a business across every touchpoint — logo, colors, typography, voice, and the rules for using them. A logo is one ingredient; a brand identity is the recipe that tells a designer, a developer, a print vendor, and a signage shop how to use it.
## Why it matters
The difference between "nice logo" and "recognizable business." Two restaurants can start with equally strong marks; six months later, the one with a written identity looks the same on its menu, its Instagram grid, its neon sign, and its takeout bag — and the one without it doesn't. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) generates a palette + tokens to start; a finished identity system is designer work.
More in Brand & design
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Breadcrumb
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/breadcrumb/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Breadcrumb: A row of links at the top of a page that shows where you are in the site hierarchy — Home › Glossary › Breadcrumb. Search engines also read it as Breadcru…
---
Skip to main content
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
# Breadcrumb
Example: A diner lands on a Tacombi taco page from Google. The breadcrumb at the top — `Home › Menu › Tacos › Carnitas` — lets them tap one level up to the full taco list rather than back-buttoning to the search results. CTR up, bounces down.
the trail at the top, breadcrumb trail
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A row of links at the top of a page that shows where you are in the site hierarchy — Home › Glossary › Breadcrumb. Search engines also read it as BreadcrumbList structured data, which decides how the page’s URL renders in Google results.
## Why it matters
On a phone, breadcrumbs are the second-most-tapped piece of navigation after the back button. On Google’s search-results page, a clean BreadcrumbList replaces a long URL with a short trail (`muntin.digital › Glossary › Breadcrumb`) which raises CTR. Most restaurant sites either don’t have them or stamp the JSON-LD without rendering anything visible, which fails Google’s rich-result eligibility check.
More in Findability
- [**Canonical URL**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/)
- [**Sitemap**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Schema markup**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Rich results**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/rich-results/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Break-even
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/break-even/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Break-even: The sales volume at which revenue equals total costs. Below break-even, every cover loses money. Above break-even, every cover is profit. Expressed various…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Break-even
where revenue equals costs
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
The sales volume at which revenue equals total costs. Below break-even, every cover loses money. Above break-even, every cover is profit. Expressed variously as "break-even sales," "break-even covers," or "break-even days."
## Why it matters
Knowing the number below which you're losing money is the difference between "it was a slow week" and "it was a losing week." The [Break-Even Covers](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#break-even-covers) calculator works backward from your fixed costs to show the covers/day floor.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#break-even)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Canonical URL
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Canonical URL: A tag in a page's HTML that tells Google "this is the real address for this page, ignore any duplicates". Matters when the same content lives at multiple U…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Canonical URL
Example: A bistro running both `/menu/` and `/menu/index.html` without a canonical link splits its ranking signal across two URLs — Google picks the lower-ranked one half the time.
rel=canonical, the "official" address
All
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A tag in a page's HTML that tells Google "this is the real address for this page, ignore any duplicates". Matters when the same content lives at multiple URLs (with/without www, with/without tracking parameters, printable versions).
## Why it matters
Without canonicals, Google can't tell which version of a page to rank and ends up splitting your SEO signal across three copies. A one-line tag concentrates all your search credit on the version you actually want people to land on.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Catering / private-events page
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/catering-page/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Catering / private-events page: A dedicated page explaining your catering or private-event offering — minimums, packages, sample menus, lead time, and an inquiry form that lands in the ri…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Catering / private-events page
buyouts, off-site, private dining
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A dedicated page explaining your catering or private-event offering — minimums, packages, sample menus, lead time, and an inquiry form that lands in the right inbox. Separate from the regular menu so a corporate planner can assess fit in under a minute.
## Why it matters
Catering and buyouts are the most profitable covers you'll serve: guaranteed headcount, batched prep, and a single-point-of-contact client. A page that answers the obvious questions (how many people, what it costs, how much notice) filters tire-kickers out and delivers qualified leads — the ones ready to write a purchase order.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: CDN
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cdn/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: CDN: A global network of servers — Cloudflare, Fastly, AWS CloudFront — that keep cached copies of your site close to every visitor in the world, so the page tr…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# CDN
Example: A Brooklyn pizzeria's images load in under 200ms in San Diego because Cloudflare cached them at a Los Angeles edge — without a CDN, every byte travels the full 2,800 miles each time.
Content Delivery Network, "the edge"
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A global network of servers — Cloudflare, Fastly, AWS CloudFront — that keep cached copies of your site close to every visitor in the world, so the page travels 30 miles instead of 3,000. Most good hosts wire one up for free.
## Why it matters
A CDN is the single biggest "I don't have to think about this" speed upgrade available. Even if half your customers are in one city, the other half get the same fast site, and your origin server does dramatically less work.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Charm pricing
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/charm-pricing/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Charm pricing: A pricing convention in which the cents portion ends in a number designed to make the price feel lower than the next round figure — \$19.95 instead of \$20…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Charm pricing
prices ending in .95, .99, or .49
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A pricing convention in which the cents portion ends in a number designed to make the price feel lower than the next round figure — \$19.95 instead of \$20, \$11.99 instead of \$12. Long established in retail; selectively used in restaurants depending on tier. The Menu Copy Inspector reports per-item pricing format and what each convention signals.
## Why it matters
Cornell's Kimes & Wirtz studies on restaurant pricing found that dropping the dollar sign entirely (writing "19" instead of "\$19") lifts average per-cover spend ~8%, while charm pricing communicates value but undercuts perceived quality at the upper price tiers. The right convention isn't universal — it depends on the segment, the average check, and the brand voice. Menu copy and price presentation are inseparable.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Copy Inspector](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-copy/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Clearspace
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Clearspace: The minimum empty area that must surround a logo, usually measured in multiples of the mark's x-height or in a defined unit like "one cap-height of the wor…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Clearspace
the empty zone around a logo
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The minimum empty area that must surround a logo, usually measured in multiples of the mark's x-height or in a defined unit like "one cap-height of the wordmark." Nothing else — text, other logos, photos, borders — is allowed inside that zone.
## Why it matters
The first rule in every competent style guide. Clearspace protects the mark from visual noise and is the single rule most often violated by a well-meaning printer cramming "one more thing" next to the logo on a flyer.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Click-to-call
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Click-to-call: A phone number on your site that, when tapped on a phone, opens the dialer with your number pre-filled — instead of being plain text the visitor has to cop…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Click-to-call
tap-to-call, tel: link
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A phone number on your site that, when tapped on a phone, opens the dialer with your number pre-filled — instead of being plain text the visitor has to copy. Built with an `href="tel:+1555…"` link.
## Why it matters
If a customer has to copy your number, switch apps, paste, and dial, many won't. One tap, one ring — that's the shortest path from "I'm hungry" or "I need a haircut" to paying you.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Click-to-directions
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Click-to-directions: Tapping your address on a phone should launch Apple Maps or Google Maps with your business pre-filled as the destination. Built with a Google Maps URL (or…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Click-to-directions
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
Tapping your address on a phone should launch Apple Maps or Google Maps with your business pre-filled as the destination. Built with a Google Maps URL (or the native `maps:` protocol) instead of plain text.
## Why it matters
Customers already standing on a sidewalk with your site open shouldn't have to retype your address into their map app. A working directions link is the shortest path from "I'm coming over" to "I'm here".
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Client-side
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/client-side/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Client-side: Computation that happens inside your browser tab, not on a server. A client-side tool takes your inputs, runs the math in JavaScript, and shows the result…
---
Skip to main content
[Data & privacy](https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-literacy/)
# Client-side
computation in your browser, not on a server
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
Computation that happens inside your browser tab, not on a server. A client-side tool takes your inputs, runs the math in JavaScript, and shows the result — without ever transmitting the inputs over the network. When the tab closes, the inputs are gone.
## Why it matters
The single technical test that separates tools that can see your numbers from tools that can only show them back to you. [Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/) is client-side across all four calculators — and invites you to prove it with DevTools before typing anything sensitive.
More in Data & privacy
- [**Fetch request** — the browser sends data to a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fetch-request/)
- [**URL fragment** — the part of a URL after the #](https://muntin.digital/glossary/url-fragment/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Client-side tool
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/client-side-tool/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Client-side tool: A tool whose math runs entirely in your browser — no server stores your inputs, no fetch fires when you type. Verifiable…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Client-side tool
Example: A Brooklyn pizzeria's images load in under 200ms in San Diego because Cloudflare cached them at a Los Angeles edge — without a CDN, every byte travels the full 2,800 miles each time.
Browser-only tool, no-server tool
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A tool whose math runs entirely in your browser — no server stores your inputs, no fetch fires when you type. Verifiable in DevTools' Network tab in under a minute. The opposite is the lead-gen tool that POSTs every keystroke.
## Why it matters
Free restaurant tools come in two architectures: client-side (the math runs in JavaScript on your laptop, which is the safe one) and server-side (your inputs travel to a server first, which is how 'free' tools turn operators into the product). Knowing the distinction is half the audit.
Every Muntin tool is client-side. The build invariants at [/security/](https://muntin.digital/security/) enforce it.
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Cumulative Layout Shift
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Cumulative Layout Shift: A score that measures how much your page jumps around as it loads — when a banner slides in, an image arrives late, or a late-loading font nudges text down…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Cumulative Layout Shift
Example: A CLS of 0.25 (your hero image jumps the menu down 200px on load) makes 1-in-7 mobile visitors mis-tap the wrong CTA — usually the wrong reservation slot.
Last verified: May 10, 2026
CLS
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A score that measures how much your page *jumps around* as it loads — when a banner slides in, an image arrives late, or a late-loading font nudges text down. Lower is better; under 0.1 is good.
## Why it matters
If a customer taps "Reserve" and the button jumps at the last millisecond because a photo arrived and pushed it down, they tap the wrong thing and leave. A stable layout keeps conversions intact.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Color blindness
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-blindness/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Color blindness: A set of inherited vision conditions — protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and milder partial forms — in which one of the three cone-cell types is missin…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Color blindness
why two distinct brand colors can collapse to one
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A set of inherited vision conditions — protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and milder partial forms — in which one of the three cone-cell types is missing or weakened. The eye no longer distinguishes certain hue pairs (most commonly red from green), even when they look obviously different to other readers.
## Why it matters
Roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women experience some form. A palette that grades AA on luminance can still merge a "go" green into a "stop" red for a deuteranope, sinking accessibility despite passing automated checks. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) includes a Brettel/Viénot simulation toggle on its contrast grid so the math gets a vision-model sanity check too.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Color harmony
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-harmony/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Color harmony: The relationship between the colors in a palette, measured by how far apart their hues sit on the color wheel. Named families — analogous, complementary, s…
---
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[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Color harmony
how the colors in a palette relate to each other on the hue wheel
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The relationship between the colors in a palette, measured by how far apart their hues sit on the color wheel. Named families — analogous, complementary, split-complementary, triadic, tetradic, monochromatic — each describe a specific spacing pattern that tends to feel intentional to a viewer, rather than accidental.
## Why it matters
Most palettes that feel "off" are not using bad individual colors; they are using colors with no readable relationship between them. A harmony principle gives you a defensible reason to keep one color and drop another. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)'s Palette Workshop generates candidate palettes from one anchor by applying these principles in [OKLab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/oklab/) hue space.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Color palette
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Color palette: The curated set of colors that belong to a brand — typically a primary, a secondary, a small number of accents, and a couple of neutrals. Each color has a…
---
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[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Color palette
the curated set of colors that belong to your brand
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The curated set of colors that belong to a brand — typically a primary, a secondary, a small number of accents, and a couple of neutrals. Each color has a defined hex value (and often CMYK / Pantone equivalents for print), a role, and a documented accessibility pair for text.
## Why it matters
After the logo itself, the palette is the single largest carrier of brand feel. A restaurant with a defined palette renders consistently on its menu, its website, its Instagram grid, and its takeout bag; without one, every vendor invents their own. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) extracts a palette from an uploaded logo in the browser.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Commission
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Commission: The percentage an aggregator or payment platform keeps per transaction. Aggregators: 15–30% depending on tier (marketing, delivery, priority placement). Pa…
---
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[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Commission
the % a platform takes per order
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
The percentage an aggregator or payment platform keeps per transaction. Aggregators: 15–30% depending on tier (marketing, delivery, priority placement). Payment processors on direct orders: typically 2–3%.
## Why it matters
On a \$25 order at 25% commission and 2% processing, you keep \$18.25 before food cost. On the same order direct at 3% processing, you keep \$24.25. The \$6 difference per order is where the margin-recovery conversation starts.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Complementary colors
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/complementary-colors/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Complementary colors: Two colors whose hues sit roughly 180° apart on the color wheel — terracotta and teal, mustard and indigo, brick and forest. The maximum-contrast pairing i…
---
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[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Complementary colors
two colors on opposite sides of the hue wheel
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
Two colors whose hues sit roughly 180° apart on the color wheel — terracotta and teal, mustard and indigo, brick and forest. The maximum-contrast pairing in [color harmony](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-harmony/). Split-complementary softens this by using the two hues 30° on either side of the opposite, producing a less-shouted variant.
## Why it matters
Bold and energetic by default — the right tool when a brand needs to feel alive (a tap room, a casual neighborhood spot, a bright daytime concept). Use sparingly: complementary pairs at full saturation can fight each other on the same plate of UI. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)'s Workshop offers complementary candidates when "bold & energetic" mood is selected.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Contribution margin
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/contribution-margin/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Contribution margin: For a single menu item: sale price minus the variable cost of producing one unit (plated food cost). Reported in dollars (CM \$) and as a percent of price…
---
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[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Contribution margin
what one sale of an item adds to covering fixed costs and profit
[90s · explainer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/contribution-margin/#contribution-margin-explainer)Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
For a single menu item: sale price minus the variable cost of producing one unit (plated food cost). Reported in dollars (CM \$) and as a percent of price (CM %). Distinct from operating margin and from food-cost percentage.
