A shift at the pass

1. Start
   Open the kitchen display

   Sign in (your own name and the PIN, or the shared kitchen screen that stays signed in). The kitchen display opens straight away. The numbers at the top are live: orders today, in the kitchen now, ready to serve.
2. Start
   Pick your station

   Kitchen shows the food, Bar the drinks, All stations both. Your station is the hotel's, not one menu's: whether the waiter rang a plate from the restaurant menu or the bar's, if the kitchen makes it, it is on the kitchen board. A ticket with a main course and a beer shows the main here and the beer on the bar's board, and each board reads and moves only its own lines. The number on a tab is how many items that board still owes, so you can see at a glance that the bar has four waiting while you have none. The screen remembers the station you picked.
3. Service
   The three shelves

   To make holds everything the floor has sent and you have not finished. Ready to serve holds plated food waiting for a waiter. Today is what already went out. A new order chimes and lands in To make, oldest first; an order nobody has started taps again every minute. Sound on at the top turns the chimes off for this screen.
4. Service
   One button, your lines only

   The big button under a card does the next thing for your station: Start cooking fires what the floor sent, Mark all ready plates it, Mark served sends it out. It never touches the bar's drinks on the same ticket, and the drinks board never marks your food. Tap Ready on a single line when one dish is up before the rest. The order itself turns ready on its own when every line, yours and the bar's, is up, and the waiter is told.
5. Service
   Read the card

   Each card is one order: the table (or the room), how long since it was sent, every line with its options and the waiter's note (“no onions”, “well done”). A card that has waited too long turns red. Lines added later appear on the same card as the waiter sends them.
6. Service
   Start, then Ready

   Press Start when you begin the order. Each line has its own Ready button: press it as that plate goes up and the line turns green on the till too. When the last line is ready the card moves to the Ready to serve shelf by itself and rings the bell of the waiter who took the order; nobody else is disturbed. Mark ready on the card does every line at once; Undo on a line puts it back to cooking. The till cannot take money for a dish you have not marked ready, so the button matters. When the waiter carries it, the card moves to Today.
7. Service
   Something has run out

   Tell the outlet supervisor or a manager: they turn the dish off on the menu and it greys out on every till at once, so no waiter can sell it. The same switch brings it back when the delivery arrives.
8. Between
   The order board and the ticket list

   Order board shows the same tickets as columns from new to served, useful between services to see what is still open on the floor. Tickets is the list for the day with who served each one and where it got to. Both are read-only for the kitchen; the till and the manager handle the money.
9. End
   Read the day

   The Today shelf and the Tickets list show what went out and when. Each sale takes its recipe out of stock by itself, so the store count on Inventory stays honest without anyone typing; a low item raises an alert for the manager.

• Take payment or open a shift: the till and the supervisor. The kitchen display has no Pay button on purpose.
• Change a price, rename a dish, turn one off: the outlet supervisor or a manager. Ask, and it changes on every till at once.
• Void a line: the waiter, with a reason and the supervisor once it has been sent. If a card is wrong, tell the floor; do not cook it and hope.
• See the desk, the guests, the money: not your screens. At your hotel the kitchen sees the pass, the order board, the ticket list and, where the manager allows it, the stock.

The full detail of every column and button is in Restaurant & kitchen.

Pass

The kitchen display: the shelf where finished plates wait for the floor, and the screen that shows what to make.

Station

Kitchen or Bar. Each line of a ticket belongs to one, decided by the dish's category.

To make

Sent by the floor and not yet marked Ready.

Ready to serve

Plated and waiting for a waiter. The card lands here when its last line is marked ready, and the waiter's bell rings.

Ready (a line)

One plate up. The till shows the word beside the dish; money can only be taken once every kitchen line reads ready.

Sold out

A dish turned off on the menu; it greys out on every till until it is turned back on.

Order board

The same tickets as columns: new, preparing, ready, served.