Kitchen Display (KDS)
The Kitchen Display System (KDS) turns a tablet or dedicated kitchen screen into a digital ticket board. Orders fired from the servers’ iPads, handhelds, or the counter land here in real time. Your cooks tap through them as they work, and tickets disappear from the screen once every item is done.
There’s no paper, no ticket spike, no printer jams — the KDS replaces the kitchen printer entirely (or runs alongside it if you want both).
Most restaurants run one KDS per station — a dedicated screen for the Grill, one for the Bar, one for Salads, and so on. Each station only sees the items it needs to cook.
The KDS is designed for landscape use on one of three device types:
• iPads — the most common kitchen screen.
• Android tablets — any reasonably sized Android tablet works.
• Dedicated Sunmi KDS screens — Sunmi’s purpose-built kitchen displays (heat- and grease-resistant, mountable).
It doesn’t run on phones — handhelds are for servers taking orders, not the kitchen. The app stays locked in landscape while KDS is on, so if a tablet rotates to portrait, flip it back.
Turning KDS mode on
There are two ways a device ends up on the KDS screen:
1. The device is set to KDS mode in the Dashboard (recommended for dedicated kitchen screens)
Your manager marks the device as a KDS device in the Dashboard’s Devices page. From then on, every time the app opens it goes straight to KDS — no staff PIN, no menu, no way to accidentally switch back to the ordering screen. This is what you want for a screen that lives on the kitchen wall (an iPad, an Android tablet, or a Sunmi KDS unit).
When the device is dedicated to KDS, the KDS Mode toggle in Settings is greyed out with the hint “Enabled by device configuration (cannot be changed)“.
2. Toggled from the device’s Settings screen (for shared tablets)
If this tablet is normally used for order-taking but you want to try KDS on it, a manager can flip it on manually:
Open Settings
On the bottom tab bar of the POS, tap Settings.
Find the KDS Mode card
It’s the row with the monitor icon — “Switch interface to Kitchen Display System view”.
Flip the switch on
The Select prep station picker pops up immediately — see below.
Pick a station
Tap the station this iPad is for (Grill, Bar, Salad…) — or View All (Expo) for a single expo screen that sees everything. As soon as you pick, the whole screen switches to the KDS.
To turn it off, open Settings again and flip the KDS switch back off — the device returns to the normal POS.
Picking a station
A prep station is a workstation in your kitchen — Grill, Salad, Pasta, Bar, Cold Station, and so on. Each KDS screen is tied to one station at a time so a cook only sees items they need to cook.
Stations are set up in the Dashboard under Prep Stations. Items and categories get assigned to a station there — e.g. all items in the “Burgers” category go to Grill, or the “Negroni” drink goes to Bar. Once that’s done, the KDS filters the live ticket stream automatically.
The picker shows up in two places:
- First time you turn KDS mode on via Settings
- Any time you tap the station name at the bottom-left of the KDS sidebar
View All (Expo)
Pick View All (Expo) instead of a specific station if this device is the expo screen — the person calling the pass who needs to see every item on every ticket, across all stations. The expo screen doesn’t filter.
Once you pick a station, the choice is saved to this device. Close the app, restart it, reboot the screen — you come back to the same station. You only need to change it if you physically move the device to a different station.
If the picker says “No stations configured for this location”, your Dashboard doesn’t have prep stations set up yet. Your manager needs to create them and assign items to them before the KDS can filter anything. Until then, every KDS sees every item.
The sidebar — everything on the left
The panel on the left of the KDS is the same on every screen. It has five sections, top to bottom:
1. Tabs — Open vs Completed
Nopen tickets — shows live tickets (the default). The number is the live count.- Completed — shows tickets the kitchen has already finished. Useful if a server comes over and asks “did that party 12 ribeye go out yet?”
Tap either to switch. You’re almost always on Open.
2. View toggle — Tickets vs Items
- Tickets — one card per order, items grouped by the table or order they belong to. This is the view most cooks prefer because you can see “everything for Table 12 together”.
- Items — items are aggregated across every open ticket. “3 cheeseburger, 5 fries, 2 Caesar salads”. Great for high-volume stations like the grill where you want to know the total count you need to fire right now.
