Club glossary
What Is a Kitchen Display System (KDS)?
Kitchen screens that replace paper tickets: orders arrive from the point of sale by station, are fired by course and are bumped when the plate is up.
A kitchen display system (KDS) is a set of screens in the kitchen that replaces printed order tickets. When a server sends an order from the point of sale, it appears on the screen for each station that needs to cook part of it — grill, sauté, fry, garde manger, expo — with the time it arrived. Cooks work the tickets in order and "bump" each one off the screen when it is done.
How it works
- Routing by station. Each menu item is assigned to a station, so a burger and a Caesar salad on one check go to the grill screen and the cold station screen at the same moment.
- Coursing and fire. For a dining-room table, the server can hold the entrées while the appetizers go out, then "fire" the next course when the table is ready. The screen shows what is on hold and what is live.
- Timers. Every ticket shows how long it has been waiting, and most systems change its color as it ages past the kitchen's targets.
- Modifiers and allergies. "No onion", "medium rare" and allergy flags appear on the ticket in full, not abbreviated.
- Expo view. The expediter sees the whole ticket across stations, so the plates for one table come up together.
- Bump. When a station finishes its part, it bumps the ticket. When every station has bumped, the order is ready.
KDS vs. ticket printers
Many club kitchens use both: screens on the line, and a printer at the halfway house or bar where a screen is impractical. A good system sends each order to the right device for that station — screen or printer — without the server having to think about it.
Example
On a Friday night the grill room has 22 tables seated and a banquet of 90 in the ballroom. A table of four orders two steaks, a fish and a pasta. The steaks show on the grill screen, the fish on sauté, the pasta on the pasta station; each ticket counts up from zero. When the server fires entrées, all three stations see the change instantly. The expo screen shows the table complete when the last station bumps.
Why it matters at a private club
Club kitchens serve several outlets at once — the grill, a formal dining room, the halfway house, on-course orders and banquets — often from one line. A KDS keeps those streams apart, shows the chef where tickets are backing up, and removes the lost or illegible paper ticket that sends the wrong plate to a member's table.
Related terms
In Bubs: orders from the register, dining room and on-course ordering route to kitchen screens or ticket printers by station, fire by course and bump when the plate is up. See kitchen display.