## Why it matters
Most operators optimise on food-cost percent, but the dollar figure is what actually pays rent. A **30%-food-cost** \$10 appetiser earns \$7 per sale; a **40%-food-cost** \$30 entrée earns \$18 — the “worse-cost” entrée nearly triples the contribution. Menu engineering plots CM \$, not CM %. The [Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/) suggests three menu prices at 28% / 30% / 33% and reports the dollar contribution margin at each.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Conversion rate
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversion-rate/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who do the specific thing you wanted them to do — book a reservation, place an order, fill out a contact form. A 3% reservation…
---
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[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Conversion rate
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The percentage of visitors who do the specific thing you wanted them to do — book a reservation, place an order, fill out a contact form. A 3% reservation conversion rate on a restaurant site is solid; a 10% online-ordering rate on the menu page is excellent.
## Why it matters
Traffic is vanity; conversions are revenue. Doubling your conversion rate is usually cheaper than doubling your traffic — and it compounds every time a new visitor shows up.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Conversions
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: Turning a visitor into a reservation, an order, or a phone call. The difference between traffic and revenue. 14 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Conversions
Turning a visitor into a reservation, an order, or a phone call. The difference between traffic and revenue.
Terms
## 14 definitions.
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
- [**Bounce rate**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/bounce-rate/)
- [**Conversion rate**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversion-rate/)
- [**Funnel** — the path from visitor to customer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/funnel/)
- [**Form abandonment**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/form-abandonment/)
- [**Gift-card checkout** — e-gift, digital gift card](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gift-card-checkout/)
- [**Newsletter capture** — email signup, list-building](https://muntin.digital/glossary/newsletter-capture/)
- [**Catering / private-events page** — buyouts, off-site, private dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/catering-page/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Cookie banner
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cookie-banner/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Cookie banner: The small bar or modal at the bottom of a page asking visitors to accept tracking cookies. Required by law in the EU and parts of the US if you run analyti…
---
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[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Cookie banner
cookie notice, consent banner
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The small bar or modal at the bottom of a page asking visitors to accept tracking cookies. Required by law in the EU and parts of the US if you run analytics or advertising pixels; unnecessary if you use a privacy-friendly analytics tool (like Plausible) that doesn't set tracking cookies.
## Why it matters
Cookie banners get dismissed in milliseconds and hurt your first impression. The cleaner answer for most small businesses is to use analytics that don't require one in the first place — your site stays legal *and* stays un-nagged.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Copyable address
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Copyable address: Your street address as real, selectable text on the page — not baked into an image or a graphic. Ideally wrapped in a Google Maps link so tapping it opens…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Copyable address
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
Your street address as real, selectable text on the page — not baked into an image or a graphic. Ideally wrapped in a Google Maps link so tapping it opens directions.
## Why it matters
If a customer can't long-press and copy your address on their phone, they can't paste it into Maps, Uber, or a text to a friend. Text addresses also feed search engines' local-business index; image addresses don't.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Core Web Vitals
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Core Web Vitals: Google's three performance scores for a real page load on a phone — one for loading speed (LCP), one for layout stability (CLS), and one for responsiveness…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Core Web Vitals
Example: A bistro's LCP at 4.2s and CLS at 0.18 — both 'poor' — costs the page about 30% of its mobile bookings before any other factor matters.
Last verified: May 10, 2026
CWV
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
Google's three performance scores for a real page load on a phone — one for loading speed (LCP), one for layout stability (CLS), and one for responsiveness (INP). You'll see them as colored bars in any audit report.
## Why it matters
Google explicitly uses Core Web Vitals as a search ranking signal. Two restaurants with identical menus and identical Google Business Profiles will rank differently if one's vitals are green and the other's are red.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Cover
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Cover: One customer seated and served. The restaurant industry's base unit of sales volume. "We did 180 covers on Saturday" means 180 customers came in and ate.
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Cover
one customer served
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
One customer seated and served. The restaurant industry's base unit of sales volume. "We did 180 covers on Saturday" means 180 customers came in and ate.
## Why it matters
Covers per day × average check = revenue. Most restaurant math starts here. When comparing shifts, locations, or seasons, covers are the cleaner metric than revenue because they're not distorted by menu-pricing changes. The [Break-Even Covers](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#break-even-covers) calculator answers "how many covers/day does my fixed overhead demand?"
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Call to action
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Call to action: The specific button or link that asks a visitor to do the next thing — "Reserve a Table", "Order Online", "Book a Class", "Get a Quote". Usually bright, cl…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Call to action
CTA
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The specific button or link that asks a visitor to do the next thing — "Reserve a Table", "Order Online", "Book a Class", "Get a Quote". Usually bright, clearly labeled, and repeated at natural moments on the page.
## Why it matters
Traffic without a clear next step converts at a fraction of the rate. Every page should have one unmistakable primary CTA — the one action you'd most like a visitor to take — and it should be visible on the first screen, not hidden at the bottom.
More in Conversions
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: One-sentence pitch
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: One-sentence pitch: A single sentence — usually in the hero — that tells a first-time visitor your cuisine, neighborhood, and vibe. Example: "Wood-fired Neapolitan pizza in do…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# One-sentence pitch
the sub-head under your name
Restaurants
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A single sentence — usually in the hero — that tells a first-time visitor your cuisine, neighborhood, and vibe. Example: "Wood-fired Neapolitan pizza in downtown Silver Spring, open late."
## Why it matters
Four seconds after landing, a visitor has either classified your restaurant or left. A pitch sentence does the classifying for them so they don't have to guess from a logo.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Data & privacy
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-literacy/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: A small vocabulary for evaluating whether any tool — ours or anyone else's — is honest about what it does with your numbers. Applies to every "free audit," calculator, or intake form you'll ever meet. 3 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Data & privacy
A small vocabulary for evaluating whether any tool — ours or anyone else's — is honest about what it does with your numbers. Applies to every "free audit," calculator, or intake form you'll ever meet.
Terms
## 3 definitions.
- [**Client-side** — computation in your browser, not on a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/client-side/)
- [**Fetch request** — the browser sends data to a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fetch-request/)
- [**URL fragment** — the part of a URL after the #](https://muntin.digital/glossary/url-fragment/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Data tiering
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-tiering/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Data tiering: A four-tier classification of business data — Public, Competitive-sensitive, Operational-confidential, Regulated — that …
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Data tiering
Example: A Brooklyn pizzeria's images load in under 200ms in San Diego because Cloudflare cached them at a Los Angeles edge — without a CDN, every byte travels the full 2,800 miles each time.
Tier 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 model
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A four-tier classification of business data — Public, Competitive-sensitive, Operational-confidential, Regulated — that decides who gets which information. The principle: data never flows up a tier.
## Why it matters
Most operators carry every kind of data in the same mental bucket — which means the supplier list and the tax ID get the same protection (often the same low level of it). Tiering forces the question 'who is this person, and what do they actually need?' before you hand anything over.
The full grid lives at [/security/#four-tiers](https://muntin.digital/security/#four-tiers).
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Delivery presence
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/delivery-presence/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: Delivery presence: Whether your site links out to at least one third-party delivery aggregator (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub).
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#conversions)
# Delivery presence
aggregator coverage, DoorDash / Uber Eats / Grubhub
Restaurants
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
Whether your site links out to at least one major third-party delivery aggregator (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Slice, ChowNow). Detected by following the order-online link from your homepage.
## Why it matters
A hungry-at-9pm customer who can't find a delivery option opens DoorDash and orders from whoever IS on the platform. Aggregator fees hurt — but losing the customer entirely hurts more. Fast-casual restaurants in particular live or die on aggregator presence; fine-dining can skip it by design.
More in Conversions
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Click-to-call** — a tappable phone link on mobile](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Click-to-directions** — a tappable maps link on mobile](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Design token
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/design-token/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Design token: A named reference for a brand decision — a color, a font size, a corner radius, a spacing step — exported as a portable file (CSS variables, JSON, or a Fig…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Design token
a name for a decision, not a value
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A named reference for a brand decision — a color, a font size, a corner radius, a spacing step — exported as a portable file (CSS variables, JSON, or a Figma library) so the same value lives in one place and every surface that uses it stays in sync.
## Why it matters
Hex codes scattered across a stylesheet are how a brand drifts. Tokens are how it doesn't. When the palette is named once (`--brand-primary`) and referenced everywhere, swapping rust for olive is a one-line change instead of a search-and-replace across forty files. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) exports a starter set of tokens from any logo.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Dietary & allergen markers
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/dietary-markers/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Dietary & allergen markers: Small labels next to menu items indicating gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, or nut-containing preparations. Best delivered as text or SVG symbol…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Dietary & allergen markers
GF, V, VG, DF, N — labels on the menu
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
Small labels next to menu items indicating gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, or nut-containing preparations. Best delivered as text or SVG symbols with a legend — not as tiny icons that vanish on a phone screen or screen reader.
## Why it matters
Dietary restrictions drive where groups eat. If a party of four includes one coeliac or vegan and your menu is silent, the group picks the restaurant that was clear. Labels also reduce staff interruptions: diners self-select before ordering instead of asking the server about every dish.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Direct ordering
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/direct-ordering/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Direct ordering: A customer ordering through your own website or POS (Toast, Square, Olo, ChowNow), bypassing aggregators. You pay only the card-processing fee — no platfor…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Direct ordering
orders through your own site
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A customer ordering through your own website or POS (Toast, Square, Olo, ChowNow), bypassing aggregators. You pay only the card-processing fee — no platform commission.
## Why it matters
The primary margin-recovery lever available to most restaurants. Every shifted order keeps the commission that would have gone to a platform. Two patterns work: aggressive website CTAs with obviously-better unit economics (e.g., free loyalty on direct), and in-restaurant nudges (QR codes on menus, signage near the door) pointing to the direct path.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Domain name
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Domain name: The human-readable address people type to reach your site — "rowhousegarden.com". You buy it yearly from a registrar (Namecheap, Google Domains, Cloudflare…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Domain name
your web address, your URL
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The human-readable address people type to reach your site — "rowhousegarden.com". You buy it yearly from a registrar (Namecheap, Google Domains, Cloudflare) and point it at whichever host runs your site.
## Why it matters
Your domain is the one piece of your brand that lives on signs, menus, Instagram bios, and printed receipts. Own it outright (not through a builder that "includes" it), keep the yearly renewal on auto-pay, and pick something short enough to say out loud without spelling.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Edible portion (EP)
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/edible-portion/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Edible portion (EP): The cost of one unit of an ingredient after yield correction: EP cost = AP cost ÷ yield. Always ≥ the as-purchased cost; for low-yield items (whole halibut…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Edible portion (EP)
the cost of one usable ounce after trim
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
The cost of one unit of an ingredient after yield correction: *EP cost = AP cost ÷ yield*. Always ≥ the as-purchased cost; for low-yield items (whole halibut, whole chicken) it can be nearly double. The number that should drive menu pricing — using AP cost in its place under-prices most produce-heavy menus by 20–30%.
## Why it matters
EP is the language of every culinary-school cost-control text and every printed yield table. Once an operator can read AP and EP fluently, they can audit any recipe's plate cost in their head from the invoice. It's the conceptual handle that lets a restaurant owner have an honest conversation with their chef and their accountant in the same vocabulary. The [Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/#result) walks the AP→EP math row by row using ~80 canonical yields — override any one if your supplier's product yields differently.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Price elasticity
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/elasticity/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Price elasticity: How much cover count changes when prices change. Rough working rule in independent dining: a 6% menu-wide raise typically loses 2–3% of covers. Elasticity…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Price elasticity
how cover count moves with price
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
How much cover count changes when prices change. Rough working rule in independent dining: a 6% menu-wide raise typically loses 2–3% of covers. Elasticity varies by item (signatures: low; anchors: high), daypart, and neighborhood.
## Why it matters
The whole math of a price raise lives in this one coefficient. Two restaurants can raise 6% and get opposite results — one gains margin; one loses covers. The [Price-Raise Simulator](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/) lets you dial elasticity with a slider so you can model "if my guess is wrong by a point, what happens?"
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Favicon
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Favicon: The small icon displayed in the browser tab and in bookmark lists. Modern sites ship it at multiple sizes — 16, 32, 192, 512 pixels — because each context…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Favicon
the small icon in the browser tab
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The small icon displayed in the browser tab and in bookmark lists. Modern sites ship it at multiple sizes — 16, 32, 192, 512 pixels — because each context (tab, bookmark, home-screen icon) samples a different size. Usually a simplified version of the mark, not the full lockup.
## Why it matters
The tiniest touchpoint your brand has, and the most-viewed one once a customer bookmarks your site or adds it to their home screen. A missing or default-gray favicon is one of the first signals visitors use to judge whether a site is a real business.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: First Contentful Paint
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/fcp/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: First Contentful Paint: The moment the browser paints the first piece of your page — usually a headline, a logo, or a patch of background color. Measured in seconds. Under 1.8s is…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# First Contentful Paint
FCP
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
The moment the browser paints the *first* piece of your page — usually a headline, a logo, or a patch of background color. Measured in seconds. Under 1.8s is good, over 3s is poor.
