The kitchen knows before you shout it.

The shouting stops

In most kitchens the order travels by voice. Somebody calls it through the hatch, somebody else half hears it, and the extra shito for table four gets lost somewhere between the counter and the pot. When it’s busy, the kitchen is cooking from memory.

A tablet becomes the kitchen screen

Any tablet can be set, on the tablet itself, as the kitchen’s screen. It shows the kitchen board and nothing else: no prices, no takings, no till. It’s on every plan.

You tick which categories the kitchen makes. Plates, soups and grills go to the kitchen. Drinks and the pastries from the counter don’t.

Every order, as a ticket

The moment an order leaves the till, it arrives on the board as a ticket:

• the order number, counted per day, so the counter and the kitchen talk about number 141, not “the jollof for the man in the blue shirt”;
• the tab’s name, or where it’s going: takeaway, delivery, or Bolt Food, Glovo and Chowdeck by name;
• every line with how it’s served, like Large or With egg, and any note: “no pepper on one”, “extra shito”.

The top of the board says how many are waiting and how long the oldest has been there. A ticket that’s waited too long turns red, and you choose what too long means, from five minutes to an hour.

Rounds, changes and voids

When a table orders again, the new round arrives as its own ticket, marked 2nd round. If something is taken off the bill after it was sent, the ticket shows it crossed out, so nobody finishes cooking it. If a whole sale is voided, the kitchen sees that too.

Start, Done, and back to the counter

A cook can tap Start when they pick a ticket up, and Done when it’s out. What the kitchen has just made shows along the top of the till, so whoever’s serving knows number 141 is ready without walking to the hatch.

When the kitchen hears about it

You choose when a ticket goes to the kitchen:

• When the order is put down: the moment it leaves the till, paid, set aside as a tab, or moved. Right for a sit-down place where people pay at the end.
• When it’s paid: only once the money’s taken, so the cashier’s charge is the go-ahead. Right for a takeaway where people pay first.

What it doesn’t do yet

It doesn’t print tickets, and there’s one kitchen board, not a separate screen for the grill and the drinks bar. It doesn’t take orders from a website or a QR code. And the tickets don’t time each dish for your reports yet.