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Routing items to a kitchen

Add-on

Multiple Kitchens is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.

What this is for​

A kitchen only receives what's assigned to it. This is the assigning.

Get it right and the grill sees steaks, the bar sees drinks, and nobody reads a ticket that isn't theirs. Get it wrong and a dish either prints in the wrong place or lands on the default kitchen and confuses everyone.

Assigning items​

From the kitchen:

  1. Go to Kitchens and open one.
  2. Select Manage Menu Items.
  3. Select Items — search by name, tick what belongs here.
  4. Add.

Search rather than scrolling. Found 6 items matching "wine" gets you a whole category faster than paging through the menu.

To move something out, use Remove Items on the kitchen it's currently in, then add it to the right one.

The unassigned list​

The screen that matters most: Unassigned Menu Items, showing every item not assigned to any kitchen, with a count.

Work it to zero. Anything left there prints to the default kitchen, which is safe but not what you designed.

Come back to it whenever you add to the menu. A new dish is unassigned by default, and the first time anyone notices is usually mid-service when the wrong station is holding the ticket.

From that list, Assign puts an item straight into a kitchen without leaving the screen.

Assigning as you add items​

Two other places routing happens, both faster than fixing it later:

  • On the menu item itself — set the kitchen when you create the dish.
  • During a bulk upload — the import asks which kitchen the items belong to. See Bulk-uploading your menu.

Getting it right at creation time is a few seconds. Finding it later is a service.

Items with variations​

An item with sizes is flagged Has Variations, and routing applies to the item as a whole.

That's fine almost always — a small pizza and a large pizza come out of the same oven. Where it isn't — a dish whose variations are genuinely made in different places — the honest fix is two menu items rather than one.

Checking your routing​

Before you rely on it, run one test order containing something from every station and watch what prints where.

Then, occasionally:

  • Is the unassigned list empty?
  • Does each kitchen's item count look right? A bar with four items is missing your wine list.
  • Did anything move? A dish that changed section in the kitchen needs to change section here.

When a station isn't getting tickets​

In order:

  1. Is the item assigned to that kitchen? Check the unassigned list first.
  2. Is the kitchen active?
  3. Does the kitchen have a printer?
  4. Is the printer online? See Receipts and printers.
  5. Was the KOT actually sent? An order showing Waiting KOT hasn't gone anywhere.

Good to know​

  • Routing is per branch, like the kitchens themselves.
  • Unassigned items print to the default kitchen. Nothing is ever lost — it just goes somewhere you didn't choose.
  • Making a kitchen inactive moves its items to the default kitchen automatically.
  • One item goes to one kitchen. A dish genuinely assembled in two places is best modelled as two items so each station gets its own line.

Next​

Using the kitchen screen