## Why it matters
FCP is the "something is happening" signal. A blank white screen for three seconds reads as broken even if the page is about to load; first paint before 1.8s tells the visitor the site is working and buys you time to finish loading.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Fetch request
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/fetch-request/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Fetch request: The browser's way of sending data to a server over HTTP. Visible in DevTools' Network tab. Modern tools may use fetch(), XMLHttpRequest, or a form submit t…
---
Skip to main content
[Data & privacy](https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-literacy/)
# Fetch request
the browser sends data to a server
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The browser's way of sending data to a server over HTTP. Visible in DevTools' Network tab. Modern tools may use `fetch()`, `XMLHttpRequest`, or a form submit to send input data onward.
## Why it matters
If typing a number into a free tool's form triggers a fetch request, your input just left your device. The fastest safety check on any tool: open DevTools → Network, start typing, watch the request list. If it grows with every keystroke, the tool is logging what you type. [See how we verified this for Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#how-we-protect).
More in Data & privacy
- [**Client-side** — computation in your browser, not on a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/client-side/)
- [**URL fragment** — the part of a URL after the #](https://muntin.digital/glossary/url-fragment/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Findability
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: How Google, Apple Maps, and voice assistants understand what your business is and where it is. Without this, customers don't find you in the first place. 19 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Findability
How Google, Apple Maps, and voice assistants understand what your business is and where it is. Without this, customers don't find you in the first place.
Terms
## 19 definitions.
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
- [**Canonical URL** — rel=canonical, the "official" address](https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/)
- [**robots.txt**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/robots-txt/)
- [**Open Graph** — og:image, social share cards, link previews](https://muntin.digital/glossary/open-graph/)
- [**Rich results** — rich snippets, SERP features](https://muntin.digital/glossary/rich-results/)
- [**NAP consistency** — name, address, phone — everywhere the same](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
- [**Hours of operation** — the times your restaurant is open, expressed in a way every map and listing service can read](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-of-operation/)
- [**Special hours** — the override for any day that doesn't follow your usual schedule](https://muntin.digital/glossary/special-hours/)
- [**Holiday hours** — the recurring per-date overrides every restaurant has to make every year](https://muntin.digital/glossary/holiday-hours/)
- [**OpeningHoursSpecification** — the Schema.org type Google reads to render your hours in search results](https://muntin.digital/glossary/opening-hours-specification/)
- [**Structured data** — the machine-readable copy of your site that Google reads](https://muntin.digital/glossary/structured-data/)
- [**Apple Maps & Bing Places**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/apple-bing-maps/)
- [**Mobile-first indexing**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile-first-indexing/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Fixed costs
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/fixed-costs/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Fixed costs: Costs that don't change with sales volume: rent, insurance, loan payments, base utilities, SaaS subscriptions (POS, reservations, payroll, marketing tools)…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Fixed costs
costs that don't scale with sales
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Costs that don't change with sales volume: rent, insurance, loan payments, base utilities, SaaS subscriptions (POS, reservations, payroll, marketing tools), salaried management, accountant retainer. Independent of whether you did 40 covers or 400 last night.
## Why it matters
The floor your covers have to clear every month before profit starts. The first place to look when a business that "feels fine" keeps running negative months — fixed costs creep slowly (one new SaaS per quarter, a rent escalation clause) and nobody notices until the total moves the break-even.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Cost Pulse](https://muntin.digital/tools/cost-pulse/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Food cost
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Food cost: The cost of ingredients, alcohol, and consumables (paper goods, to-go packaging) expressed as a percentage of sales. Target 28–32% for most formats; pizzer…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Food cost
cost of goods sold, as a % of sales
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
The cost of ingredients, alcohol, and consumables (paper goods, to-go packaging) expressed as a percentage of sales. Target 28–32% for most formats; pizzerias and cafés often run lower, steakhouses and sushi higher.
## Why it matters
Every point over target is margin walking out the kitchen door — and it's typically the fastest lever to fix, through portion specs, waste logs, supplier audits, and menu engineering. Most operators know their number to the tenth of a percent; many don't know what their peers' number is. The [Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/) builds the per-dish food cost from a recipe in five minutes — the missing input behind a defensible aggregate number.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Engineering Matrix](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-engineering/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Form abandonment
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/form-abandonment/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Form abandonment: When a visitor starts filling out a form — reservation, contact, inquiry — and leaves before submitting. Usually caused by too many required fields, unclea…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Form abandonment
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
When a visitor starts filling out a form — reservation, contact, inquiry — and leaves before submitting. Usually caused by too many required fields, unclear errors, or a form that doesn't work on their phone.
## Why it matters
A visitor who starts a form has already decided they want to give you their business. Losing them halfway through is a uniquely expensive failure. The fixes are almost always smaller forms, clearer labels, and mobile-tested flows.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Funnel
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/funnel/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Funnel: The sequence of steps a visitor goes through before becoming a customer — landing page → menu page → reserve button → reservation form → confirmation. "Fun…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Funnel
the path from visitor to customer
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The sequence of steps a visitor goes through before becoming a customer — landing page → menu page → reserve button → reservation form → confirmation. "Funnel" because each step loses some of the people at the one before it.
## Why it matters
Most conversion problems live at one specific step, not everywhere. Mapping your funnel tells you whether visitors are bailing at the menu, at the reservation form, or at the confirmation email — so you know which one to fix first.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Google Business Profile
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Google Business Profile: Your business's free listing on Google Maps and Google Search — the panel on the right of a search that shows your name, hours, photos, reviews, and a link…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Google Business Profile
Last verified: May 10, 2026
GBP, formerly Google My Business
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Your business's free listing on Google Maps and Google Search — the panel on the right of a search that shows your name, hours, photos, reviews, and a link to your menu or booking. Claim and edit it at google.com/business.
## Why it matters
For most small local businesses, the Google Business Profile drives more discovery than the website itself. A well-tuned profile — right categories, good photos, complete hours, current menu link — is usually the highest-ROI hour anyone will spend on marketing.
More in Findability
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Storefront Health](https://muntin.digital/tools/storefront-health/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Hours mismatch
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp-hours-mismatch/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: Hours mismatch: When the weekly hours your website declares don't match the hours Google shows on your Business Profile.
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#findability)
# Hours mismatch
GBP vs schema, "open now" search
Restaurants
[Local SEO](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
When the weekly hours your website declares (via [OpeningHoursSpecification](https://muntin.digital/glossary/opening-hours-specification/) schema markup) don't match the hours Google shows on your Business Profile.
## Why it matters
When your site says one set of hours and Google says another, Google's the one a Friday-night party of six trusts — they search "open now", see your name with the wrong hours, and either bounce or show up to a closed door. Among the most invisible reservation killers in independent dining. A 10-minute fix in Google Business Profile or your site's hours block prevents it permanently.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Hours of operation** — when your restaurant is open for diners](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-of-operation/)
- [**Hours visibility** — whether hours are findable on every page](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Schema** — structured data that tells Google what a page is about](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**NAP consistency** — matching name/address/phone across the web](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: GBP photo count
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp-photo-count/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: GBP photo count: How many photos are attached to your Google Business Profile, visible in the carousel at the top of your Google panel.
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#conversions)
# GBP photo count
Google profile photos, carousel coverage
Restaurants
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
How many photos are attached to your Google Business Profile — visible in the photo carousel at the top of your Google search panel and Maps listing.
## Why it matters
Diners scrolling the carousel decide in 4–6 photos. Under ten and the carousel runs out before they've seen a dish, the room, and the patio — they swipe over to a competitor whose 80 photos let them eat with their eyes first. Adding 15–20 strong photos (food, room, exterior, smiling staff) takes one focused hour with your phone and pays back for years.
More in Conversions
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Review responsiveness** — how often the owner replies to Google reviews](https://muntin.digital/glossary/review-responsiveness/)
- [**OG share preview** — how your link looks when shared on messaging apps](https://muntin.digital/glossary/og-share-preview/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the shape of an image (4:3, 1:1, 16:9)](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
- [**Alt text** — the short description for an image read by screen readers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Gift-card checkout
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/gift-card-checkout/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Gift-card checkout: A page on your site where someone can buy a gift card in minutes, usually delivered as an email with a code the recipient redeems in-house or online. Squar…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Gift-card checkout
e-gift, digital gift card
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A page on your site where someone can buy a gift card in minutes, usually delivered as an email with a code the recipient redeems in-house or online. Square, Toast, Shopify, and specialty providers like Yiftee or GiftFly all offer a drop-in widget.
## Why it matters
Gift cards are the single highest-margin transaction a restaurant runs — roughly a quarter never get redeemed, and the ones that do bring a full table, not a solo diner. A "Gift cards" link in the header adds a revenue stream that costs almost nothing and runs itself year-round, with a December spike that can cover a slow January.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Hero section
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Hero section: The large top section of your homepage, above everything else. It's the only area most first-time visitors will see before deciding whether to keep reading…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Hero section
the first block a visitor sees
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The large top section of your homepage, above everything else. It's the only area most first-time visitors will see before deciding whether to keep reading or leave.
## Why it matters
Your hero has about four seconds to answer: what kind of business is this, where is it, and what can I do here right now. If those three answers aren't clear without scrolling, you're losing visitors who were ready to become customers.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Hero shot
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero-shot/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Hero shot: For a given destination surface (web hero, Yelp featured, Instagram profile-grid lead, Google Business cover), the single photograph that carries the visua…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Hero shot
the one photo per surface that does the load-bearing visual work
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
For a given destination surface (web hero, Yelp featured, Instagram profile-grid lead, Google Business cover), the single photograph that carries the visual identity of the restaurant — the one a returning visitor recognises before reading any text. Distinguishes from supporting shots (menu items, room interior, process) that round out the surface but don't anchor it.
## Why it matters
The hero is the photo a first-time visitor decides to come in by. Wansink (2005) and Cornell SHA (2014) put the descriptive-photo lift at 10–18% of selection rate; the hero is where most of that lift compounds because it's the photo every visitor sees once. Picking the wrong dish to hero is the single most expensive mistake an independent makes about photography.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Photo Brief Builder](https://muntin.digital/tools/photo-brief/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Holiday hours
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/holiday-hours/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Holiday hours: The subset of special hours that recur on a calendar — closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, early-close on Christmas Eve, brunch-only on Mother's Day,…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Holiday hours
the recurring per-date overrides every restaurant has to make every year
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The subset of [special hours](https://muntin.digital/glossary/special-hours/) that recur on a calendar — closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, early-close on Christmas Eve, brunch-only on Mother's Day, extended hours for St. Patrick's Day. Distinct from one-off closures only in that they come back next year. Captured in Schema.org as `specialOpeningHoursSpecification` entries with `validFrom`/`validThrough` set to the holiday date.
## Why it matters
The customer searching "is [restaurant] open today?" on Thanksgiving morning needs an authoritative answer. If your Google Business Profile or your site's JSON-LD still shows the standard schedule, the customer either takes the trip and finds you closed (negative review territory) or skips to the chain that bothered to post their holiday hours. [Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/) ships a holiday picker pre-populated with the dates that matter and produces an `.ics` calendar file with day-before alarms.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Holiday Hours Generator](https://muntin.digital/tools/holiday-hours/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Honest menu prices
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Honest menu prices: Showing the price of every dish on your menu page — or, for tasting-menu formats, prominently stating the total. No "contact us for pricing", no hidden sur…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Honest menu prices
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Showing the price of every dish on your menu page — or, for tasting-menu formats, prominently stating the total. No "contact us for pricing", no hidden surcharges buried in small print.
## Why it matters
First-time diners scanning your menu on a phone interpret hidden prices as either expensive or evasive. Neither wins the booking. Transparency converts better than mystery, every time.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Web hosting
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hosting/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Web hosting: The server, somewhere on the internet, that sends your website to a visitor's phone when they type your domain. Small-business hosting runs $5–$30/month (C…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Web hosting
where your site actually lives
All
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The server, somewhere on the internet, that sends your website to a visitor's phone when they type your domain. Small-business hosting runs $5–$30/month (Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, SiteGround, DreamHost); restaurant-specific builders like Squarespace bundle hosting into their subscription.
## Why it matters
Bad hosting makes every other optimization pointless — a fast site on a slow host still loads slowly. Good hosting gives you free HTTPS, free global caching, and 99.9%+ uptime without you thinking about it.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Hours of operation
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-of-operation/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Hours of operation: The structured representation of when a restaurant is open across the week — encoded variously as Google Business Profile fields, Yelp's Business Informati…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Hours of operation
the times your restaurant is open, expressed in a way every map and listing service can read
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The structured representation of when a restaurant is open across the week — encoded variously as Google Business Profile fields, Yelp's Business Information, Apple Business Connect entries, Schema.org `OpeningHoursSpecification` on your website, and a handwritten card on your front door. Each surface has a different format; the underlying decision is the same.
## Why it matters
Wrong hours in any one place is the #2 driver of bad reviews after stale menus, and the #1 cause of Google Business Profile listing-quality decay. Diners check Google before they leave home; a "closed" listing on a Saturday lunch sends them to a competitor. [Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/) is the 15-minute fix-up that keeps the six places aligned.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Hours visibility
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Hours visibility: Whether today's hours are visible on your homepage within five seconds of landing, without scrolling or clicking. Distinct from just having hours somewhere…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Hours visibility
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
Whether today's hours are visible on your homepage within five seconds of landing, without scrolling or clicking. Distinct from just *having* hours somewhere on the site.
## Why it matters
"Are they open right now?" is the single most common question a visitor asks. Hide the answer three clicks deep and they'll ask your competitor's site instead.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Google Business Profile Grader](https://muntin.digital/tools/gbp-grader/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: hreflang
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/hreflang/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: hreflang: An HTML attribute (<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="...">) that tells Google which language and region…
---
Skip to main content
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
# hreflang
Example: A diner in Silver Spring searches in Spanish for “tacos cerca de mí.” Tacombi’s site has hreflang declared on every page pointing the Spanish version at `/es/menu/`. Google ranks the Spanish menu page in the Spanish-language SERP. Without hreflang, the English page would rank and the visitor would bounce.
language tag, locale alternate
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
An HTML attribute (<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="...">) that tells Google which language and region a page is targeted at, and where the equivalent page in another language lives. The bilingual restaurant’s seatbelt against showing English search results to a Spanish-speaking diner who wanted Spanish.
