CashoutGlossary / Front of house (FOH)
Front of house (FOH)
The guest-facing side of a restaurant: servers, bartenders, hosts, bussers and runners. Most tipped restaurant jobs are front of house.
Front of house means the parts of a restaurant guests see and the people who work there: servers, bartenders, hosts, bussers, food runners and floor managers. It's industry slang, not a legal term, but it lines up closely with how tip rules sort workers.
- Tip pools. When an employer takes a tip credit, a pool can include only employees who customarily and regularly receive tips, which mostly means front of house roles like servers, bartenders and bussers.
- Managers. Managers and supervisors can't take from a tip pool. The DOL looks at duties, not titles, such as whether managing is your primary duty and whether you can hire or fire.
- Tip allocation. For Form 8027, the IRS sorts staff into directly tipped employees, like waitstaff and bartenders, and indirectly tipped employees, like bussers and service bartenders. Only directly tipped employees get allocated tips.
Many front of house jobs are on the IRS list of tipped occupations for No Tax on Tips, including bartenders (code 101), wait staff (102), dining room attendants and bartender helpers (104) and host staff (109).
A common mistake is assuming a shift lead or captain can't share in tips just because of the title, or that someone called a lead can. It depends on what the job actually involves, so ask.
Related terms
Back of house (BOH) · Tip pool · Runner · Section · Side work
