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How collect orders reach the kitchen

When a click-and-collect order fires to the kitchen, how it's labelled on a KDS or printed ticket, and how staff mark it ready.

A click-and-collect order goes through your kitchen on the same rails as any other order — it fires to your KDS or kitchen printer like a dine-in or takeaway ticket. This article explains when it fires, how to tell it's a collection, and how it's marked done.

When it reaches the kitchen

Collect orders use your Fire to kitchen ahead setting (under Click and collect → Settings → Advanced) to decide when the kitchen sees the order:

  • Fire to kitchen ahead = 0 — the order fires immediately when the customer submits it. Good for fast prep where you'd rather start now.
  • A higher number — the order fires that many minutes before pickup, so hot food is made just in time rather than sitting.

So with a 12:30 pickup and a fire-ahead of 15, the kitchen gets the ticket at 12:15. With fire-ahead 0, they get it the moment the order is placed. See Set up click and collect for the setting.

Which stations get it

A collect order goes to the stations its items are routed to, like any other order. It counts as a Takeaway order: a station whose Which orders come here setting has Takeaway unticked won't get collect orders. An item with no station goes nowhere, and the rest of the order still reaches the kitchen.

If customers pay when they order

If your collect orders are set to take payment online at checkout, nothing happens until the payment goes through. An order whose payment hasn't cleared doesn't reach the kitchen, and it doesn't show on the till's Collection view or on the Click and collect page either. It appears the moment the customer's payment is taken, and from then on it follows the fire-ahead rules above.

If a customer starts an order and never pays, it never shows up anywhere. It is cancelled automatically after two hours. If their payment does go through late, the order appears as normal.

Heads up

Fire-ahead needs the Collection times in the kitchen switch. Until that switch is on for your account, every collect order goes to the kitchen the moment it is placed, whatever number is in Fire to kitchen ahead. A 9am order for a 1pm collection lands on the kitchen screen at 9am. The switch is off for every account today; ask us to turn it on and the setting starts doing what it says.

Note

Changing Fire to kitchen ahead takes effect once you click Save in the bar at the top of the settings screen — the Advanced card no longer has a Save button of its own. It is saved together with your public web address and the Accepting online orders switch, in one click.

Heads up

Allergen information is switched off. Everything about allergens described in this article — allergen tags on an ingredient, the AI label scan, the allergens shown on a recipe or a product, and the allergen warnings on the kitchen screen and the printed kitchen ticket — sits behind a separate Allergen information switch, and that switch is currently off for every account. With it off, those parts are not shown and the fields are not there to edit. Nothing you have already entered is deleted; it reappears if the switch is turned on for you.

Telling a collection apart on the ticket

A collect order carries a label so the kitchen can see it isn't a dine-in table. Instead of a table number, it shows the order's name — typically the customer's name, or "Collection" where there's no name — in the place a table label would normally go on the ticket.

The kitchen display also shows the order's number, and it's the same number the customer was given when they ordered. Order numbers never reset, so on a busy day they won't repeat.

With Collection times in the kitchen switched on, the card also carries a TAKEAWAY badge and the collection time itself — 13:00, or Tomorrow 08:30 for an order placed the night before. An order taken as takeaway on the till gets the badge but no time, because there isn't one to show: it was rung up to be collected there and then.

Both appear on their own, with nothing to set up. If you'd rather they sat somewhere else on the card, add Order kind or Pickup time to your screen layout — put one of them on the card yourself, as its own variable block, and it renders where you put it, and the automatic badge switches off so you never see it twice. Take it off the layout again and the automatic badge comes back. A layout you've never edited is unaffected. Writing the variable into a Text block instead is just wording: the time fills in, and the automatic badge still shows.

The same applies to the customer's note and their guest tags below — both appear on their own, and both move if you place them.

The footer: a second place to put them

A screen card now has three parts — the coloured header bar, the dish list, and a footer under it. Order-wide variables work in either the header or the footer, so you can leave the header for what the kitchen reads first (the order number and the collection time) and put the quieter detail underneath.

For a collection that is usually the footer's job: the customer's name, the till it came from, or a line of your own wording such as Collection · {{order.pickup_time}} — which prints the time in your sentence and leaves the automatic badge where it is, so it reads in both places. Click a block on the card and use the Move arrows in the settings rail to move it between the header and the footer, or just drag it. Placing the Pickup time variable block in the footer suppresses the automatic badge exactly as placing it in the header does — it is placed that matters, not where.

Both parts can be split into sections of one line or 1–4 columns — a four-column row reading order number · pickup time · customer · till is a common collection header. The automatic TAKEAWAY badge and collection time sit on the first row of the header when that row is a single line; if your first row is columns, they get a small line of their own under your rows, so a layout can never hide them.

A collect ticket's card can also carry any of the other variables a kitchen screen offers — the takeaway number, the pickup time, your business or location details, or your own wording with values mixed in (Collection {{order.takeout_number}}). See Screen layout fields for the full list. The editor's card has an Order type switch — set it to Collection to see a collect order exactly as the kitchen will.