## Why it matters
If you publish English and Spanish versions of your menu page (or your whole site), Google needs hreflang to keep them straight. Without it, the wrong language can rank in the wrong search, you can split equity across both URLs, or one can be dropped from the index as a duplicate. The rules are unforgiving: every alternate must be reachable (no 404), declarations must be reciprocal (each page names every other), and self-referencing is required.
More in Findability
- [**Canonical URL**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/)
- [**Sitemap**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Breadcrumb**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/breadcrumb/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: HTML menu
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: HTML menu: A menu built as real text on a web page, instead of as a PDF file or a photograph of a printed card. Real text means phones can render it at readable sizes…
---
Skip to main content
[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# HTML menu
Example: A diner switching from PDF menu to HTML saw 4× the click-through from Google search results within 60 days — the PDF was invisible to the dish-level query.
not a PDF, not an image
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A menu built as real text on a web page, instead of as a PDF file or a photograph of a printed card. Real text means phones can render it at readable sizes, Google can index it, and screen readers can read it aloud.
## Why it matters
PDF menus are the single most common reason a restaurant site loses mobile visitors. They download slowly, open in a separate viewer, force pinch-zoom, and often fail on older phones outright. An HTML menu is searchable, fast, updatable in seconds, and gives Google a crawlable list of what you actually serve.
More in The basics
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
- [**Domain name** — your web address, your URL](https://muntin.digital/glossary/domain-name/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Copy Inspector](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-copy/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: HTTPS
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: HTTPS: The little padlock icon in the browser's address bar. It means your site is served over a secure, encrypted connection — everything between the visitor and…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# HTTPS
SSL certificate, the padlock
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The little padlock icon in the browser's address bar. It means your site is served over a secure, encrypted connection — everything between the visitor and your server is scrambled in transit.
## Why it matters
Modern browsers flag non-HTTPS sites with a big "Not Secure" warning. Google has used HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014. Most good hosts give it to you for free via Let's Encrypt or Cloudflare; if yours charges extra, move hosts.
More in Trust
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Incident response
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/incident-response/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Incident response: A pre-decided plan for what you do in the first 24 hours of a data breach: who do you call, what do you change, what do …
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Incident response
Example: A Brooklyn pizzeria's images load in under 200ms in San Diego because Cloudflare cached them at a Los Angeles edge — without a CDN, every byte travels the full 2,800 miles each time.
IR plan, breach response
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A pre-decided plan for what you do in the first 24 hours of a data breach: who do you call, what do you change, what do you tell whom. Most operators don't have one. Most operators who get breached spend the first 24 hours figuring out the plan instead of executing it.
## Why it matters
A small-business incident-response plan is one page: lawyer (yes, before you call anyone else), POS vendor, payroll vendor, bank, cyber-insurance carrier (if you have one), affected customers (under your state’s notification timeline). Write it now, store it in two places, hope you never use it.
The 4-tier framework at [/security/#four-tiers](https://muntin.digital/security/#four-tiers) tells you which data needs to be in the IR plan.
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Interaction to Next Paint
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Interaction to Next Paint: How long your site takes to respond after a visitor taps, clicks, or types something. Measured in milliseconds; under 200ms is good, over 500ms feels broke…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Interaction to Next Paint
Last verified: May 10, 2026
INP, formerly FID
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
How long your site takes to respond after a visitor taps, clicks, or types something. Measured in milliseconds; under 200ms is good, over 500ms feels broken.
## Why it matters
When a page "feels slow", this is usually the culprit — not load time. A heavy third-party chat widget or an untuned tracking pixel is often the fix.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Labor cost
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Labor cost: Wages, payroll taxes, and the tipped-employee contribution expressed as a percentage of sales. Target 28–32% for most formats, with quick-service at the lo…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Labor cost
wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Wages, payroll taxes, and the tipped-employee contribution expressed as a percentage of sales. Target 28–32% for most formats, with quick-service at the low end and full-service at the high end.
## Why it matters
Rising labor markets make this the margin battlefield of the 2020s. Labor has faster turning radius than food cost — you can adjust a schedule this week; you can't renegotiate a tomato contract. When prime cost runs hot, this is usually where owners look first.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Cost Pulse](https://muntin.digital/tools/cost-pulse/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Last-updated signal
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Last-updated signal: Anything on your site that subtly tells a visitor "someone is still running this place" — a seasonal menu badge, a "this week's specials" block, a recent b…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Last-updated signal
seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
Anything on your site that subtly tells a visitor "someone is still running this place" — a seasonal menu badge, a "this week's specials" block, a recent blog post, a dated press mention, or even a visible last-updated stamp in the footer.
## Why it matters
A stale website feels like a closed business. Visitors who aren't sure if you're still operating don't drive over to find out — they pick the place whose site looks maintained.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Lazy loading
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/lazy-loading/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Lazy loading: A technique where images and videos further down the page don't start downloading until the visitor actually scrolls near them. Built into modern HTML via…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Lazy loading
deferred loading, below-the-fold loading
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A technique where images and videos further down the page don't start downloading until the visitor actually scrolls near them. Built into modern HTML via `loading="lazy"`.
## Why it matters
A homepage with twelve food photos doesn't need to download all twelve before the top of the page is usable. Lazy loading lets your hero paint in under a second while the bottom of the page gets ready in the background.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Largest Contentful Paint
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Largest Contentful Paint: How long it takes for the biggest visible chunk of your homepage — usually the hero image or the headline — to finish drawing on a phone. Under 2.5 seconds…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Largest Contentful Paint
Example: An LCP above 2.5s loses an estimated 12% of mobile reservation conversions; above 4.0s the loss compounds to roughly 30%.
Last verified: May 10, 2026
LCP
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
How long it takes for the biggest visible chunk of your homepage — usually the hero image or the headline — to finish drawing on a phone. Under 2.5 seconds is "good", over 4 seconds is "poor".
## Why it matters
LCP is what a visitor feels as "the page loaded". Every extra second pushes more of them to the back button. Google's own research puts the bounce-risk jump at ~32% when load time goes from 1s to 3s.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Lighthouse
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/lighthouse/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Lighthouse: The open-source auditing tool Google ships inside Chrome and inside PageSpeed Insights. It simulates a mobile page load and scores your site across perform…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Lighthouse
Last verified: May 10, 2026
Google's audit engine
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
The open-source auditing tool Google ships inside Chrome and inside PageSpeed Insights. It simulates a mobile page load and scores your site across performance, SEO, accessibility, and best practices.
## Why it matters
Lighthouse is the same engine Google uses to rank your site — so its score isn't advisory, it's the report card. Our restaurant audit runs a real Lighthouse scan on your URL and translates the numbers into specific fixes for your business.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Logo lockup
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Logo lockup: A fixed composition of a mark, a wordmark, and sometimes a tagline, designed as one asset — spacing, alignment, and proportions locked in. The lockup is th…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Logo lockup
mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A fixed composition of a mark, a wordmark, and sometimes a tagline, designed as one asset — spacing, alignment, and proportions locked in. The lockup is the asset designers hand to vendors 90% of the time. The bare mark alone covers the other 10%: the favicon, the social profile pic, an embossed coaster.
## Why it matters
When a printer or developer asks you to "send your logo," the correct thing to send is a lockup — not a screenshot, not the mark stretched on its own. Identities that ship without a lockup get reassembled inconsistently by every vendor who touches them.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Map pack
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/map-pack/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T10:58:10-04:00
description: Map pack: The three-restaurant card Google shows above the blue links when a query has local intent. Restaurants appear in the map pack via Google Business Profile…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Map pack
the three-pin Google Maps box above search results
Restaurants
[Local SEO](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The three-restaurant card Google shows above the blue links when a query has local intent — "Italian restaurant near me", "best omakase in Silver Spring". Restaurants appear in the map pack via their Google Business Profile, not their website. Map-pack ranking is a separate axis from organic search ranking.
## Why it matters
For roughly 60% of restaurant searches in 2026, the visitor never scrolls below the map pack. If you're not in the three pins, you're not in the consideration set. Map-pack visibility is decided by Google Business Profile health (claimed, correct-category, unsuspended, no duplicates), not by the website's SEO score.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**NAP consistency** — matching name/address/phone across the web](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
- [**AI Overview** — the paragraph Google writes above the results](https://muntin.digital/glossary/ai-overview/)
- [**Schema** — structured data that tells Google what a page is about](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Apple + Bing Maps** — the other maps to claim](https://muntin.digital/glossary/apple-bing-maps/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Margin
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/margin/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Margin: Sales minus costs. Gross margin = sales − food cost. Contribution margin = sales − variable costs (food + hourly labor + card fees). Operating margin = sal…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Margin
sales minus costs; several kinds
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Sales minus costs. *Gross margin* = sales − food cost. *Contribution margin* = sales − variable costs (food + hourly labor + card fees). *Operating margin* = sales − (food + labor + fixed costs). The word alone is ambiguous — always ask which margin.
## Why it matters
Consultants, lenders, and vendors use "margin" loosely. Knowing which one is on the table in a specific conversation prevents you from agreeing to a number that sounds right but refers to a different line. When Margin Math says "contribution per cover," it means gross margin minus variable costs, which is the right input for break-even math — not operating margin.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Margin Math
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/margin-math/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Margin Math: Four browser-side calculators — Delivery Break-Even, Prime Cost Check, Break-Even Covers, Price-Raise Simulator — plus a printable Monthly Margin Report, s…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Margin Math
client-side restaurant finance calculators
RestaurantsTools
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Four browser-side calculators — Delivery Break-Even, Prime Cost Check, Break-Even Covers, Price-Raise Simulator — plus a printable Monthly Margin Report, shareable URL-fragment scenario links, and an `.ics` monthly calendar reminder. Every input stays in your browser; no server endpoint receives your numbers.
## Why it matters
Every term above in this section is something [Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/) computes. The tool is designed to be run monthly — print the report, drop it beside your P&L, compare to last month, then hand it to your bookkeeper. The privacy claim is inspectable: no [`fetch()`](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#fetch-request) on input, no [storage](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#client-side), no cookies. Right-click *View source* on the tool page — the math module is unminified and under ~500 lines.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Menu copy
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-copy/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Menu copy: The words next to each item — the descriptive sentence, the dish name, the price as it appears on the page — viewed as a separate craft from the cooking it…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Menu copy
the language doing the selling, separate from the dish
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
The words next to each item — the descriptive sentence, the dish name, the price as it appears on the page — viewed as a separate craft from the cooking itself. A "house salad" can be the same plate of greens whether the menu calls it that or "Romaine, blistered cherry tomato, and 24-month parmesan, finished with house anchovy."
## Why it matters
Wansink's 2005 restaurant study found descriptive food names lift selection rate by 27% on average; Cornell's School of Hotel Administration has replicated the effect across casual and fine-dining tiers. Menu copy is one of the cheapest and least-touched conversion levers in the restaurant — most owners write their menu once and never audit it. The [Menu Copy Inspector](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-copy/) teaches how to read your own copy critically.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Copy Inspector](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-copy/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Menu engineering
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-engineering/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Menu engineering: A 50-year-old restaurant analysis (Kasavana & Smith, 1990) that plots every menu item on a 2×2 of contribution margin (\$ per sale) against menu-mix share…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Menu engineering
Example: A bistro that re-staged its 4 'puzzle' items (high margin, low sales) with better photos and descriptions saw a 22% lift in their sales mix within 6 weeks — no price changes.
treating each dish as a portfolio decision, not a P&L line
[90s · explainer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-engineering/#menu-engineering-explainer)Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A 50-year-old restaurant analysis (Kasavana & Smith, 1990) that plots every menu item on a 2×2 of contribution margin (\$ per sale) against menu-mix share (popularity), splitting at the median to label each dish a Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle, or Dog with a different recommended action.
## Why it matters
Operators usually look at average prime cost or average price; menu engineering is what turns those averages into per-item decisions. Drop the Dogs, re-cost the Plowhorses, re-photograph the Puzzles, protect the Stars. The [Menu Engineering Matrix](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-engineering/#matrix) runs the math on your own data.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Engineering Matrix](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-engineering/#matrix)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Menu mix
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-mix/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Menu mix: For each item: units sold divided by total units sold across the menu in the same period. The denominator that turns a raw sales count into a velocity figu…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Menu mix
the share of total sales each item commands
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
For each item: units sold divided by total units sold across the menu in the same period. The denominator that turns a raw sales count into a velocity figure comparable across menus of different sizes. The y-axis of the menu-engineering matrix.
## Why it matters
A dish that sold 80 covers tells you nothing on its own — 80 out of 200 is a Star, 80 out of 5,000 is a Dog. Menu mix is the math that lets a chef compare velocity across services, seasons, and menu sizes without recalibrating the eye each time.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Engineering Matrix](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-engineering/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Meta description
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Meta description: The short paragraph of text Google shows underneath the blue headline in a search result. Set in the HTML with <meta name="description" content="…">. Rough…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Meta description
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The short paragraph of text Google shows underneath the blue headline in a search result. Set in the HTML with `<meta name="description" content="…">`. Roughly 150–160 characters; any more gets cut off.
