Help me understand using the KDS and kitchen printer, please!

[MarkSpiegelman]

Hello All,

We use Square For Restaurants and accept orders from Square Online, and orders are taken internally through one of several internal POS stations.

I want to understand how the KDS display is operated from the Cooks' point of view and when an accompanying physical ticket can be printed.

Here's an example:  An order comes in online and has ten items to be cooked.  Since this is a to-go order, we want to print out a stub for each of the ten items to help customers identify them when they are received.

How does the chef interact with the KDS to signify that they have started on one or more items in this order so that another chef could look and start the following items?

As each item in the order is completed, can the item be marked as done and a ticket stub printed?

I am desperate to understand how this can work, and if not, what ideas might you suggest for how to use the KDS and printer efficiently?

Thanks so much for your responses!

-Mark

[Donnie-M · Accepted solution]

@MarkSpiegelman You are describing a little bit unorthodox kitchen routing and ticket printing contrary to industry norms.  I think what you are wanting to do can be done with just a little tweaking to your system and processes. 

"

Prep stations have the ability to view all orders, clear items/tickets, recall tickets, and view All Day counts. 

Expeditor stations or Expo stations have the same abilities as Prep stations, as well as the ability to see items and tickets that were marked as complete by other Prep stations. In addition, Expeditor stations have the ability to recall completed tickets back to just the Expeditor station(s) or both the Expeditor and Prep station(s)."

This is important to know.  The first cook would be the prep station and the 2nd cook can see when the item is marked off by the prep station and do the other parts.

The key is to have a kds for each station/cook and have orders routed using the categories to send certain items to certain stations.  You can print the ticket automatically, have the kds print a ticket for each item on the check automatically, or you can have the cook/expeditor print each ticket directly from the kds with the little printer icon and this can also print a whole check or a ticket for each item.

This would also be under how courses are "fired" and if you need fryer drops first or grill drops first you would set those to fire first in the restaurants dashboard and then say 3-5 minutes later the 2nd items would send to the kds.

There is a lot of routing available based on dining options and online versus in person versus to go.

So all that said:  Describe a ticket and how you normally prepare and get the order out....  I think I can help you more that way.

[MarkSpiegelman]

Hi Donnie,

Thank you for the 411; it was very helpful in understanding how KDSs are used, and much appreciated.

Mark