Both views show the exact same underlying tickets — you’re just choosing how to look at them. See The two views below for examples.
3. Order type filter
Four pills to narrow the grid down:
| Filter | What you see |
|---|---|
| All | Everything (the default). |
| Urgent | Only rushed tickets. Hides everything else. |
| Dine in | Only tables in the dining room. Hides to-go orders. |
| To go | Only takeaway / delivery. Hides dine-in. |
Handy on a split kitchen — say the grill cook wants to fire all the to-go burgers first before the dine-in rush.
4. All-day totals
Right under the filters — a running count of the top 10 most-ordered items this shift, coloured so it’s easy to scan:
7 Fries 5 Cheeseburger 4 Caesar Salad …
This is your quick answer to “how many burgers have we sold tonight?” — no need to call the manager.
5. Connection status + station indicator
The small line at the bottom-left:
- A coloured dot — green = connected to the Zavo Network, yellow = reconnecting, red = disconnected. If it’s red, the screen won’t receive new tickets until it comes back.
- An arrow, then the station icon + name this iPad is set to. Tap it to open the station picker and change it.
The two views — Tickets vs Items
Tickets view (default)
One card per order. Each card has:
- The table code or Q# (quick order) at the top
- A status pill — NEW, PREPARING, or DONE
- A big timer showing how long since the server fired the ticket
- Badges — RUSH (green, lightning bolt), TO GO (orange, person running) or DINE IN (grey, bell)
- The course and item count (e.g. “main · 3 items”)
- An allergy banner (amber) if the party has allergies
- The list of items with modifiers and notes
- A Mark All Complete button at the bottom
A KDS screen shows up to 6 ticket cards at once (3 columns × 2 rows). More tickets scroll down — the oldest is always at the top-left.
Items view
The same orders, but every item of the same kind is added up into one card:
- Items are grouped by name + modifiers + special instructions — so “cheeseburger no onion” is a different card from plain “cheeseburger”.
- The big number is the total quantity across every open ticket.
- The timer shows the age of the oldest item in the group — the one that’s been waiting the longest.
- Special instructions from individual tickets show as small italic lines underneath.
Items view fits 16 cards at once (4 columns × 4 rows).
Tickets view is best when you’re cooking by table — you want to fire everything for one party at the same time so courses come out together.
Items view is best when you batch by ingredient — “I’ll drop 5 fries now, grill 3 patties, plate 2 salads”. Popular at the grill and the fry station.
Switch any time — the view is just a lens, the data is the same.
How an item moves through the kitchen
Every item on a ticket is in one of three states. Tapping the item cycles it forward.
| State | Colour | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| New (pending) | Red header | Fired from the front, nobody has started it yet. |
| Preparing (working) | Yellow header | Someone is cooking it. A little chef-hat icon appears next to the item. |
| Done (ready) | Grey header, item text struck through | Finished. The card starts a 5-second fade-out. |
The basic tap flow
Ticket arrives — card is red
A new ticket appears at the end of the grid. The header is red, the pill says NEW, every item is plain white text.
Start cooking → tap an item
Tap the item line. Its text turns yellow and a chef-hat icon appears. The header also turns yellow once at least one item is working and none are still pending — that’s your signal to the rest of the kitchen that “this one’s being cooked”.
Finish the item → tap it again
The item text goes grey with a strikethrough. The icon disappears.
Every item done → card fades for 5 seconds
Once all items on the ticket are done, the card turns grey, shows “Completing… tap to undo” at the bottom, and fades out over 5 seconds.
If nothing stops it, after the fade the ticket is marked Ready and leaves the Open tab. The server sees “Ready to pickup” on the POS, grabs the food, and marks it Served.
Tapped the wrong thing? Every tap is reversible:
• Tap a preparing (yellow) item to push it to done.
• Tap a done (struck-through) item once more to bump it back to new — useful if the server spots something wrong at the pass.
• During the 5-second fade, tap any item on the card to cancel the fade. The card stops disappearing and the item you tapped goes back to new.
Mark All Complete — for tickets where everything’s done at once
At the bottom of every active ticket there’s a Mark All Complete button. Tap it once to mark every un-done item on that ticket as done in a single tap — the card then starts its 5-second fade.
