The kitchen display¶
The kitchen display shows what has been ordered and not yet finished. It updates itself — nobody needs to refresh it — and it is the kitchen's working screen for a whole service.
What a ticket goes through¶
A ticket moves through three states, and you move it along as the food is made:
| State | Means |
|---|---|
| Received | the order has arrived and nobody has started it |
| Preparing | someone has started — you set this with Start |
| Ready | the food is done and can go out — you set this with Mark ready |
Once it has gone to the customer it can be marked Served.
Mark All Ready does the whole ticket at once, for when everything on it finishes together.
Colour tells you how long something has been waiting¶
Tickets change colour as they age — green, then amber, then red. You can find the ticket that has been waiting longest by colour rather than by reading timestamps.
Stations¶
If your kitchen is split into sections, the display can be filtered to one of them, or show All Stations together. A station is a part of the kitchen — starters, grill — so the person on that section sees their own work rather than everything.
An empty display is good news¶
When nothing is showing, the screen says All caught up. That means no tickets are currently displayed for the station or filter you are on — check you are looking at the right one, or at All Stations, before concluding the kitchen is clear. The header carries a live ticket and item count and a timestamp, so you can see the board is still updating.
Things to know¶
The display is the kitchen's copy of the order, not the order itself. Marking something ready tells the floor the food is done; it does not settle a bill or close a table.
Tickets left unfinished are noticed at day close. One of the end-of-day checks asks whether any kitchen ticket is still sitting unbumped, so clearing the display at the end of service saves someone a puzzle later. See Close the day.
Takeaway and dine-in tickets sit on the same display and are marked as such, because the kitchen makes the food the same way regardless of where it is going.