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Reading the board

The Kitchen Display System (KDS) is the screen on your line. It is a real-time ticket board, built touch-first for the kitchen rather than for analysts. Open it on a tablet and it shows every active order as a ticket.

What loads when you open the board

The moment the KDS connects, it receives a snapshot of all open tickets for your restaurant. You see the current state of the kitchen immediately, with no blank loading gap. After the snapshot, the board stays live: new orders and status changes stream in as they happen.

This snapshot-then-stream behavior is what makes the board trustworthy after a reload or a reconnect. See reconnect behavior for the guarantees.

Anatomy of a ticket

Each ticket shows what the kitchen needs to make the order:

  • The short order number, a human-friendly code for calling out the order.
  • The customer name when provided.
  • The line items, each with quantity, the product name, and the chosen modifiers exactly as ordered.
  • Any order notes.
  • An age timer showing how long the ticket has been waiting. See age timers.
  • Large state buttons to advance the ticket.

Line items are a snapshot taken at order time. If you later rename a dish or change its price, tickets already on the board are unaffected, so the kitchen always sees the order as the customer placed it.

A new order arrives

When a customer pays, the order lights up the board. A new ticket appears in under two seconds and an audible chime sounds so the line knows an order landed even if nobody is watching the screen. The two-second target is a measured budget, not a hope. See latency budgets.

Color by age

Tickets are colored by how long they have been waiting so the oldest orders stand out at a glance. A ticket that crosses your configured age threshold turns red. You set that threshold in the console settings. The mechanics are covered in age timers.

One source of truth

Every ticket on the board reflects the same order state the customer sees on their tracker. The kitchen and the customer never disagree, because both are driven by a single append-only stream of order events. When you advance a ticket, the customer’s tracker updates in real time from the same event.