Use this when:
- You took a whole ticket from start to finish yourself and want to clear it in one motion.
- Everything plated up at once (e.g. all sides came up together with the mains).
Fading card — “Completing… tap to undo”
The moment the last item turns done, the card starts fading green:
The fade is your safety net. If a server walks up and says “actually, send that ribeye back”, tap any item — the card stays, the item flips back to new, and the ticket re-joins the live grid.
If you don’t tap anything, the card vanishes after 5 seconds and the ticket moves to Completed.
The Items-view flow
In Items view the tap targets are the big aggregated cards, not individual items. The rules are a little different:
Tap the card body
Advances every item in the group to the next state. If any items are new (red header), they all go to preparing. If they’re already all preparing, they all go to done.
Tap the yellow header
Only works while the card is yellow (preparing, with no new items left). Rolls everything in the group back to new. Use this if you started but then had to stop — e.g. the grill went out, you need to wait before firing again.
5-second fade + undo
When every item in the group is done, the card fades just like in Tickets view. Tap “Completing… tap to undo” to roll every item back to preparing.
Items view is powerful because a single tap can advance items that live across different tickets. If Table 3, Table 7, and Q#12 all ordered fries, “5 Fries” is one card — one tap fires them all as preparing. Great when you batch.
Badges and banners at a glance
Here’s every indicator that can appear on a KDS card — the full vocabulary of what the screen can tell you:
Below, each one in detail.
Rush
A green RUSH pill with a lightning bolt. The server flagged this ticket as urgent from the POS — typically “these guests have a show to get to”. Matches the Urgent sidebar filter.
To go / Dine in
Every ticket gets one of these:
- TO GO — orange, running-person icon. Takeaway or delivery.
- DINE IN — grey, bell icon. Table service.
Use these to plate differently — to-go gets boxed, dine-in gets plated.
Allergy banner
A big amber stripe across the top of the card, with a warning triangle. Lists the allergens the guest called out — “ALLERGY: Peanut, Gluten”. Never clear a card you see this on without double-checking what’s in the dish.
Ticket note
Free-text from the server. Shown right under the header — “Birthday party — bring candle”, “VIP, comp the drinks”, etc.
Item modifiers and notes
Each item can show:
- Green dots + green text — modifiers the server picked (e.g. “Medium rare”, “No anchovy”).
- Grey italic line — a free-form note (e.g. “No croutons”, “Extra hot”).
Course
If the server sent the item as part of a course (starter, main, dessert…), the course name appears next to the item count at the top: “main · 3 items”.
RUSHED on a single item
Small red RUSHED tag next to an item inside a ticket — the server flagged only this item as urgent (not the whole ticket). Bump it first.
Voided tickets
If a server voids a ticket after it’s been fired to the kitchen, you’ll see a dark-red card with “VOIDED” across the top and every item struck through.
Stop cooking it right away — the guest cancelled. Then tap “Tap to dismiss” at the bottom to acknowledge and remove it from your screen.
Once dismissed, the voided card goes away for good on this device — it won’t come back even if something on the ticket changes later. Only dismiss after you’ve actually stopped cooking the items.
Quick service orders (Q#N)
If your restaurant takes counter orders (bar, coffee shop, fast-casual line), those show up on the KDS with a Q# number instead of a table label — Q#7, Q#12. The flow is identical otherwise: tap items through the three states, the card fades when done, you’re clear.
When Q#7 comes up, the cashier at the counter sees “Q#7 Ready” on their screen and calls the guest.
The expo screen
If your kitchen uses an expo (the person at the pass who plates, calls out tickets and hands food to servers), dedicate one screen to it:
- Set it to View All (Expo) in the station picker.
- This screen ignores the station filter — every item of every ticket is visible.
- The expo taps items as they come up on the pass, not as they’re cooked on each line. Grill’s cards fade on grill; expo’s card only fades once every item — from every station — is up at the pass.
This gives you two layers: each line cook manages their own items, and the expo confirms the ticket is complete across the whole kitchen before calling a server.
Completed tickets
Tap the Completed tab in the sidebar to see the last N tickets that fully closed out (either you marked everything done, or the server marked the food served from the POS).
