Get Started With the Kitchen Display System

In this Article:

• Kitchen Display System Overview
  • Basic KDS Navigation
• KDS Hardware
• Required Permissions
• Additional Resources

Kitchen Display System Overview

Toast Kitchen Display System (KDS) seamlessly connects your front of house and kitchen staff so they can deliver unforgettable meals. KDS features include:

• All Day View and production item counts
• Multiple language support
• Advanced prep station routing
• Kitchen productivity reporting
• SMS & in-app alerts
• Automated firing by prep time
• Color-coded modifiers

To add the KDS module to your account, contact your Toast Sales representative or your Customer Success Manager.

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Basic KDS Navigation 

When an order is placed, tickets will appear on the KDS. You can scroll from left to right to view the open tickets and tap a ticket to fulfill an entire order or a specific item in the order.  Tickets will show in order of when they were fired, with the oldest tickets on the left and the newest on the right. You can set your KDS as a prep station or an expediter within Device Settings. You can change these at any time.

KDS that are configured to be expediters will see the entire order on a ticket, and KDS that are set to prep stations will only see items on tickets that pertain to that prep station. 

On the top right of the KDS screen, you'll see four buttons. These buttons provide more information and options on your KDS:

• All Day View: When you select Show All Day View - your screen will change to show you how many specific items need to be prepared. All Day View makes it easy to see a condensed list of totaled menu items without searching through every ticket to see what can be made at the same time. To go back to the ticket view, select Hide All Day View. You can always toggle back and forth.
• Show Recently Fulfilled: The Show Recently Fulfilled button will display tickets that you recently fulfilled to make it easy to see what’s been completed already and unfulfill those tickets if needed. These tickets are in green and will always be on your screen's left. Select Hide Recently Fulfilled to remove these tickets.
  • Note: At this time, the recently fulfilled tickets here do not show timestamps when they were closed.
• Recall: The Recall button will re-open the last ticket you fulfilled. This is helpful if, say, you accidentally bump into a ticket that isn’t ready yet. Recalled tickets will say RECALLED in red at the top. You can recall multiple tickets by tapping the button multiple times. 
• Device Settings: The three-dot icon in the top right corner allows you to select different configuration options on that specific device, like how tickets are displayed, which tickets are displayed, and whether this device is an Expediter or Prep Station through Device Setup.

Here are a few more high-level settings on your KDS:

Production Item Count- Whereas All Day View summarizes orders at the item level, Production Item Count summarizes at the ingredient level. This helps cooks know at a glance how many of each ingredient is needed to fulfill all of the active orders at any given moment. This ensures that high volumes of orders can be fulfilled quickly without taking time to read through a bunch of KDS tickets. For example, if there are five active orders for Double Cheeseburgers, the Production Item Count would show 10 Burger Patties.

• To see Production Items on your KDS, you will need to first need to configure these settings in Toast Web and then after that, enable which ones you want to track on your KDS. To learn how to do this, check out the article 

Offline Mode - In the event of a Toast or internet outage, your KDS can still receive in-store orders. Through your local area network, Your staff can continue service as usual. Online orders cannot be received when there is an internet or Toast outage. 

KDS Hardware

You can purchase kitchen displays for your restaurant on Toast Shop (learn more: ). Options include 22" or 14" screens that can be mounted on the wall or a universal mount, or placed on the counter.

If your restaurant already has the KDS module, users with the required permissions can switch to KDS mode on any Toast terminal by navigating to the main menu of the Toast app and selecting Kitchen Display System (KDS) from the Mode section.

Required KDS Permissions 

In order to access KDS mode on a device, the employee who is signed in must have the 1.3 Kitchen Display System Mode permission assigned to their user account.

To access all device setup options related to the KDS, the 7.3 KDS and Order Screen Setup permission is also required. See the  to learn more.
 

Additional Resources