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Kitchen Display System & Management

Streamline your kitchen processes with tools that connect directly to your point of sale.

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Kitchen Display System (KDS)

Lose paper tickets and display orders as they come in on a Kitchen Display System. Your staff will be able to manage orders more efficiently and eliminate any gaps with automatic syncing between your kitchen display system, iPad point of sale and kitchen management system.

Kitchen Printers

A Revel POS integrates seamlessly with a number of kitchen printers to ensure your back of house runs like clockwork. This includes impact printers, designed specifically to handle the heat of the kitchen.

Intelligent Reporting

Utilize inventory and sales reports when making decisions for your kitchen. Ingredient level reporting provides insights to aid in inventory purchases and menu changes.

It starts with how we put in our orders, it’s the only way we can really manage the business. And the data is very, very clean with Revel, with our POS. It really helps us manage the business and keep track of the different ways we feed people on a daily basis.

Maxwell Cohen, Manager, Proposition Kitchen

Learn more about Features of a Kitchen Display System (KDS)

The primary purpose of a kitchen order system is to facilitate fast and effective communication between your front and back of the house. To achieve this, your KDS should have the following basic features:

Order Views

This is an essential feature that allows kitchen staff to receive and monitor pending food orders from the front of the house. Ideally, this can be customized to fit the nature of the restaurant. A grid view, for example, typically works best for fast food or fast-casual restaurants with no seat charts.

Aside from views, a good kitchen display system will also have filters so you can categorize orders based on their status. This allows you, for example, to see which orders are still in preparation.

Learn more about Features of a Kitchen Display System (KDS)

A Robust Kitchen Order Ticket System

Staff need a powerful and flexible ticketing and ordering system to be on top of the food they need to put out for guests. With this in mind, it is helpful to have a timer on tickets so the kitchen can be alerted if a table is waiting on their food for too long.

For larger kitchens, it’s also great if the system can send the ticket directly to the relevant kitchen prep station. Not only does this speed up execution, but it ensures that tickets don’t get lost in the mix.

Finally, a way to prioritize specific orders (for VIPs, for example) also gives the system better flexibility for any situation.

Order Ready Display

One of the biggest causes of low reviews for restaurants is slow service, which almost always stems from a busy kitchen. One way to mitigate this is to use order ready screens to show diners the status of their orders. This transparency can help set customer expectations and ease tensions.

POS / Kitchen Monitor Integrations

A KDS should integrate seamlessly with your point of sale and kitchen management system. In addition, full integration allows online orders to be automatically directed to your kitchen monitor.

Heat-Resistant Hardware

Kitchens can get very hot, and this can damage regular computer hardware. Thus, specific components like kitchen printers should be heat resistant to ensure longevity and durability.

Benefits of Kitchen Display Systems

In a nutshell, the most significant benefit of a kitchen display system is that it helps make your restaurant operations much more efficient. Indirectly, it can also help improve your revenue, deliver a better customer experience, reduce food waste, and even help with kitchen staff planning.

Using traditional paper tickets carries the risk of losing those tickets amid the hustle and bustle of dinner service. There’s also the risk of miscommunication or misreading handwritten orders.

Going digital means all orders are accounted for. Plus, it’s easy for kitchen staff to monitor the time duration of each ticket to know which ones need to be prioritized.

KDS also speeds up your serving time by eliminating the need for your servers to pass around order tickets to the kitchen. Sending orders directly to the relevant stations also ensures food gets sent in the right direction. In the restaurant industry, every second counts.

The benefits of a kitchen display system get even more pronounced for restaurants with complicated menus and multiple-course offerings. Traditionally, the responsibility of pacing the flow of food falls upon the POS or server. Naturally, doing this manually over multiple tables carries the risk of human error. A KDS helps simplify the process by handling the pacing of a multi-course meal. Servers need to punch in the entire order to the POS, and the KDS’ system does the rest.

By following a pre-configured serving time and the cook times of each dish, it can guarantee that orders are ready at the scheduled time. Thus, dishes are served immediately and at the proper serving temperature. This automatic delay feature can also help the kitchen improve its food quality, even for casual restaurants.

There’s also the human resources benefit. A kitchen display system can help make your kitchen operate much more smoothly and efficiently. There would be fewer order returns, frustrations, and hot heads. It also raises the morale of your entire operation, knowing they’re delivering incredible food and service to patrons.

Lastly, a kitchen order system can help you manage your restaurant’s capacity. Using data derived from your KDS, you can check the average time your kitchen delivers food orders. This insight can help you find the capacity “sweet spot” without sacrificing food quality, service, and wait times.

What a KDS System Can Do for Your Business

A kitchen display system is more than just a fancy way for your kitchen to view orders coming in from the front of the house. In fact, calling it just a “display” isn’t all that accurate.

In reality, a kitchen display and order management system can help your restaurant improve its bottom line. It ensures that your food is ready for your guests at the right time and in perfect quality. It also helps you deliver this promise even during busy times, which can improve your turnover rate (and revenues) dramatically.

A kitchen display system isn’t just for larger establishments. Whether your business has a single food prep station or a network of kitchen team members preparing multiple orders, Revel’s KDS stations can be tailored to suit your individual business needs.

Overall, a KDS system is crucial for your bottom line. It speeds up your service, makes your food quality consistent, increases your turnover rates, and enhances your operation. Not to mention you’ll get happy customers in the process.

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