Two things about collect specifically. It has no table, so a Table block shows nothing on those tickets — that is the order type, not a fault. And a collect order has no team member, because nobody rang it in, so a Team member block is blank too. If you want one line that copes with both, place Placed by: it reads Takeaway on a collect order and the team member's name on one rung in at the till.

QR is a different thing again, and easy to confuse with collect because both are placed by the guest. A QR order is the guest scanning the code at a table, so it keeps its table and has no pickup time. Order kind says so directly — a scanned order reads Dine in QR, the same table rung in by a server reads Dine in, and a collection reads Takeaway either way. Switch between Collection and QR in the editor to see the difference.

Note

On a one card per table screen your header and footer do apply: the header replaces what normally sits in the coloured bar, and the footer sits under the last course. One card holds several rounds, so time, order number and course show the oldest round still cooking. A collection rarely lands on one of those screens — they are for table service — and when it does, the TAKEAWAY badge and collection time show there too.

Like any other kitchen ticket, a collect ticket's items can be grouped under your top-level menu categories (e.g. Food then Drinks) on the kitchen screen — turn on Group items by parent category in the screen layout assigned to the station.

On the printed chit, a collect order splits the same way as any other: a printed ticket whose Items blocks are filtered by category or by course lays a collect order out under those same headings, using the course each item has on your menu. A collect order is never "coursed" in the kitchen — it leaves in one bag at its collection time — but if your chit is laid out STARTERS / MAINS, a collect order reads that way too rather than landing in the catch-all section at the bottom. See design a printer ticket.

Note

This is about the printed chit, not the screen. The pickup time isn't printed on a chit by default; you can add it through the ticket editor, which controls what each printed ticket shows. On a kitchen screen, the collection time appears on its own once Collection times in the kitchen is on — there is nothing to configure.

Allergies the customer declared

If a customer declares an allergy when they order, the kitchen sees it on the ticket as a Diner declared line listing what they told you.

This shows for every venue running a kitchen screen. You do not need stock or recipe setup switched on for it — the line is simply what the customer typed, passed straight through.

Heads up

The Diner declared line is what the customer told you, not a check of what's in the dish. Matching a declared allergy against the ingredients of each item is a separate feature that does need your recipes set up, and it shows as its own warning on the affected item. Treat the declared line as information from the customer, and keep your normal allergen checks.

If nothing was declared, no line is printed and nothing changes on the ticket.

Tags about the guest

A kitchen ticket can also carry guest tags — the labels your team puts on a person, shown under the customer's note as small dark chips.

Only tags you have deliberately sent there appear. A tag reaches the kitchen when somebody has opened it under Customers → Customer tags and ticked Show on kitchen ticket; every other tag stays off the ticket, which is the default. If the order has no customer attached, or the customer's tags are all un-ticked, nothing is printed and the ticket looks exactly as it did before.

Unless you have placed Guest tags on your screen layout yourself, the chips sit below the Diner declared line and are styled to look nothing like it, on purpose: a tag is something your team wrote down about a guest, and a declared allergy is something the customer told you. They are not the same claim and the ticket must not let them read as one.

A note from the customer

If you have switched on Let guests add a note for this journey, anything the customer typed at checkout shows on the ticket in quotes, under the items.

It is one note for the whole order — "we're in the garden", "please knock, the buzzer is broken" — not a note on a single dish. Dish-level notes still appear under the dish they belong to, as they always have.

Heads up

A customer note is not an allergy declaration and is deliberately not styled like one. Allergies have their own question at checkout and their own Diner declared line above. If someone writes about an allergy in the note box instead, it has not been through any allergy check — treat it as a prompt to ask them, not as a declaration.

If they wrote nothing, or you have the box switched off, nothing is printed and the ticket is unchanged.

Marking it ready

There's nothing collect-specific about completing the food. The order behaves like any other ticket:

  • On a KDS, staff bump the ticket when the food's done, the same as a dine-in or takeaway order. See KDS overview.
  • On a printed ticket, the kitchen works it like any other chit.

Old orders on the screen

Nothing clears a kitchen ticket except someone pressing Bump on the screen. Taking payment doesn't do it, and closing the tab doesn't either. So if a station's screen isn't being watched during service, its tickets stay on the board.

To stop that turning into months of history, the screen only shows orders from the last 12 hours. Anything older sits behind a line at the top of the board that tells you how many there are:

  • Show them lists the hidden orders so you can see what they were. They're read-only — there's nothing left to cook.
  • Clear all clears the whole backlog at once, so you don't have to bump them one at a time. It asks you to confirm first, and it can only ever touch orders that are already hidden — never a live one on the board.

If a ticket won't bump, check every dish on it is ticked green. A dish left part-ticked (amber) still counts as outstanding.

Settling versus marking ready

Marking the food ready in the kitchen is separate from settling the order. The customer still pays at the till when they arrive — see Settle a collect order at the till.

What's next