Kitchen Display Systems (KDS) are becoming a must-have technology in the restaurant industry. At its core, a KDS is a digital system of screens that manages food orders between the front of house, off-premise and back of house to help restaurants prioritize, organize, change, and track orders. 

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Fortunately, KDS technology can be relatively cheap and easy to implement. 

Features of a Basic KDS

Different KDSs may have varying features, but each tends to have these features:

Order Management 

This feature helps you separate orders based on their type, for example dine-in, take-out, drive thru, etc. Knowing the order type is important so the kitchen knows how to package the order, and separating orders by type allows you to prioritize orders based on how quickly you need them to be ready.

Sending Information to Different Kitchen Stations:

There are many moving parts in the kitchen of a restaurant, and it can be difficult to communicate between the different stations of the kitchen. 

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A KDS can route menu items to the appropriate stations so employees only see the items they are responsible for preparing. This helps increase speed and efficiency.

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POS Integration:

Point Of Sale (POS) software is also important for a growing business. The KDS must get order information from the POS, so it’s important that you make sure that the KDS you are purchasing integrates with your POS. Most POS systems force users to utilize their native KDS solution, but Fresh KDS, for example, integrates with multiple POS to add flexibility for restaurant operators. 

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Speed of Service Tracking

Unlike paper tickets, kitchen display systems usually show the amount of time an order has been open. The orders change from green, to yellow, to red the longer they are open. This visual indicator helps employees stay on track with preparing orders quickly. Bumping orders saves time, which allows operators to review speed of service performance and identify bottlenecks.

Benefits of Fresh KDS 

Using Fresh KDS helps restaurants eliminate errors, reduce ticket times, and decrease their monthly costs. But, that’s not all. Several additional benefits include:

• Everything is digital.

• For restaurants, this means no more torn, dirty, burned, or lost order papers, which are a common occurrence in most restaurants and lead to costly errors. The need for handwritten orders is removed, resulting in less confusion from difficult-to-read handwriting.
  
  

• Information is centralized.

• In a digital world with increased online ordering and delivery, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Ordering food used to be extremely straightforward - a person in front of you ordered food from your menu. Now, orders come in from a variety of digital and in-person sources, and Fresh KDS provides a single source of information that everyone can access. This information helps to avoid miscommunications and eliminates the need to rely on verbal, handwritten, or printed updates which can get lost or smudged. 
  
  

• Detailed analytics with actionable results.

• Fresh KDS can use information to create operational reports, which helps your business improve efficiency. You can see information like the time it takes to prepare specific dishes and whether performance suffers on certain days or other time periods. 

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