Kitchen Display
The kitchen display (KDS) is a live ticket screen for the kitchen, at Admin → Kitchen display (/admin/kds). It's built for a tablet mounted where cooks can see it, and it refreshes on its own — nobody needs to reload anything.
You can run the KDS instead of paper tickets, or alongside them. Many kitchens do both: the screen for timing and the printed chit for the pass.
The three lanes
| Lane | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | Just arrived, not started |
| Preparing | Being made |
| Ready | Done, waiting for handoff |
A ticket moves left to right. Tapping it advances it to the next lane — one tap, which is all anyone with full hands is going to do.
Moving a ticket to Ready notifies the customer their order is ready. That's automatic.
Timers and urgency
Every ticket shows how long it's been waiting, and tickets change appearance as they age so an old one is visible from across the kitchen without reading a clock.
Order matters: the lanes are sorted so the most urgent ticket is the one you should be working on. On a scheduled order, the timer reflects when the food is due, not when it was placed — an order placed at 2pm for 6pm pickup shouldn't look late all afternoon.
What's on a ticket
- Order number and the customer's name
- Every item with quantity
- Modifiers under each item
- Combo selections, itemized — see Bundles & Combos
- Item notes (allergies, "no onions")
- The order type — pickup, delivery, or dine-in — and the pickup time
Tickets show what's needed to cook, not prices.
Setting up the tablet
- On the kitchen tablet, open the ForkLine admin and sign in with an account that has kitchen access.
- Go to Admin → Kitchen display.
- Use fullscreen to hide browser chrome.
- Set the tablet's display to never sleep — the single most common KDS complaint is a screen that went dark.
Install it as an app
On iPad: Share → Add to Home Screen while the kitchen display is open. On Android Chrome: Install app.
This gives you a chromeless app icon with no address bar, and staff stay signed in inside it.
On iPad, be on the kitchen display page when you add it. iOS pins whatever page is open at that moment. Adding it from the dashboard gives you a dashboard icon.
Kitchen-only accounts
Staff who only work the line should have the Kitchen role. They can use the display and move orders through prep, and see nothing else — no menu, no settings, no revenue, no customer data.
Create these under Admin → Users. See Users & Roles.
Troubleshooting
Tickets aren't appearing. Check the tablet's network first. Then confirm orders are actually arriving in Admin → Orders — if they aren't there either, it's not a KDS problem. Check the dashboard for alerts.
The screen went to sleep. Set the tablet to never sleep while charging.
Staff got signed out. Sessions expire eventually. Sign back in; installing as a home-screen app makes this much rarer.
A ticket won't advance. Confirm the account has kitchen permissions. Kitchen accounts can move orders forward, not backward.
Where to go next
- Managing Orders — the manager's view of the same orders
- Receipt Layout — printed kitchen tickets
- Users & Roles — kitchen-only accounts
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