Kitchens and stations
Multiple Kitchens is an add-on. The kitchen ticket screen itself is standard in every plan — what this adds is more than one kitchen, with each dish routed to the right station. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
What this is for
One kitchen is fine when one team cooks everything. As soon as you have a grill, a cold section and a bar, printing the whole order in all three places wastes paper and hides the two lines that matter to each of them.
A kitchen in Restodesk is a station: a place where some of your menu is made. Give each one its own kitchen and each gets a ticket containing only its own items.
Adding a kitchen
- Go to Kitchens.
- Select Add Kitchen.
- Fill in:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Kitchen Name | What staff call it — Grill, Bar, Cold Section, Pass, Pizza. |
| Description | Optional. Useful when the name alone isn't obvious. |
| Select Printer | Which printer this kitchen's tickets go to. |
| Is Active | Whether it's in use. |
- Save.
The default kitchen
One kitchen is the default, and it's the safety net — anything not assigned anywhere else ends up there.
Two rules follow from that:
- The default kitchen can't be deleted.
- It can't be made inactive.
If it could, unassigned items would have nowhere to print, and a dish would silently never reach a cook. Restodesk stops you rather than letting that happen.
Choosing your stations
Split by where the food is physically made, not by menu structure.
Worth its own kitchen:
- Bar — drinks are made somewhere else by someone else, almost always the first split worth making.
- Grill / hot line
- Cold section — salads, starters, desserts.
- Pizza oven, fryer, or any station with its own queue.
Not worth it:
- Menu categories that all come off the same line. Splitting "Starters" from "Mains" when one chef cooks both just doubles the paper.
- A station with no printer and no screen. The ticket has nowhere to go.
Copper Fork runs two: Kitchen and Bar. That's the split that pays for itself fastest.
Printers
Each kitchen points at a printer. One printer can serve several kitchens; a kitchen has one printer.
If a kitchen has no printer assigned, its tickets have nowhere to print. That's the first thing to check when a station says nothing is coming through. See Receipts and printers.
Turning a kitchen off
Setting a kitchen inactive shows a warning first:
By changing the status, all items assigned to this kitchen will be moved to the default kitchen.
That's the right behaviour — the items keep printing somewhere — but it means the default kitchen suddenly gets a station's worth of extra tickets. Expect it, and tell whoever works the default.
Good to know
- Kitchens are per branch. Each location sets up its own.
- The kitchens list shows Number of Items per kitchen — the quickest way to spot one you created and never assigned anything to.
- Managing kitchens is a permission: Kitchen Place. See What each role can do.
- Splitting kitchens changes nothing about the bill. The guest still gets one order and one receipt.