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Route menu items to stations

Tell the kitchen which station makes each item so tickets fire to the right screen or printer.

Menu routing is where you decide which kitchen station makes each item. Once an item is routed to a station, it appears on that station's ticket when it's ordered. An item can go to more than one station.

You find it under KDS → Menu routing.

Note

KDS must be switched on for your account for this to appear. If you don't see it, ask your account manager.

Before you start

You need at least one station. If you haven't created any yet, the page shows a prompt to go to Stations first. Set those up, then come back here.

Note

Only one station? Then you're done — every item automatically goes to it, and this page shows a note saying so instead of the unrouted warning. Routing only needs setting up once you have two or more stations. You can still set routes ahead of time; they take effect when you add a second station.

If you run more than one site, this is counted per location: one station at each of two sites means both are automatic, and neither needs routing.

Choose the location you're routing (multiple sites only)

If you run more than one trading site, a Location picker sits at the top of the page. Pick a site and the page narrows to it:

  • Stations — you see that site's stations, plus any station that serves all locations. Every station button is labelled with the site it belongs to, so two screens both called "Kitchen" can't be confused.
  • Items — you see the items on menus that site actually serves.

Without this, two sites with a "Kitchen" each showed two identical buttons, and picking the wrong one sent that site's food to the other building's screen.

Note

What "items available at a location" means today. Items don't yet carry a location of their own — availability is set at the menu level, on Menus → Settings, by excluding a menu from a site. So this filter shows the items on menus that site is served. An item on no menu at all is never hidden by the filter: it appears in a Not on any menu group at the bottom, because you can still ring it up from the keypad and it still needs a route.

Leave the picker on All locations and nothing is filtered — you see every station and every item, as before. In that view the page asks you to pick a location before you set routes, because a station only ever receives orders from its own site. The unrouted warning above it still works on All locations: it names each site that has a problem, rather than adding them up into one number.

Single-site accounts don't see the picker, the labels or any of this wording.

How the page is laid out

Your whole menu is shown grouped by category. Each item has a row of buttons — one per station. A button is highlighted when the item is routed to that station. There's a search box at the top to jump to an item by name.

Each station button shows a small icon: a screen icon for stations that display on a screen, a printer icon for stations that print. If you run more than one site, it also shows the station's location.

Items sit under their category. Two groups always come last: Uncategorised (on a menu, but in no category) and Not on any menu (in your product list but on no menu — still routable, because a keypad sale can ring one up).

Route an item

  1. 1

    Find the item

    Scroll to its category or type its name in the search box. If you got here from the menu Assistant's approval card, the search box is already filled in with your new product — it's the one row on screen.

  2. 2

    Tap the station buttons

    Tap a station to route the item there; tap again to remove it. Highlighted means routed. You can route one item to several stations.

Changes save as you make them — there's no separate save button. If a change can't be saved, the page shows an error and undoes it.

Note

Filtering by location never touches another site's routes. When a location is selected, tapping a station only changes that item's routes among the stations you can see. The routes you set at your other sites are left exactly as they were.

Set a dish's course, on the same row

If your account has courses switched on, each item also gets a row of Course buttons, in their own column between the dish name and its station buttons. They work exactly like the station buttons: tap one to set it, tap it again to clear it. Saved straight away, no separate save button.

A dish has one course, so only one of those buttons is ever on. A dish can go to several stations, so any number of those can be on. The headings above each column say so.

This is the same course you'd set on the Courses page, because a dish carries one course across your whole account. Set it here or set it there; it's one value either way, and it applies on every menu the dish appears on. Both pages exist because they answer different questions: Courses tells you how many of your dishes still have none, and Menu routing lets you finish a dish off, station and course together, without leaving the page.

The heading above the list names the course structure the dropdown is offering, so if you have more than one you can see which is in force.

Note

No Course dropdown? Courses are a separate feature from KDS. They also drive how the till groups a table's order, so they're switched on independently. If you have kitchen screens but not courses, this page works exactly as described everywhere else and simply has no Course column. Ask your account manager if you want it turned on.

Change a lot of dishes at once

Every row has a tickbox, and so does each category header. Tick what you want and a black bar appears at the bottom of the screen with the whole selection in it. Choose a course, or a station, or both, then press Apply.

  1. 1

    Tick the dishes

    Row by row, or the tickbox in a category header to take that whole category. Your selection can span more than one category, and the bar keeps counting.

  2. 2

    Choose what to set

    A course, a station, or one of each. Next to the station you choose Add or Remove. The line under the bar spells out what pressing Apply will do before you press it.

  3. 3

    Press Apply

    It applies to everything you ticked, and the selection clears.

Note

A course replaces, a station adds. Setting a course on a selection replaces whatever course those dishes had, because a dish only ever has one. Adding a station leaves the stations they already had alone, because a dish can be made in more than one place. Use Remove to take a station off a set of dishes.

Note

Searching clears your selection. If you type in the search box while dishes are ticked, the selection is dropped rather than quietly left on rows you can no longer see. Search first, then tick, and the category tickbox takes just the dishes the search left on screen. That's the quick way to do something like "everything fried goes to the fryer".

Stations that see everything (expo)

Some stations are set up as expo stations, which see every item regardless of routing. Their button shows a hint to that effect. You don't need to route items to an expo station — it gets them all. (You choose whether a station is prep or expo when you set it up; see Station kinds: prep vs expo.)

Items not routed anywhere

With two or more stations at a location, the page (and Stations) lists the items that aren't routed to any station there, so you can check that's what you meant.

Note

An item with no station simply isn't sent to the kitchen — on every kind of order. Think of a pint at a pub: the bar staff pour it, nobody needs a ticket. The item still sells and stays on the bill, and everything else on the same order still goes to its own stations. Sending the order never fails because of it.

So the list is a check, not an error: leave drinks or anything staff serve straight away unrouted if you like, and route anything the kitchen has to make. (With a single station there's nothing to check — everything goes there automatically.)

Note

A site with no kitchen screen at all is a different message. If one of your sites has no station, routing can't fix it — there is nowhere for its orders to go. The banner says so in those words — the site's own name, then "has no kitchen station, so nothing ordered there reaches a kitchen" — and it doesn't list items, because none of them can be routed anywhere useful. Add a station for that site on Stations if it needs one; if that site genuinely has no kitchen, there's nothing to do.

One case this can't catch: a keypad or "Custom amount" sale has no menu item to route in the first place, so it can never show up as "unrouted" here. With two or more stations it goes to no kitchen station, like any unrouted item; the rest of the order still reaches the kitchen.

Heads up

If you see a banner about "legacy category-level routes" from an older version of this page, it means some items are being routed by an older rule that isn't shown here. Re-tap a station for an affected item to give it an explicit route (an item's own route always wins), or contact support to clear the old rules.

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