Glossary

Shared terminology for the Ghost Kitchen project. Definitions live in a single file src/data/glossary.json and are used both on this page and as hover tooltips throughout the documentation.

Term	Definition
Aggregator	A marketplace platform that collects orders for restaurants (e.g. a food-delivery app), routes them to the kitchen and takes a commission.
Brand	A trade brand inside the platform (e.g. "Pizza Burger"). One brand can have several restaurants/kitchens. In the architecture a brand equals a tenant.
Brand Admin	Administrator of a single brand. Manages its restaurants, menu and settings, and sees analytics for that brand only.
Checkout	Order checkout: entering contacts and address, choosing time/delivery, payment and confirmation. In the custom stack it is fully under our control.
Company Admin	The platform owner. Sees and manages all brands, restaurants, orders and cross-brand analytics; creates new brands.
Dark kitchen	A delivery-only kitchen with no dine-in area. Also known as ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen.
Dead-letter queue	A queue for messages/tasks that could not be processed after all retries. They are handled manually so that no order is lost when an integration fails.
Directus	An open-source headless platform on top of PostgreSQL: provides the data model, REST/GraphQL API, authentication, RBAC and a ready-made admin UI without writing code.
Fulfillment	The process of completing an order from acceptance to handoff: preparation, assembly, packing and dispatch.
Ghost Kitchen	A restaurant with no dine-in area, operating for delivery and pickup only. Also the name of this project — a platform for managing a network of such kitchens and brands.
Idempotency	The property of an operation yielding the same result when repeated. Protects against duplicate orders/payments when a webhook is redelivered or a request is retried.
KDS	Kitchen Display System — a screen in the kitchen showing incoming orders and their statuses instead of paper tickets.
Kitchen / Restaurant	A specific location of a brand (e.g. "Pizza Burger Berlin Mitte"). Has its own menu, orders and settings within the brand.
Liefersoft	A restaurant POS / cash-register system (Germany) with TSE fiscal compliance. The platform pushes orders to it for preparation and fiscal accounting.
Menu	The set of categories and items of a brand/kitchen available for ordering, together with prices and modifiers. The platform is the source of truth for the menu.
Menu item	An individual dish or product in a brand's menu available for ordering. May have modifiers and an associated SKU.
Modifier	An option that alters a menu item: add-on, size, doneness, ingredient removal. May affect the price.
Mollie	A European payment provider. Accepts payments (cards, iDEAL, Apple/Google Pay, etc.) and reports payment status via webhooks.
Multi-tenant	An architecture where a single application instance and one database serve many isolated customers (tenants). Here a tenant equals a brand.
Nuxt	A meta-framework on top of Vue.js. Supports server-side rendering (SSR) and SPA mode. Used for the customer storefront and the admin panels.
Platform	The entire Ghost Kitchen system and the owning company. Sees all brands, restaurants, orders and cross-brand analytics.
POS	Point of Sale — a restaurant's cash-register system. Here it is Liefersoft: it receives orders from the platform, prints receipts and handles fiscal accounting.
RBAC	Role-Based Access Control — access management based on roles. Permissions are granted to a role (Company Admin, Brand Admin, Restaurant Manager) rather than to each user individually.
Restaurant Manager	Manager of a specific kitchen. Works with incoming orders (KDS), the local menu and the settings of one location.
SKU	Stock Keeping Unit — a unique identifier for a product or menu item used for inventory and sales tracking.
SPA	Single-Page Application — the app renders in the browser without page reloads. Suitable for behind-login admin panels where SEO is not needed.
SSR	Server-Side Rendering — the page is built on the server and delivered as ready HTML. Needed for SEO and fast first load of the storefront.
Tenant	A logically isolated customer in a multi-tenant system. In Ghost Kitchen a tenant is a brand: its data is separated from others by `brand_id` and access rules.
TSE fiscalization	German technical requirements (Technische Sicherheitseinrichtung) for cash registers: every sale is securely signed. Handled on the POS side (Liefersoft).
Virtual brand	A brand that exists only for online ordering and delivery. One physical kitchen can run several virtual brands.
Webhook	An HTTP notification an external service (e.g. Mollie) sends to the platform on an event — for example, "payment paid". An alternative to constantly polling the API.

Using terms in text

On any .mdx page you can highlight a term with a hover tooltip:

import Term from '@site/src/components/Term';

We are launching a new <Term id="virtual-brand" /> in an existing <Term id="dark-kitchen" />.

Result: We are launching a new Virtual brandVirtual brandA brand that exists only for online ordering and delivery. One physical kitchen can run several virtual brands. in an existing Dark kitchenDark kitchenA delivery-only kitchen with no dine-in area. Also known as ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen..

:::tip Adding a term Add an entry to src/data/glossary.json with ru and en translations — it will immediately appear both in the table above and in tooltips across the site. :::