What is 86ing an item? A Zayos definition, straight off the pass

Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

To 86 an item means marking a dish unavailable because the kitchen has run out of it. A cook calls out 86 on the item, and it comes off the board, off the menu, and off every ordering channel until it is back in stock.

Written 86, 86’d, 86ed or eighty sixed. It works as a verb and as a status: you 86 the branzino, and for the rest of the night the branzino is 86ed.

Why does one sold out dish cost real money?

Running out is normal. Every kitchen that preps fresh runs out of something, and an owner who never 86s anything is over prepping and throwing food away. The loss is not in running out. It is in the minutes between running out and the menus catching up.

Put numbers on it with your own volume. Say your kitchen takes 30 online orders in a 40 minute stretch of a Friday, and roughly one in six of them includes the item you just ran out of. If the 86 reached three channels but not the fourth, you have about five orders arriving for food that does not exist. Each one is a phone call in the middle of a rush, a substitution the diner did not choose, or a refund on a ticket you already cooked around.

A sold out item that is still orderable is the most expensive item on your menu. You pay for the phone call, the refund and the review, and you sell nothing.

Where does the term 86 come from?

Nobody knows for certain, and anyone who tells you they do is repeating one of four stories. Here they are, most to least evidenced.

Soda fountain and diner code

The earliest documented use is 1930s American lunch counter slang, where a numbered code list let staff talk across a noisy room. 86 meant the kitchen was out of something. This is the version with actual printed evidence behind it, which is why it is the one worth repeating.

Item 86 at Delmonico's

The story goes that item 86 on the Delmonico's menu in New York was a house steak that sold out constantly, so 86 came to mean sold out. Widely repeated, thinly documented.

86 Bedford Street

Chumley's, a New York bar at 86 Bedford Street, is said to have pushed unwanted drinkers out the 86 door. This one explains the other use of 86, meaning to remove a person, better than it explains a sold out dish.

Rhyming slang for nix

Eighty six rhymes with nix, which already meant to cancel or refuse. Plausible, unprovable, and popular with people who like tidy explanations.

The useful takeaway is that 86 started as a way for staff to communicate quickly in a loud room. That is still exactly what it is for, except the room now includes four ordering channels that cannot hear anyone shouting.

Where does an 86 actually have to reach?

In 1985 an 86 had one destination: the people in the building. Today it has five, and the item is only genuinely 86ed when the last of them agrees.

  • The board and the line

    Where the cooks look. Useless on its own, because the cooks are not the ones still selling it.

  • The POS

    So the register and the phone order taker stop ringing it in.

  • Your own ordering site

    The channel you control, and usually the fastest one to update.

  • Each marketplace listing

    DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub each hold their own copy of your menu. An item removed from two of the three is still on sale on the third.

  • Catering and phone quotes

    The slowest to catch up, because a catering order placed today gets cooked next Saturday.

How do you 86 an item so it actually leaves every channel?

Five steps, about two minutes. Most kitchens do step one perfectly and skip step three, which is the one that catches the channel that did not update.

  1. 01 Call it and write it

    The cook calls 86 on the item and it goes on the board where the whole line can see it. This is the step every kitchen already does correctly, and it is the only one that does not stop the item from being sold.

  2. 02 Kill it at the source, not on one app

    Turn the item off wherever your master menu lives, so the change pushes out to every channel at once. Turning it off inside one delivery app updates that one app and nothing else, which is how a sold out item stays orderable somewhere for the rest of the night.

  3. 03 Spot check your two busiest channels

    Open the two channels that actually sell the item and confirm it is gone. Sixty seconds of checking beats forty minutes of refunds. If a channel did not take the change, that is the one to fix before the next rush.

  4. 04 Clear the tickets already in flight

    Orders placed in the last few minutes are still coming. Decide the substitution now and tell the diner before the bag leaves, because a proactive swap is a phone call and a discovered swap is a refund plus a rating.

  5. 05 Put it back deliberately

    Un 86 the item with a count of how many portions came in, not from memory at midnight. The quiet money leak in most kitchens is not the 86, it is the item that stayed off for four days because nobody remembered to turn it back on.

What do people get wrong about 86ing?

86 does not mean the food went bad

It means unavailable. Out of stock, prep not ready, the fryer is down, or the item is too slow to execute during a peak. All of those are legitimate 86s.

Telling the staff is not 86ing

The people still selling the item are the ordering channels, not your team. If the change did not reach the channels, the item is not 86ed, it is just known about internally.

86ing does not hurt your ratings

What hurts your ratings is an item that is sold out and still orderable. A dish that quietly disappears from a menu costs you one ticket. A dish that sells and cannot be delivered costs you a refund and a public review.

It is not the same as pausing your store

An 86 removes one item and leaves the rest of your menu selling. Pausing stops everything. Reaching for a pause when you needed an 86 turns a missing side dish into a closed restaurant.

Where Zayos fits

Zayos treats step two as the whole job. The item is turned off once, in one place, and the change travels to the restaurant’s own ordering site and out through the same kitchen tablet that carries its marketplace tickets, so the cook is not opening four apps mid rush. Plans are $499, $599 and $699 per location per month, month to month, with no setup fee, and the restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and tips.

The multi channel setup is described on the Otter integration page and on how it works. Other terms that come up on the pass are defined in the glossary.

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Questions about 86ing

What does 86 mean in a restaurant?
In a professional kitchen, to 86 an item is to declare it unavailable and take it off the menu until it is back. It is used as a verb and as a status: a cook 86s the branzino, and for the rest of the night the branzino is 86ed. The same word is also used, less often, for removing a person from the premises.
Where does the term 86 come from?
No origin is proven. The earliest documented use is 1930s American soda fountain and lunch counter slang, where numbered codes let staff talk across a noisy counter and 86 meant the kitchen was out of something. The popular stories about item 86 on the Delmonico's menu, about 86 Bedford Street in New York, and about eighty six rhyming with nix are all plausible and none of them is settled.
How fast does an 86 need to reach the delivery apps?
Before the next order lands, which on a busy Friday is a matter of a minute or two. The arithmetic is simple: if your kitchen takes 30 online orders in 40 minutes and roughly one in six includes the item, an 86 that never reached one marketplace produces about five orders you cannot fill. Each one is a phone call, a substitution or a refund, and a chance at a one star review.
Can I 86 an item on one channel only?
Yes, and sometimes you should. A slow item can be pulled from delivery, where travel time ruins it, while it stays on the dine in menu. What you should not do is pull it from delivery by hand on each app separately, because that is exactly the workflow that leaves it live on the one app you forgot.
What is the difference between 86ing an item and running out of stock?
Running out is the event. 86ing is the response. The stock hits zero whether or not anyone reacts, and the 86 is the deliberate act of making every menu the public can see agree with the walk in. Kitchens do not lose money on running out. They lose money on the gap between running out and the menus catching up.

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