## Why it matters
Meta descriptions don't directly affect ranking, but they heavily affect whether someone clicks. A sharp, specific description — with hours, neighborhood, and one differentiator — outperforms a generic one by double-digit percentages.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Mobile & speed
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: How your site performs on a phone, on cellular, in a real customer's hand. Most of your visitors are here — and Google ranks pages on this first. 14 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Mobile & speed
How your site performs on a phone, on cellular, in a real customer's hand. Most of your visitors are here — and Google ranks pages on this first.
Terms
## 14 definitions.
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
- [**Lighthouse** — Google's audit engine](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lighthouse/)
- [**PageSpeed Insights** — PSI, pagespeed.web.dev](https://muntin.digital/glossary/pagespeed-insights/)
- [**First Contentful Paint** — FCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fcp/)
- [**Time to First Byte** — TTFB, server response time](https://muntin.digital/glossary/ttfb/)
- [**CDN** — Content Delivery Network, "the edge"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cdn/)
- [**Responsive design** — mobile-first, adaptive layout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/responsive-design/)
- [**Lazy loading** — deferred loading, below-the-fold loading](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lazy-loading/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Mobile-first indexing
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile-first-indexing/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Mobile-first indexing: Google's rule, in effect since 2019, that it only looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding how to rank it. Whatever your desktop site does we…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Mobile-first indexing
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Google's rule, in effect since 2019, that it *only* looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding how to rank it. Whatever your desktop site does well no longer matters if the mobile version is bad.
## Why it matters
Every audit, every fix, every copy tweak has to be tested on a phone first. Desktop is a nice-to-have in 2026; mobile is the thing Google actually scores.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Monochromatic palette
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/monochromatic-palette/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Monochromatic palette: A palette built from a single hue rendered at multiple lightness levels — a deep navy paired with a mid-blue, a pale ice, and a near-white tint of the same…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Monochromatic palette
one hue, varied in lightness and chroma
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A palette built from a single hue rendered at multiple lightness levels — a deep navy paired with a mid-blue, a pale ice, and a near-white tint of the same hue family. The hue stays constant; the lightness and chroma do the work of distinguishing the chips from each other.
## Why it matters
The most restrained of the harmony families, and the natural fit for a brand whose logo is already one strong color. Reads as sophisticated and disciplined; rarely reads as cheap. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)'s Workshop offers monochromatic candidates when the uploaded logo is single-color, or when "refined & restrained" mood is selected.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Monochrome variant
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/monochrome-variant/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Monochrome variant: A single-color version of a logo, usually pure black and pure white (and occasionally a single brand color), designed for contexts where full color isn't r…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Monochrome variant
one-color version of the logo
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A single-color version of a logo, usually pure black and pure white (and occasionally a single brand color), designed for contexts where full color isn't reproducible: embroidery, foil embossing, small-scale print, laser engraving, a newspaper ad.
## Why it matters
Every logo needs a mono version. Its absence is the number-one signal to a designer that an identity wasn't finished — and the number-one reason a restaurant ends up with a muddy, pixelated reproduction on a staff polo.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: NAP consistency
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: NAP consistency: Your business name, address, and phone number written identically across your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, and every other…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# NAP consistency
name, address, phone — everywhere the same
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Your business name, address, and phone number written identically across your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, and every other directory. "Suite 200" vs. "Ste. 200" counts as a mismatch to Google. Increasingly, hours-of-operation matters here too — Google treats day-of-week conflicts the same way it treats address conflicts.
## Why it matters
Google cross-references your NAP across every mention of your business online and downgrades listings with inconsistent info — it reads as "this business might not be real". One tidy-up, done once, recovers rank you didn't know you'd lost. [Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/) covers the hours half; the other fields are a separate fix-up.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Google Business Profile Grader](https://muntin.digital/tools/gbp-grader/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Newsletter capture
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/newsletter-capture/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Newsletter capture: A simple form on your site that collects an email address in exchange for an actual reason to give it — "first to know about the spring menu," "event invit…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Newsletter capture
email signup, list-building
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A simple form on your site that collects an email address in exchange for an actual reason to give it — "first to know about the spring menu," "event invites," a small perk on first visit. Usually wired to Mailchimp, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, or Klaviyo.
## Why it matters
A house email list is the only marketing channel you fully own — no platform can throttle it, charge you to reach your own audience, or disappear overnight. A thousand-address list becomes a reliable way to fill Tuesday seats, soft-launch a new menu, or sell out a ticketed dinner in a single afternoon.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: OG share preview
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/og-share-preview/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: OG share preview: The preview card iMessage / WhatsApp / Messenger / Facebook show when someone shares your URL.
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#conversions)
# OG share preview
Open Graph card, link preview, og:image
All sites
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
The preview card iMessage / WhatsApp / Messenger / Facebook show when someone shares your URL — a title, a short description, and a photo, pulled from `<meta property="og:image">` and friends in your page `<head>`.
## Why it matters
When someone texts your URL to four friends to plan dinner, that preview is half the click decision. Missing — blank box, just the domain — and half those friends never tap through. One image + one title in your platform's SEO settings; the upside is dozens of lost meal plans per year that suddenly become bookings.
More in Conversions
- [**Aspect ratio** — the shape of an image (4:3, 1:1, 16:9)](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
- [**Schema** — structured data that tells Google what a page is about](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Canonical URL** — the official address for a piece of content](https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/)
- [**Alt text** — the short description for an image read by screen readers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**GBP photo count** — how many photos are on your Google profile](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp-photo-count/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: OKLab
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/oklab/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: OKLab: A color space designed so that mathematical distance between two colors matches the perceived difference a human reader sees. Plain RGB does not have this…
---
Skip to main content
[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# OKLab
a perceptual color space — distance in it matches what the eye sees
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A color space designed so that mathematical distance between two colors matches the perceived difference a human reader sees. Plain RGB does not have this property — two colors close in RGB can look very different, and vice versa. OKLab fixes that by separating lightness (L) from two opponent chroma axes (a, b).
## Why it matters
Every reliable color decision — k-means clustering for palette extraction, hue rotation for harmony generation, similarity scoring for "these two chips feel identical" warnings — needs a perceptual space to be honest. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/) runs all of its color math in OKLab and only converts back to RGB for display and export.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Online ordering link
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Online ordering link: A button on your menu page that links directly to your pickup or delivery checkout — not a landing page, not an interstitial. Either a handoff to your POS…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Online ordering link
Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A button on your menu page that links directly to your pickup or delivery checkout — not a landing page, not an interstitial. Either a handoff to your POS provider (Toast/Square/ChowNow) or a direct checkout running through your own payment processor.
## Why it matters
Every extra tap between a hungry visitor and a checkout drops completion rates measurably. Direct checkouts also let you keep more of the margin than marketplace apps like DoorDash or Grubhub.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Open Graph
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/open-graph/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Open Graph: A set of meta tags that tell Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, iMessage, and Slack how to preview your link when someone pastes it — which image to show, whic…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Open Graph
og:image, social share cards, link previews
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A set of meta tags that tell Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, iMessage, and Slack how to preview your link when someone pastes it — which image to show, which headline, which description.
## Why it matters
Without Open Graph tags, a shared link shows as a grey box with your domain name, which people ignore. With a good food photo and a sharp headline, that same link becomes a thumbnail ad every time anyone posts about you.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: OpeningHoursSpecification
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/opening-hours-specification/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: OpeningHoursSpecification: A specific Schema.org structured-data type for representing when a place is open. Lives inside a Restaurant JSON-LD block as one or more entries with dayOf…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# OpeningHoursSpecification
Example: A diner with valid OpeningHoursSpecification + holiday overrides shows the correct 'Closed Christmas Day' notice in Google's panel — without it, hungry holiday-eve searches see stale hours.
Last verified: May 10, 2026
the Schema.org type Google reads to render your hours in search results
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A specific Schema.org structured-data type for representing when a place is open. Lives inside a [`Restaurant`](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/) JSON-LD block as one or more entries with `dayOfWeek`, `opens`, and `closes` fields. Holiday overrides use the same type via the parallel `specialOpeningHoursSpecification` property. The format Google's Rich Results parser actually consumes — the difference between "hours vary" and a full weekly grid in your search snippet.
## Why it matters
The customer searching "is [restaurant] open right now?" doesn't open your website — they glance at the rich snippet and decide. Without an `OpeningHoursSpecification` block on every page, Google falls back to "hours vary" or to whatever your Google Business Profile says, and when those two sources disagree your listing inherits the lower confidence. [Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/#result) generates a complete block (with the cross-midnight defensive pattern handled correctly) for any week + closure schedule you enter.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Owned channel
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/owned-channel/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Owned channel: Any customer relationship, ordering path, or data stream you control end-to-end — your website, your direct-ordering link, your email list, your phone, yo…
---
Skip to main content
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
# Owned channel
Example: A regular orders pickup through DoorDash for 12 weeks. DoorDash gets the 30% commission and the customer’s phone number. The same 12 orders through your own ordering link net you ~$320 more in margin and the customer’s email for the next promo — that’s the gap an owned channel closes.
first-party, direct channel
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
Any customer relationship, ordering path, or data stream you control end-to-end — your website, your direct-ordering link, your email list, your phone, your Google Business Profile (which you don’t fully own but you do operate). The opposite of a third-party marketplace where someone else owns the rails.
## Why it matters
Owned channels keep two things on your side of the table: the customer’s contact information and the margin on the order. A direct delivery via your own ordering page typically nets 18–28%; the same order via DoorDash typically nets 5–12% after the 30% commission, the marketing fee, and the delivery share. Owned channels also compound — a returning customer on your site is yours next time too.
More in Operations & Margin
- [**Third-party marketplace**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/third-party-marketplace/)
- [**Aggregator**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Direct ordering**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/direct-ordering/)
- [**Funnel**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/funnel/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: PageSpeed Insights
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/pagespeed-insights/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: PageSpeed Insights: Google's free web tool at pagespeed.web.dev that runs a Lighthouse audit on any URL and shows you your Core Web Vitals plus a prioritized list of fixes. Bu…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# PageSpeed Insights
Last verified: May 10, 2026
PSI, pagespeed.web.dev
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
Google's free web tool at pagespeed.web.dev that runs a Lighthouse audit on any URL and shows you your Core Web Vitals plus a prioritized list of fixes. Built on top of the Lighthouse engine.
## Why it matters
PSI is the tool Google itself uses to look at your site, so its score is as close to Google's opinion of you as you can get without working there. Run your site through it once a month; run it again after any big change.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Photo brief
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Photo brief: A structured shot list a restaurant owner hands to a photographer at the start of a session: which dishes get shot, where each shot is destined to publish…
---
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[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Photo brief
the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
A structured shot list a restaurant owner hands to a photographer at the start of a session: which dishes get shot, where each shot is destined to publish (Yelp, Google, Instagram, the menu), what aspect ratio that destination needs, what angle and lighting the photographer should compose for, and how the files come back named.
## Why it matters
The single biggest gap between an independent restaurant's photo session and a usable result is the brief. Owners who hire a photographer without one walk away with 80 generic plate photos and 0 hero shots that actually fit a 16:9 web hero or a 1.91:1 OG card. Owners who walk in with a brief get the right 36 source frames in half a day, every one cropped to a known destination.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Photo Brief Builder](https://muntin.digital/tools/photo-brief/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: PII
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/pii/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: PII: Personally Identifiable Information — any data that can identify a specific person on its own or in combination with oth…
---
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[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# PII
Example: A Brooklyn pizzeria's images load in under 200ms in San Diego because Cloudflare cached them at a Los Angeles edge — without a CDN, every byte travels the full 2,800 miles each time.
Personally Identifiable Information
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
Personally Identifiable Information — any data that can identify a specific person on its own or in combination with other data. For a restaurant operator: customer names, emails, phone numbers, payment details, employee SSN, I-9 records. PII has legal protection; mishandling it has fines and lawsuits attached.
## Why it matters
Most operators conflate PII with 'the email list.' But payment data, employee bank accounts, and reservation records are also PII — and each carries its own regulatory framework (PCI-DSS for cards, state breach-notification laws for the rest). Knowing what counts is the precondition for handling it right.
PII sits in [Tier 4](https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-tiering/) of the data-tiering model.
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Plate cost
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/plate-cost/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Plate cost: What it costs you in ingredients to send one plate of a dish to the pass, after trim, peel, bone, and shrink. Computed per ingredient as edible-portion cos…
---
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[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Plate cost
the real ingredient cost of one finished plate
[90s · explainer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/plate-cost/#plate-cost-explainer)Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
What it costs you in ingredients to send one plate of a dish to the pass, after trim, peel, bone, and shrink. Computed per ingredient as *edible-portion cost × portion used*, then summed and divided by the recipe's portion count for batch recipes. Excludes labour and overhead.
## Why it matters
Plate cost is the missing input every other restaurant-numbers tool assumes the operator already has. Menu engineering needs it as *food cost*; prime cost needs it aggregated across the menu; menu pricing needs it as the floor. Most independents work from the chef's gut estimate or the accountant's aggregate percentage; computing it dish-by-dish typically reveals 3–5 points of food cost the operator was eating without knowing.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Prime cost
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Prime cost: Your food cost plus your labor cost, expressed as a percentage of sales. Healthy independents land between 55–65%; above 70% is operationally unsustainable…
---
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[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Prime cost
Example: A 65% prime-cost ratio (food + labor combined) is the watershed — above 65% almost no independent restaurant survives a 12-month dip in covers.
food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales
[90s · explainer](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/#prime-cost-explainer)Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
Your food cost plus your labor cost, expressed as a percentage of sales. Healthy independents land between 55–65%; above 70% is operationally unsustainable without a hard change.