This is view-only — you can’t bump anything from here. Use it to answer “did X go out?” or to spot a pattern (“all the Margheritas came up late”).
Both the Tickets and Items view work on the Completed tab too.
Things the KDS doesn’t do
Save yourself the search — these are deliberate:
- No 86 / stock-out from the KDS. If you run out of salmon, you can’t mark it 86’d from here. Ask a server to 86 it from the POS, or (if you have it) do it from the Dashboard. New tickets will then block that item automatically.
- No new orders. This is a read + confirm-done surface, not an order-taker. Servers and handhelds create orders; the KDS only displays what’s fired.
- No sounds or beeps. New tickets arrive silently on the grid. Keep the iPad in a spot you can see — if your kitchen is loud, this is the best way to stay in sync.
- No recall of a fully-completed ticket. Once a ticket has fully faded and moved to Completed, you can’t bring it back to Open. Use the 5-second fade as your safety net — if you notice a problem, tap to cancel the fade before it ends.
- No settings in the KDS itself. To change station, tap the station name at the bottom-left. To turn KDS off, exit and use Settings → KDS Mode on the POS.
- No phones. KDS runs only on tablets (iPad, Android) and dedicated Sunmi KDS screens — always in landscape.
Multi-station setup at a glance
A typical two-station kitchen:
| Device | Station | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen wall, by the grill | Grill | Steaks, burgers, chicken, anything from the grill category |
| Kitchen wall, cold side | Salad | Salads, cold starters, desserts if you plate them cold |
| Pass | View All (Expo) | Every item, across both stations — for the expo to call the pass |
When a server fires a ticket with a steak, a Caesar and a tiramisu:
- The Grill screen only shows the steak.
- The Salad screen only shows the Caesar and the tiramisu.
- The Expo screen shows all three.
Each station bumps its own items independently. The expo’s card only fades once all three are marked done by their respective stations.
Items with no assigned station (e.g. bread) appear on every station’s KDS — so somebody always picks them up.
Item routing is set up in the Dashboard → Prep Stations page. The rules:
• An item can be assigned to a specific station — this wins over everything else.
• A category can have a default station — every item in that category goes there unless overridden.
• Items with no assignment show on every station.
Keeping the kitchen in sync — how tickets reach the KDS
The whole flow from server to chef:
Server builds the order on the POS
Picks a table, adds items, applies modifiers.
Server taps Fire (or Pay on a quick tab)
This is the moment the kitchen hears about it.
Every KDS that matches gets the ticket instantly
The ticket lands on any KDS assigned to a station that matches an item. The expo always gets it. New card appears at the end of the grid with a red header and NEW pill.
Cooks tap items through new → preparing → done
Each tap is synced instantly to every other device — the server sees the live status on their POS too (so they know the food’s being plated before you call it).
All items done → card fades → ticket marked Ready
The ticket leaves the Open tab. The server’s POS flips the table to green (ready) so the floor knows to grab the food.
Server serves → ticket disappears from KDS completely
When the server taps Serve on the POS, the ticket is gone for good.
If the Zavo Network connection drops (red dot in the status bar), the KDS keeps showing whatever tickets it already had, but new ones won’t arrive until it reconnects. This is rare — the POS works over both Wi-Fi and device-to-device connections, so one router going down doesn’t take out the kitchen.
Quick recap — the moves you’ll do every shift
- Read the grid left-to-right, top-to-bottom — oldest on the top-left, newest on the bottom-right.
- Tap an item to start cooking it (red → yellow).
- Tap it again to mark it done (yellow → struck-through grey).
- Tap a done item to push it back to red if the server caught a problem.
- Mark All Complete to finish everything on a ticket in one tap.
- Tap during the green fade to cancel the fade if you need to.
- Tap the allergy banner — actually, don’t. Just read it. Then double-check the dish.
- Switch to Items view when the grill’s slammed and you want to batch by ingredient.
- Filter to Urgent when a RUSH ticket comes in and you need to drop everything else.
- Tap the station name at the bottom-left to change stations — or hand the iPad to another cook.
Next steps
- Order Taking — how the server fires the tickets you’re cooking
- Prep Stations — setting up stations and assigning items in the Dashboard
- Table Statuses Reference — how the kitchen’s progress shows up on the floor iPad