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Marking food ready

What you'll accomplish

The floor knows the dish is up, without anyone having to come and look.

The three moves

  1. Start — you have begun cooking it. The ticket becomes Preparing.
  2. Mark ready — it is done. The ticket becomes Ready, and it appears on the floor's board.
  3. Mark served — it has gone to the customer, and it leaves the list.

Mark All Ready does a whole ticket at once, for when everything on it finishes together.

Why marking as you go is worth the seconds

The board is only useful while it matches the pass. A display showing three tickets when five are up does not get corrected — it gets ignored, and everyone goes back to shouting. Marking as you go is what keeps it worth looking at.

Start matters as much as ready. A ticket sitting in Received looks untouched, so someone will ask about it. Starting it answers the question before it is asked.

Reading the colours

Tickets change colour as they age — green, then amber, then red. Work the red ones first unless you have a reason not to; the colour is doing the job of remembering which came in when.

If the board looks wrong

Check the station filter. An empty board means nothing is showing for the station or filter you are on, not necessarily that the kitchen is clear. Switch to All Stations to see everything.

Check the header. It carries a live ticket and item count with a timestamp, so you can tell the board is still updating rather than frozen.