## Why it matters
Prime cost is the single best one-number pulse of a restaurant's operating health. Everything else (rent, insurance, SaaS, loan payments) is more or less fixed — prime is the biggest lever you can actually move week to week. The [Prime Cost Check](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#prime-cost) in Margin Math plots your two inputs against the healthy band.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Margin Math](https://muntin.digital/tools/margin-math/#prime-cost)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Privacy policy
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/privacy-policy/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Privacy policy: A page on your site (usually at /privacy) that plainly states what information you collect from visitors, what you use it for, and how you keep it safe. Le…
---
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[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Privacy policy
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
A page on your site (usually at /privacy) that plainly states what information you collect from visitors, what you use it for, and how you keep it safe. Legally required in the EU (GDPR), California (CCPA), and a growing list of US states.
## Why it matters
Even if you only collect emails through a contact form, a missing privacy policy is a legal exposure and a trust red flag. The good news: a one-page, honest policy satisfies most rules. It doesn't need to be written by a lawyer for a site that just has hours and a menu.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Professional email
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/professional-email/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Professional email: Email that runs on your own domain (hello@rowhousegarden.com) rather than a free Gmail or Yahoo address. Usually $6–$12/month per mailbox through Google Wo…
---
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[The basics](https://muntin.digital/glossary/basics/)
# Professional email
you@yourdomain.com
Restaurants
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
Email that runs on your own domain (hello@rowhousegarden.com) rather than a free Gmail or Yahoo address. Usually $6–$12/month per mailbox through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
## Why it matters
First impressions aside, free email addresses are five times more likely to land in spam when you reply to reservation inquiries or invoices. A domain-matching email also signals to customers that you actually own your online presence.
More in The basics
- [**HTML menu** — not a PDF, not an image](https://muntin.digital/glossary/html-menu/)
- [**Hero section** — the first block a visitor sees](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero/)
- [**Click-to-call** — tap-to-call, tel: link](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-call/)
- [**Hours visibility**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-visibility/)
- [**Copyable address**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/copyable-address/)
- [**One-sentence pitch** — the sub-head under your name](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cuisine-pitch/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Real photos
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Real photos: Photographs of your space, your food, and your team — not royalty-free stock images licensed from an agency.
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Real photos
not stock photography
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
Photographs of *your* space, *your* food, and *your* team — not royalty-free stock images licensed from an agency.
## Why it matters
Visitors can smell stock photography at a glance, and it reads as dishonest — "they wouldn't show their own place unless there was something wrong with it". One two-hour session with a local photographer outperforms a whole library of stock for years.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Photo Brief Builder](https://muntin.digital/tools/photo-brief/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Reservation link
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Reservation link: A persistent link — in the nav, in the hero, and in the mobile footer — that starts a reservation flow. Ideally wired to whichever platform your hostess st…
---
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[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Reservation link
OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A persistent link — in the nav, in the hero, and in the mobile footer — that starts a reservation flow. Ideally wired to whichever platform your hostess stand already trusts (OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Square) so bookings land in the same system your team already checks.
## Why it matters
A reservation that has to be emailed, or lives three clicks deep, is a reservation half your visitors abandon. One tap, one booking, one confirmation — that's the standard diners have been trained on.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Responsive design
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/responsive-design/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Responsive design: A design approach where the same page automatically rearranges itself to fit whatever screen it lands on — phone, tablet, desktop — without a separate mobi…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Responsive design
mobile-first, adaptive layout
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A design approach where the same page automatically rearranges itself to fit whatever screen it lands on — phone, tablet, desktop — without a separate mobile site. The standard since about 2015.
## Why it matters
Roughly two-thirds of your visitors arrive on a phone. A non-responsive site treats them as second-class. Google also explicitly penalizes sites that aren't mobile-friendly under its mobile-first indexing rule.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Restaurant numbers
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: The vocabulary of a restaurant's finances. The same terms show up in every lease negotiation, supplier conversation, and "free audit" pitch. Naming them cleanly is how you stop getting talked past. 23 terms in plain English.
---
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Glossary section
# Restaurant numbers
The vocabulary of a restaurant's finances. The same terms show up in every lease negotiation, supplier conversation, and "free audit" pitch. Naming them cleanly is how you stop getting talked past.
Terms
## 23 definitions.
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
- [**Direct ordering** — orders through your own site](https://muntin.digital/glossary/direct-ordering/)
- [**Menu engineering** — treating each dish as a portfolio decision, not a P&L line](https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-engineering/)
- [**Contribution margin** — what one sale of an item adds to covering fixed costs and profit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/contribution-margin/)
- [**Menu mix** — the share of total sales each item commands](https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-mix/)
- [**Plate cost** — the real ingredient cost of one finished plate](https://muntin.digital/glossary/plate-cost/)
- [**Yield percent** — the share of what you bought that ends up on a plate](https://muntin.digital/glossary/yield-percent/)
- [**Edible portion (EP)** — the cost of one usable ounce after trim](https://muntin.digital/glossary/edible-portion/)
- [**Menu copy** — the language doing the selling, separate from the dish](https://muntin.digital/glossary/menu-copy/)
- [**Sensory adjective** — a word that names a flavor, texture, temperature, or preparation](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sensory-adjective/)
- [**Charm pricing** — prices ending in .95, .99, or .49](https://muntin.digital/glossary/charm-pricing/)
- [**Break-even** — where revenue equals costs](https://muntin.digital/glossary/break-even/)
- [**Margin** — sales minus costs; several kinds](https://muntin.digital/glossary/margin/)
- [**Price elasticity** — how cover count moves with price](https://muntin.digital/glossary/elasticity/)
- [**Fixed costs** — costs that don't scale with sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fixed-costs/)
- [**Variable costs** — costs that scale with sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/variable-costs/)
- [**Margin Math** — client-side restaurant finance calculators](https://muntin.digital/glossary/margin-math/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Review responsiveness
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/review-responsiveness/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: Review responsiveness: The percentage of your recent Google reviews that have an owner reply visible under them.
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#trust)
# Review responsiveness
owner reply rate, Google review replies
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The percentage of your recent Google reviews to which the business owner has posted a reply — visible right under each review on your Google Business Profile.
## Why it matters
Diners read the most recent 2–3 reviews before deciding. Zero replies signals an absentee operator and shifts borderline picks to a competitor who answers every one. Replying to even half — "thanks for coming in" on the 5-stars, "I'm sorry, please email me" on the 1-stars — measurably moves first-time visits.
More in Trust
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**GBP photo count** — how many photos are on your Google profile](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp-photo-count/)
- [**Transport security** — HTTPS, HSTS, security headers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/transport-security/)
- [**Stale copyright** — an outdated footer year reads as "are they still open?"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/stale-copyright/)
- [**NAP consistency** — matching name/address/phone across the web](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Rich results
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/rich-results/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Rich results: Enhanced Google search results that show more than a plain blue link — star ratings, hours, prices, FAQ dropdowns, image carousels. Unlocked by having the…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Rich results
rich snippets, SERP features
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Enhanced Google search results that show more than a plain blue link — star ratings, hours, prices, FAQ dropdowns, image carousels. Unlocked by having the right schema markup on your page.
## Why it matters
A result with a 4.8-star rating and a "$" price next to it gets clicked far more often than a text-only result directly above it. Rich results are one of the few SEO levers where a small technical fix produces a visible, front-page win.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: robots.txt
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/robots-txt/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: robots.txt: A tiny plain-text file at /robots.txt on your domain that tells search-engine crawlers which parts of your site they can and can't read. Usually a five-lin…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# robots.txt
All
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A tiny plain-text file at `/robots.txt` on your domain that tells search-engine crawlers which parts of your site they can and can't read. Usually a five-line file; sometimes the quiet reason a page isn't showing up in Google at all.
## Why it matters
A broken or accidentally-restrictive robots.txt is one of the most common "why is my site invisible on Google" causes. Get yours wrong once and half your pages disappear from search overnight.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Schema markup
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Schema markup: Invisible tags on your page that spell out, in a format Google can read directly, exactly what kind of business you are — "I'm a Restaurant, here's my cuis…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Schema markup
JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Invisible tags on your page that spell out, in a format Google can read directly, *exactly* what kind of business you are — "I'm a Restaurant, here's my cuisine, my address, my hours, my menu URL". Usually written as a JSON-LD script in the page head.
## Why it matters
Schema is what lets Google show your hours, price range, and rating in the search result itself (a "rich result"), instead of a plain blue link. Without it you're guessing whether Google understood your business; with it, you're telling it.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Google Search Console
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Google Search Console: The free Google dashboard that shows you which search terms people used to find your site, which pages they landed on, and whether Google has any indexing…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Google Search Console
Example: A pizzeria's Search Console shows 12,400 impressions/month for 'pizza near me' but a 0.4% CTR — the meta description is the leverage, not the rank.
Last verified: May 10, 2026
GSC
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The free Google dashboard that shows you which search terms people used to find your site, which pages they landed on, and whether Google has any indexing problems with your pages. Found at search.google.com/search-console.
## Why it matters
Search Console is the only way to know what Google actually thinks of your site. Every small business owner running a website should be claimed in it and checking it once a month — that's where you notice drops in traffic before they become problems.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Sensory adjective
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/sensory-adjective/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Sensory adjective: A modifier in a menu description that names a perceptual quality of the dish — flavor (smoky, briny, tangy), texture (crispy, silky, chewy), temperature (c…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Sensory adjective
a word that names a flavor, texture, temperature, or preparation
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A modifier in a menu description that names a perceptual quality of the dish — flavor (smoky, briny, tangy), texture (crispy, silky, chewy), temperature (chilled, blistering, molten), or preparation method (charred, brined, dry-aged). Distinct from generic positives ("nice", "great", "amazing"), which carry no sensory information and are flagged by the Menu Copy Inspector as drag.
## Why it matters
Wansink's research isolated sensory adjectives as the specific lever behind the +27% selection lift. The cognitive mechanism: a sensory word lets the diner pre-experience the dish, which translates to higher willingness to order. Generic positives don't trigger the same imagined-taste response. Density target on a typical 12-word description: at least one sensory word, ideally two from different categories.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Menu Copy Inspector](https://muntin.digital/tools/menu-copy/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Service charge
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/service-charge/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-11T10:58:10-04:00
description: Service charge: A percentage (commonly 18–22%) the restaurant adds to the guest check automatically, in lieu of or alongside tipping. Treated as restaurant revenue…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Service charge
a fixed % the restaurant adds to the check
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
A percentage (commonly 18–22%) the restaurant adds to the guest check automatically, in lieu of or alongside tipping. Treated as restaurant revenue under DC and most state labor law; distributed to FOH and BOH per a posted policy at the operator's discretion.
## Why it matters
As DC's Initiative 82 phases out tipped-minimum-wage, service charges have become the cleanest compensation model for kitchen retention — back-of-house cooks finally get a measurable share of service-side dollars they previously didn't see. The customer pays roughly the same as under tipping; the operator's labor accounting gets simpler; the kitchen sees the lift first.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Commission** — the % a platform takes per order](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Sitemap
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: Sitemap: A file at /sitemap.xml on your domain that lists every public page on your site. You submit it once to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools so th…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Sitemap
sitemap.xml
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A file at `/sitemap.xml` on your domain that lists every public page on your site. You submit it once to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools so they know where to look.
## Why it matters
Without a sitemap, Google finds your pages eventually but slowly. With one, new blog posts, new menu pages, and new specials get indexed in days instead of weeks. It's a one-time setup that pays off forever.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Social proof
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Social proof: A quote, star rating, or press mention surfaced on your homepage — ideally in or near the hero, not buried on a Testimonials page — that tells a first-time…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Social proof
reviews, press, star ratings
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A quote, star rating, or press mention surfaced on your homepage — ideally in or near the hero, not buried on a Testimonials page — that tells a first-time visitor other people have tried and liked this place.
## Why it matters
Strangers trust other strangers more than they trust your marketing copy. One real quote from a real review ("the best carbonara in Bethesda — Washington Post") above the fold does more conversion work than three paragraphs of your own prose.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Sticky mobile footer** — persistent bottom bar on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Special hours
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/special-hours/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Special hours: A separate entity in Google's data model from regular hours: per-date overrides for holidays, private events, weather closures, and modified-hours days (ea…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Special hours
the override for any day that doesn't follow your usual schedule
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A separate entity in Google's data model from regular hours: per-date overrides for holidays, private events, weather closures, and modified-hours days (early-close on Christmas Eve, brunch-only on Mother's Day). In Schema.org this maps to additional `OpeningHoursSpecification` entries with `validFrom`/`validThrough` dates.
## Why it matters
Most owners enter regular hours once and never touch the data model again. Google flags listings where regular hours conflict with widely-known holiday closures (your "Mon: 11–9" still showing on Christmas Day) as "may have inaccurate info" — a soft demotion in local search. Maintaining special hours is the half of hours-management that requires a calendar, not a one-time fill-in.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: SSL certificate
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/ssl-certificate/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: SSL certificate: A small file your web server uses to prove it's really you and to encrypt the connection to a visitor's browser. HTTPS is the result; the SSL (or more prop…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# SSL certificate
TLS certificate, the thing behind the padlock
All
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
A small file your web server uses to prove it's really you and to encrypt the connection to a visitor's browser. HTTPS is the result; the SSL (or more properly, TLS) certificate is the proof underneath it.
## Why it matters
Modern hosts issue these for free and renew them automatically via Let's Encrypt. If someone is quoting you for one — or worse, your certificate has quietly expired and visitors are seeing a scary red warning — both are solved by moving to a better host.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Stale copyright
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/stale-copyright/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: Stale copyright: The copyright year shown in your site footer. Diners read it as a freshness signal.
