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KDS across multiple locations

How kitchen stations work when you run more than one site — per-location stations, routing one location at a time, and where tickets show their source.

If you run more than one trading site, KDS works much the same — with a few things to know about how stations and routing relate to locations. Single-site merchants can skip this article; you'll never see the location choices it describes.

Note

KDS must be switched on for your account. If you don't see the KDS section, ask your account manager.

Each station belongs to one location

A station lives at a single site. When you create one, the form asks which location it belongs to, preselected to your default site (single-site accounts don't see this — there's only one place it can be). There is no "every site" choice: a grill at Site A and a grill at Site B are two separate stations, each with its own screen links and printers.

An older station created before locations existed may have no site set. It is shown as All locations on the routing page and it receives orders from every site — open it on Stations and give it a location if that isn't what you want.

The Stations list shows each station's location, and once you have more than one site it also gets a location filter so you can look at one site's kitchen at a time. On a station's page, the printer picker offers the station's own site's printers (plus any printer without a site) — so a chit can't be sent to another building by mistake.

Route one location at a time

Menu routing has a Location picker at the top. Pick a site and the page narrows to it: you see that site's stations (plus any station that serves all locations) and the items on menus that site is served. Every station button is labelled with its location either way, so two screens both called "Kitchen" are never confused for one another.

A route still belongs to a station, and a station belongs to one site — so routing the same dish at both sites is normal and correct, not a duplicate. In practice: pick Site A, route "Burger" to its kitchen; switch to Site B, route "Burger" to its kitchen. Each site's kitchen then sees its own burgers, and tapping a station at one site never disturbs the routes you set at the other.

Note

Which items you see is decided by your menus. Items don't carry a location of their own yet, so "available at this site" means "on a menu this site is served" — set on Menus → Settings by excluding a menu from a site. Items that are on no menu are never hidden: they get their own Not on any menu group, because a keypad sale can still ring one up.

The single-station shortcut (with only one station, everything routes to it automatically) counts stations at each site: with one station at each of two sites, each site's orders automatically route to that site's own station — no menu routing needed, and no unrouted warning, because nothing is wrong. Orders placed at a site create kitchen tickets only at that site's stations.

Heads up

Unrouted items still bite once any one site runs two or more stations. At that site routing is manual for every item — and an item routed to no station is costly: on an order rung up on the till it stops the whole order reaching the kitchen, silently. Both Menu routing and Stations show a banner naming anything unrouted; check it after adding a station, and after adding menu items.

The banner counts per site and names the site it means, so it stays quiet for a site that has one station and speaks up only about the site that actually needs routing.

Note

A site with no station at all gets its own message. It isn't a routing problem — there is nowhere for that site's orders to go, so no amount of routing will help. The banner names the site and says nothing ordered there reaches a kitchen, and it doesn't list items, because none of them could be routed anywhere. Give that site a station on Stations if it needs one.

Tickets carry their source

A kitchen ticket carries the table or area the order came from, so the kitchen can tell which part of the venue — and which site — an order belongs to. That context rides along with the ticket automatically; there's nothing to set up.

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