Kitchen stations and KOTs: getting every dish to the right queue

Organise the queue around your kitchen

A kitchen order ticket is useful when the people preparing food can act on it. Build stations around real responsibilities: beverages, grill, tandoor, cold preparation or another queue your team recognises. A screen full of tickets with no clear owner can be as confusing as a stack of paper slips.

Before creating stations, walk through your busiest menu. Decide who prepares each dish and where its ticket should appear. Keep station names short enough for staff to recognise during service.

Assign dishes consistently

Create the active stations in the shop's catalog and assign them to the relevant categories or items. Check the effective station for dishes that need a different queue from the rest of their category.

A CSV menu import can include a station code, but the station must already exist and be active. A misspelled or unknown code rejects the batch rather than silently routing the dish somewhere else. Download the template and preview the file before importing.

Review modifiers and combos too. Staff need to understand the complete dish request, including the choices the guest made. Do not assume that a dish's name alone explains preparation.

Set the right access for each person

Kitchen staff should receive the permissions needed to view and work their queue. Cashiers and owners may need different screens. Use individual staff accounts so the shop can control access and revoke it when someone's responsibilities change.

In a food court, vendor scope matters as well as the role. A vendor's staff should work that vendor's orders, not gain access to another business simply because both use a kitchen screen.

Walk through the handoff

• The guest or counter places the order.
• The correct kitchen queue receives the ticket.
• The responsible staff member follows the available preparation actions.
• Ready dishes reach the service team or collection point.
• The counter checks the bill and confirms the correct payment before settlement.

Agree on the team's handling of changes and cancellations. A cashier changing an order without telling the kitchen creates a different problem from a slow preparation ticket. Use the application's actions and a clear operational handoff together.

Practise before live records are created

Start with the interactive demo. It explains guest, kitchen, counter and receipt stages using sample data. It does not create shop records and cannot be mistaken for a paid customer bill.

Once your branch's operating setup is confirmed, place a controlled real order with dishes from different stations. Check which staff accounts can see and act on each ticket. Settle the bill only after payment has actually been collected through the configured method.

Review after the menu changes

New dishes, inactive stations and a changed vendor assignment can affect routing. Revisit the menu review milestone when those settings change. A completed launch checklist is a starting point for service, not a guarantee that every later configuration change is correct.