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#trust)
# Stale copyright
outdated footer year, freshness signal
All sites
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The copyright year shown in your site footer (e.g. "© 2024 Joe's Pizza"). Diners use it as a subconscious freshness signal — particularly when planning a special meal or visiting from out of town.
## Why it matters
A "© 2019" footer reads to an anxious diner as "are they still open after COVID?" It costs nothing to update and removes a silent doubt signal. Two-minute fix: change the year, or better, set it to auto-render from the current year so it never goes stale again.
More in Trust
- [**Transport security** — HTTPS, HSTS, security headers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/transport-security/)
- [**Review responsiveness** — how often the owner replies to Google reviews](https://muntin.digital/glossary/review-responsiveness/)
- [**Hours of operation** — when your restaurant is open for diners](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hours-of-operation/)
- [**NAP consistency** — matching name/address/phone across the web](https://muntin.digital/glossary/nap-consistency/)
- [**Google Business Profile** — your free Google listing](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Sticky mobile footer
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/sticky-footer/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Sticky mobile footer: A thin bar pinned to the bottom of every mobile page holding one or two of your most important actions — usually Call, Reserve, or Order. Stays visible eve…
---
Skip to main content
[Conversions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/conversions/)
# Sticky mobile footer
persistent bottom bar on phones
Restaurants
[Conversions & Reservations](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/conversions/)
A thin bar pinned to the bottom of every mobile page holding one or two of your most important actions — usually Call, Reserve, or Order. Stays visible even as the visitor scrolls through the menu or the blog.
## Why it matters
A visitor who's sold somewhere in the middle of your menu shouldn't have to scroll back to the top to act. A sticky footer keeps the next step one thumb-tap away at any moment.
More in Conversions
- [**Call to action** — CTA](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cta/)
- [**Reservation link** — OpenTable, Resy, Tock, built-in form](https://muntin.digital/glossary/reservation-link/)
- [**Online ordering link** — Toast, Square, ChowNow, direct checkout](https://muntin.digital/glossary/online-ordering/)
- [**Click-to-directions**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/click-to-directions/)
- [**Social proof** — reviews, press, star ratings](https://muntin.digital/glossary/social-proof/)
- [**Above the fold** — the first screen, "what loads first"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/above-the-fold/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Structured data
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/structured-data/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Structured data: A small JSON block embedded in your website's <head> that mirrors the human-facing content (hours, address, menu items, reviews, prices) in a format search…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Structured data
the machine-readable copy of your site that Google reads
All
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
A small JSON block embedded in your website's `<head>` that mirrors the human-facing content (hours, address, menu items, reviews, prices) in a format search engines can index without parsing your design. The convention is Schema.org's vocabulary, expressed as JSON-LD; what you might recognize as the “[rich result](https://muntin.digital/glossary/rich-results/)” preview Google shows is downstream of this data.
## Why it matters
The machine-readable copy decides what Google shows in your listing, your knowledge panel, and the first-screen result for "[restaurant name] hours". Pretty design doesn't matter if the structured data is missing or wrong — Google can't see CSS. [Open Hours](https://muntin.digital/tools/open-hours/) generates the hours portion of your structured data automatically; sending the block to a website builder usually takes them five minutes to install.
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Title tag** — the page's <title>](https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Bakery / pâtisserie
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Bakery / pâtisserie: Bakeries, patisseries, and dessert shops where custom-cake intake and wholesale accounts are the margin engine beneath the walk-in counter. Schema: Bakery,…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Bakery / pâtisserie
viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Bakeries, patisseries, and dessert shops where custom-cake intake and wholesale accounts are the margin engine beneath the walk-in counter. Schema: `Bakery`, `IceCreamShop`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs a wholesale / custom-orders flow at 2.0× for bakeries and treats allergen markers as a trust-and-safety signal, not just a marketing one — a customer ordering a wedding cake for a nut-allergic child needs to trust the cross-contamination policy before they book. Platform fingerprints: Square, Toast. Keyword signals: pastries, croissants, sourdough, patisserie, custom cake, wedding cake.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Bar / pub / brewery
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Bar / pub / brewery: Bars, pubs, taprooms, breweries, wine bars, cocktail rooms — drink-led spots where private-party events and happy-hour clarity drive conversion. Schema: Ba…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Bar / pub / brewery
taproom, gastropub, cocktail room
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Bars, pubs, taprooms, breweries, wine bars, cocktail rooms — drink-led spots where private-party events and happy-hour clarity drive conversion. Schema: `BarOrPub`, `Brewery`, `Winery`, `Distillery`.
## Why it matters
The audit adds an age-gate check (weight 2.0× for bar-pub, 0 for every other subtype) and treats the private-events page as revenue-critical. Cocktail and draft lists rotate constantly, so the HTML menu check runs heavier here too. Platform fingerprints: Tripleseat for events, OpenTable/Resy/SevenRooms for reservations. Keyword signals: cocktails, craft beer, on tap, happy hour, gastropub, taproom, speakeasy, brewery.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Café / coffee shop
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Café / coffee shop: Coffee-led spots where morning traffic is 80% of revenue and the two most-read pieces of content are hours and location. Schema: CafeOrCoffeeShop.
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Café / coffee shop
espresso-led, morning traffic
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Coffee-led spots where morning traffic is 80% of revenue and the two most-read pieces of content are hours and location. Schema: `CafeOrCoffeeShop`.
## Why it matters
The audit prioritizes hours visibility, a tappable phone, and a legible menu; reservations are irrelevant, heavy online-ordering flows are nice-to-have but secondary. Platform fingerprints: Square (dominant for café POS), Toast, ChowNow. Keyword signals: espresso, cappuccino, pour-over, coffee shop, single-origin, cold brew. Roasters and bakeries with strong coffee programs usually classify here too.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Casual / full-service
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Casual / full-service: Sit-down restaurants that live in both worlds — reservations for dinner rushes, online ordering for lunch takeout. Neighborhood spots, family-friendly room…
---
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[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Casual / full-service
neighborhood bistros, family rooms
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Sit-down restaurants that live in both worlds — reservations for dinner rushes, online ordering for lunch takeout. Neighborhood spots, family-friendly rooms, full-service bistros. Schema: `Restaurant`, `FoodEstablishment`.
## Why it matters
Missing either reservations or direct ordering sends revenue to OpenTable, DoorDash, or a competitor with both. The audit weighs conversions at 1.5× and expects both flows. Common platforms: OpenTable, Yelp Reservations, Toast, Square. Keyword signals: dining room, full bar, lunch and dinner, signature dishes, family-friendly, neighborhood spot.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Catering-only / private events
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-catering-only/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Catering-only / private events: Businesses that exist primarily to serve off-premise events — corporate catering, wedding catering, private-chef work, drop-off catering, pop-up dinners. S…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Catering-only / private events
off-premise, drop-off, private chef
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Businesses that exist primarily to serve off-premise events — corporate catering, wedding catering, private-chef work, drop-off catering, pop-up dinners. Schema: `FoodEstablishment`, `Restaurant`.
## Why it matters
The entire site IS the catering page; the audit weighs that check at 2.5× for this subtype. Event planners comparing vendors search "catering [neighborhood]" and land directly on catering pages — packages, per-head pricing, minimum lead time, and a structured quote-request form are the critical surfaces. Platform fingerprints: ezCater, CaterTrax, Tripleseat. Keyword signals: catering menu, private events, corporate catering, wedding catering, drop-off catering, request a quote, off-premise.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Fast-casual / quick-service
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Fast-casual / quick-service: Counter-service restaurants where online ordering IS the business model. Every order through DoorDash/Grubhub costs 20-30% commission; every order through…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Fast-casual / quick-service
counter-service, grab-and-go
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Counter-service restaurants where online ordering IS the business model. Every order through DoorDash/Grubhub costs 20-30% commission; every order through your own Toast or ChowNow keeps the margin. Schema: `FastFoodRestaurant`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs conversions at 2.0× and menu-format at 1.5× — fast-casual menus ARE the conversion page; prices, item names, and the one-tap Order button need to live together. Platform fingerprints: Toast, ChowNow, Square, BentoBox, Popmenu, Slice, Menufy, Olo, Lunchbox. Keyword signals: order online, pickup, curbside, grab and go, fast-casual, counter service.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Fine-dining
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Fine-dining: Tasting-menu or prix-fixe restaurants where the reservation is the conversion, the wine list is marketing, and OpenTable/Resy/Tock integration defines the…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Fine-dining
tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Tasting-menu or prix-fixe restaurants where the reservation is the conversion, the wine list is marketing, and OpenTable/Resy/Tock integration defines the booking funnel. Schema: `Restaurant`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs reservations at 2.0× for fine-dining and the private-dining page at 1.5× — a single corporate holiday buyout pays for a slow week. Common platform fingerprints: Resy, Tock, SevenRooms, OpenTable. Keyword signals: tasting menu, prix fixe, chef's counter, sommelier, degustation, Michelin, omakase.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Food truck / pop-up
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-food-truck/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Food truck / pop-up: Mobile kitchens and pop-ups where the primary content question is "where are you today?" — and static storefront maps are worse than no map at all. Schema:…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Food truck / pop-up
mobile kitchen, schedule-led
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Mobile kitchens and pop-ups where the primary content question is "where are you today?" — and static storefront maps are worse than no map at all. Schema: `Restaurant`, `FastFoodRestaurant`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs the food-truck schedule page at 2.0× for this subtype and downweights maps because a pinned home address is the wrong answer — a dynamic "today's location" block, an Instagram feed, or a schedule calendar is what customers actually need. Reservations are irrelevant; catering inquiries are the margin-rich lead flow. Keyword signals: food truck, today's location, this week's schedule, pop-up, catch us, mobile kitchen.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Ghost kitchen / delivery-only
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-ghost-kitchen/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Ghost kitchen / delivery-only: Virtual brands and cloud kitchens that operate exclusively through aggregators — no dine-in, no pickup window, customers never visit. Schema: Restaurant, F…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Ghost kitchen / delivery-only
virtual brand, cloud kitchen
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Virtual brands and cloud kitchens that operate exclusively through aggregators — no dine-in, no pickup window, customers never visit. Schema: `Restaurant`, `FastFoodRestaurant`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs the "explicit delivery-only marker" check at 2.0× for this subtype; without a clear "virtual kitchen / no dine-in" banner, customers show up in person to an empty address and leave one-star reviews. Aggregator links (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Caviar, Deliveroo) are the primary conversion; static storefront maps aren't useful. Keyword signals: ghost kitchen, virtual kitchen, delivery only, cloud kitchen, no dine-in.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Pizzeria
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Pizzeria: Pizza-first restaurants where ordering IS the business and every Slice/DoorDash/Grubhub pie costs 20-30% in commission. Schema: Restaurant, FastFoodRestaur…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant subtypes](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/)
# Pizzeria
Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
Pizza-first restaurants where ordering IS the business and every Slice/DoorDash/Grubhub pie costs 20-30% in commission. Schema: `Restaurant`, `FastFoodRestaurant`.
## Why it matters
The audit weighs conversions at 2.0× and adds a delivery-radius check at 1.5×. A direct-order flow (Toast, ChowNow, Square, or Slice Direct) vs. routing everything through aggregators is the difference between ~78% and ~55% gross margin on a pie. Platform fingerprints: Slice is the strongest tell, then Toast, ChowNow, DoorDash, Grubhub. Keyword signals: pizza, neapolitan, wood-fired, coal-fired, sicilian, detroit-style, calzone.
More in Restaurant subtypes
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Restaurant subtypes
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtypes/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: The restaurant audit tool tailors scoring and copy to ten segments. Each subtype maps to schema.org types, platform hints, and a specific set of priority-check weights — a pizzeria cares about direct-order commission in ways a fine-dining tasting-menu room doesn't, and vice versa. These entries explain what each segment covers and when it applies. 10 terms in plain English.
---
Skip to main content
Glossary section
# Restaurant subtypes
The restaurant audit tool tailors scoring and copy to ten segments. Each subtype maps to schema.org types, platform hints, and a specific set of priority-check weights — a pizzeria cares about direct-order commission in ways a fine-dining tasting-menu room doesn't, and vice versa. These entries explain what each segment covers and when it applies.
Terms
## 10 definitions.
- [**Fine-dining** — tasting menus, prix-fixe, destination dining](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fine-dining/)
- [**Casual / full-service** — neighborhood bistros, family rooms](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-casual-dining/)
- [**Fast-casual / quick-service** — counter-service, grab-and-go](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-fast-casual/)
- [**Café / coffee shop** — espresso-led, morning traffic](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-cafe/)
- [**Bakery / pâtisserie** — viennoiserie, custom cakes, dessert](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bakery/)
- [**Bar / pub / brewery** — taproom, gastropub, cocktail room](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-bar-pub/)
- [**Pizzeria** — Neapolitan, Detroit, Sicilian, slice shop](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-pizzeria/)
- [**Food truck / pop-up** — mobile kitchen, schedule-led](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-food-truck/)
- [**Ghost kitchen / delivery-only** — virtual brand, cloud kitchen](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-ghost-kitchen/)
- [**Catering-only / private events** — off-premise, drop-off, private chef](https://muntin.digital/glossary/subtype-catering-only/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
Print this section
---
title: Tap targets
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Tap targets: Any clickable element — button, link, menu item — that a finger taps on a phone. Google and Apple both recommend a minimum 44×44-pixel tap area with space…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Tap targets
button size on phones
Restaurants
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
Any clickable element — button, link, menu item — that a finger taps on a phone. Google and Apple both recommend a minimum 44×44-pixel tap area with space between neighbors.
## Why it matters
Cramped tap targets produce the "fat-finger" tap that opens the wrong thing. After one or two of those, most visitors leave. Bigger targets also make your site usable for older customers and anyone with motor or dexterity limits.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Terms of Service
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/terms-of-service/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Terms of Service: A page covering the rules of using your site — reservation cancellation policy, gift-card terms, any disputes. Less strictly required than a privacy policy…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Terms of Service
terms and conditions, ToS
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
A page covering the rules of using your site — reservation cancellation policy, gift-card terms, any disputes. Less strictly required than a privacy policy, but strongly recommended for any business that takes payments or deposits online.
## Why it matters
A clear terms page short-circuits most chargeback disputes and cancellation arguments. Your processor (Stripe, Square) will also ask for a link to it during onboarding.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Third-party marketplace
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/third-party-marketplace/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Third-party marketplace: A platform that sits between you and your customer — DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Yelp, OpenTable, Google’s Find a Table. They route demand, take a…
---
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[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
# Third-party marketplace
Example: A taqueria did 60% of its delivery on DoorDash for two years. DoorDash raised commission tiers; the taqueria’s margin compressed. With no email list, no SMS list, and no first-party ordering, there was no way to communicate the price change to those 60% of customers without giving DoorDash another fee. That’s the third-party-marketplace squeeze in operational shape.
the aggregator stack, platforms
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A platform that sits between you and your customer — DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Yelp, OpenTable, Google’s Find a Table. They route demand, take a fee (15–30% on delivery; per-cover or subscription on reservations), and own the customer relationship. The opposite of an owned channel.
## Why it matters
Third-party marketplaces solve real problems — demand discovery, dispatch logistics, the no-show fee — and they aren’t inherently bad. The trap is structural dependency: when a marketplace becomes your primary channel, the platform sets your effective price, decides who sees you, and keeps the customer’s contact info. The honest math for any restaurant is: what share of revenue is on rails I don’t own, and what would the year look like if those rails were 30% more expensive next quarter?
More in Operations & Margin
- [**Owned channel**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/owned-channel/)
- [**Aggregator**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
- [**Direct ordering**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/direct-ordering/)
- [**Commission**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/commission/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Restaurant Website Audit](https://muntin.digital/tools/audits/restaurant/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Title tag
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/title-tag/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Title tag: The line of text that shows up as the clickable blue headline of your page in Google search results, and as the name of the tab in a browser. Set in the HT…
---
Skip to main content
[Findability](https://muntin.digital/glossary/findability/)
# Title tag
the page's <title>
Restaurants
[Local SEO & Discovery](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/local-seo/)
The line of text that shows up as the clickable blue headline of your page in Google search results, and as the name of the tab in a browser. Set in the HTML with `<title>…`. Under 60 characters, Google doesn't truncate it.
## Why it matters
The title tag is the single biggest on-page SEO signal you control. For a restaurant: restaurant name + cuisine + city is the formula ("Rowhouse & Garden — Italian Restaurant in Silver Spring, MD").
More in Findability
- [**Google Business Profile** — GBP, formerly Google My Business](https://muntin.digital/glossary/gbp/)
- [**Meta description**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/meta-description/)
- [**Schema markup** — JSON-LD, structured data, schema.org](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
- [**Alt text** — image descriptions](https://muntin.digital/glossary/alt-text/)
- [**Sitemap** — sitemap.xml](https://muntin.digital/glossary/sitemap/)
- [**Google Search Console** — GSC](https://muntin.digital/glossary/search-console/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Transport security
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/transport-security/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-12T17:51:26+00:00
description: Transport security: The HTTP headers a site sends so browsers always load it over HTTPS securely.
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/#trust)
# Transport security
HTTPS, HSTS, security headers, Mozilla Observatory grade
All sites
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
The bundle of HTTP headers a modern site sends to tell browsers it should always load over HTTPS and how to handle script / frame loading safely. Graded A through F by Mozilla Observatory.
## Why it matters
If a diner hits your site and sees Chrome's "Not secure" warning at the top, the party-of-12 holiday booking dies before the booker has scrolled to your menu. The fix is usually one-line additions in your CDN / hosting settings — on Cloudflare, Vercel, or Netlify it's a checkbox.
More in Trust
- [**CDN** — a global cache that serves your site fast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cdn/)
- [**Canonical URL** — the official address for a piece of content](https://muntin.digital/glossary/canonical-url/)
- [**Review responsiveness** — how often the owner replies to Google reviews](https://muntin.digital/glossary/review-responsiveness/)
- [**Stale copyright** — an outdated footer year reads as "are they still open?"](https://muntin.digital/glossary/stale-copyright/)
- [**Schema** — structured data that tells Google what a page is about](https://muntin.digital/glossary/schema/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
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---
title: Trust
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/
kind: glossary
locale: en
description: The signals that tell a first-time visitor you're a real, careful, operating business — not a half-finished side project. 12 terms in plain English.
---
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Glossary section
# Trust
The signals that tell a first-time visitor you're a real, careful, operating business — not a half-finished side project.
Terms
## 12 definitions.
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Working contact form**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
- [**Hero shot** — the one photo per surface that does the load-bearing visual work](https://muntin.digital/glossary/hero-shot/)
- [**SSL certificate** — TLS certificate, the thing behind the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/ssl-certificate/)
- [**Privacy policy**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/privacy-policy/)
- [**Cookie banner** — cookie notice, consent banner](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cookie-banner/)
- [**Terms of Service** — terms and conditions, ToS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/terms-of-service/)
[Full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
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---
title: Time to First Byte
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/ttfb/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Time to First Byte: How long it takes your web server to send the very first byte of a page after a visitor requests it. Measured in milliseconds. Under 200ms is good, over 60…
---
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[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Time to First Byte
Last verified: May 10, 2026
TTFB, server response time
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
How long it takes your web server to send the very first byte of a page after a visitor requests it. Measured in milliseconds. Under 200ms is good, over 600ms points at a slow host or a misconfigured site.
## Why it matters
Bad TTFB is almost always a hosting problem, not a design problem. Every other speed metric inherits it — you can't render what hasn't been sent yet. If your TTFB is poor, switch hosts or add a CDN before optimizing anything else.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Viewport meta tag**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/viewport-meta/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Typography pairing
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Typography pairing: The combination of a display typeface (used for headings and signage) and a body typeface (used for long-form reading) that together carry a brand's tone.…
---
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[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# Typography pairing
display + body typefaces that work together
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The combination of a display typeface (used for headings and signage) and a body typeface (used for long-form reading) that together carry a brand's tone. A serif display + a geometric sans body is a classic pairing. Wrong pairings feel off to visitors without their being able to say why.
## Why it matters
After color, the second-biggest tone carrier in a brand identity. The difference between "this restaurant feels handmade and old-world" and "this restaurant feels like a chain from 2008" is often 60% typography.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**WCAG AA contrast** — accessible color contrast](https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: URL fragment
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/url-fragment/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: URL fragment: The portion of a URL that comes after the # symbol (sometimes called the "hash"). Per HTTP specification, browsers never transmit fragments to servers — th…
---
Skip to main content
[Data & privacy](https://muntin.digital/glossary/data-literacy/)
# URL fragment
the part of a URL after the #
All
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
The portion of a URL that comes after the `#` symbol (sometimes called the "hash"). Per HTTP specification, browsers never transmit fragments to servers — they're read and used only on the client side.
## Why it matters
A clean pattern for client-side tools that need a "save this scenario" URL: encode the inputs into the fragment, hand the reader a bookmarkable link, and keep the server entirely out of the loop. The permalink works; the server never sees what's in it. When Margin Math's share URLs ship, this is the design.
More in Data & privacy
- [**Client-side** — computation in your browser, not on a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/client-side/)
- [**Fetch request** — the browser sends data to a server](https://muntin.digital/glossary/fetch-request/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: URL fragment vs. query
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/url-fragment-vs-query/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: URL fragment vs. query: In a URL, the part after ? is the query (sent to the server with every request). The part after # of every page () that tells phones "render this pag…
---
Skip to main content
[Mobile & speed](https://muntin.digital/glossary/mobile/)
# Viewport meta tag
All
[Speed & Mobile](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/speed-mobile/)
A single line of code in the of every page (``) that tells phones "render this page at phone width, not desktop width".
## Why it matters
Without it, phones render every page as if it were a desktop monitor and shrink it — everything looks tiny, unreadable, unusable. The fix is literally one line; the before-and-after on mobile is night-and-day.
More in Mobile & speed
- [**Core Web Vitals** — CWV](https://muntin.digital/glossary/core-web-vitals/)
- [**Largest Contentful Paint** — LCP](https://muntin.digital/glossary/lcp/)
- [**Cumulative Layout Shift** — CLS](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cls/)
- [**Interaction to Next Paint** — INP, formerly FID](https://muntin.digital/glossary/inp/)
- [**Tap targets** — button size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/tap-targets/)
- [**Body text size** — minimum readable font size on phones](https://muntin.digital/glossary/body-text-size/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: WCAG AA contrast
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/wcag-contrast/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: WCAG AA contrast: A readability standard, defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), that requires body text to contrast at least 4.5:1 against its backgrou…
---
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[Brand & design](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-design/)
# WCAG AA contrast
accessible color contrast
All
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
[Brand & Design](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/brand-design/)
A readability standard, defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), that requires body text to contrast at least **4.5:1** against its background and large text (18pt, or 14pt bold) at least **3:1**. The AAA threshold is **7:1**. Light grey on cream looks refined in a design mockup and fails badly in sunlight.
## Why it matters
WCAG AA is the legal accessibility baseline in the US and EU, and it's also simply how readable your menu is on a patio at noon. Brand colors that look lovely in the logo but fail contrast on a menu shut out customers with low vision and invite ADA-compliance lawsuits. [Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)'s contrast grid scores every pair in your palette.
More in Brand & design
- [**Brand identity** — the full visible system around your logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/brand-identity/)
- [**Logo lockup** — mark + wordmark + optional tagline, as one unit](https://muntin.digital/glossary/logo-lockup/)
- [**Clearspace** — the empty zone around a logo](https://muntin.digital/glossary/clearspace/)
- [**Color palette** — the curated set of colors that belong to your brand](https://muntin.digital/glossary/color-palette/)
- [**Favicon** — the small icon in the browser tab](https://muntin.digital/glossary/favicon/)
- [**Typography pairing** — display + body typefaces that work together](https://muntin.digital/glossary/typography-pairing/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Brand Suite](https://muntin.digital/tools/brand-suite/)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
---
title: Working contact form
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/working-contact-form/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Working contact form: A form where a visitor can type a question or an inquiry and actually get a response. "Working" is the important word — the form sends, the email arrives i…
---
Skip to main content
[Trust](https://muntin.digital/glossary/trust/)
# Working contact form
Restaurants
[Trust & Reviews](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/trust-reviews/)
A form where a visitor can type a question or an inquiry and actually get a response. "Working" is the important word — the form sends, the email arrives in an inbox someone checks, and a human replies.
## Why it matters
Broken contact forms are everywhere, and every one is silently costing someone business. Test your own by sending yourself a message once a quarter. If nothing lands in five minutes in an inbox you actually check, replace it.
More in Trust
- [**HTTPS** — SSL certificate, the padlock](https://muntin.digital/glossary/https/)
- [**Honest menu prices**](https://muntin.digital/glossary/honest-pricing/)
- [**Last-updated signal** — seasonal menu badge, "this week", dated posts](https://muntin.digital/glossary/last-updated-signal/)
- [**Real photos** — not stock photography](https://muntin.digital/glossary/real-photos/)
- [**Photo brief** — the one-page sheet you walk into a photoshoot with](https://muntin.digital/glossary/photo-brief/)
- [**Aspect ratio** — the proportion between width and height, locked by the destination](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aspect-ratio/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)
[Back to the Library](https://muntin.digital/learn/)
---
title: Yield percent
url: https://muntin.digital/glossary/yield-percent/
kind: glossary
locale: en
date: 2026-05-10T04:12:16+00:00
description: Yield percent: For a given ingredient: the percentage of as-purchased weight that survives trim, peel, bone, fat, and cooking shrinkage. Romaine yields about 75%; a whole…
---
Skip to main content
[Restaurant numbers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/restaurant-numbers/)
# Yield percent
the share of what you bought that ends up on a plate
Restaurants
[Operations & Margin](https://muntin.digital/learn/topics/operations-margin/)
For a given ingredient: the percentage of *as-purchased* weight that survives trim, peel, bone, fat, and cooking shrinkage. Romaine yields about 75%; a whole halibut closer to 50%; a whole chicken 60%. Sourced from culinary-school standard yield tables; varies ±5% by handler skill and product specification.
## Why it matters
The most-skipped concept in independent restaurant cost accounting. An owner who divides invoice cost by purchase weight under-prices most produce by 20–30%, and the loss compounds across every plate the recipe runs. Yield is the multiplier that turns AP cost into the real cost of a usable ounce — without it, every downstream number lies a little, in the same direction.
More in Restaurant numbers
- [**Prime cost** — food cost + labor cost, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/prime-cost/)
- [**Food cost** — cost of goods sold, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/food-cost/)
- [**Labor cost** — wages + payroll taxes, as a % of sales](https://muntin.digital/glossary/labor-cost/)
- [**Cover** — one customer served](https://muntin.digital/glossary/cover/)
- [**Average check** — total sales ÷ covers](https://muntin.digital/glossary/average-check/)
- [**Aggregator** — third-party delivery platform](https://muntin.digital/glossary/aggregator/)
Glossary
## Browse all149 terms.
Plain-English definitions for every term in your audit, organized by category.
[Open Plate Cost Calculator](https://muntin.digital/tools/plate-cost/#result)
[Open the full glossary](https://muntin.digital/glossary/)