Kitchen display system: when a screen beats paper

A kitchen display system is a screen at the pass showing orders as they arrive, instead of a printer producing paper tickets.

It is not automatically an upgrade. It is better than paper at four specific things and worse at one, and knowing which is which is the whole decision.

What a screen is genuinely better at

Timing. A ticket on paper has no idea how long it has been sitting there. A screen counts, and it can change colour when an order passes the point where somebody should have noticed. On a busy evening that single feature does more than everything else combined.

Sequencing. Paper arrives in the order it was printed. A screen can group by course, by station, or by which items take longest, so the grill and the fryer are not each working from the same piece of paper.

Not running out. Printers jam, run out of paper, and do so at the worst moment. A screen does not.

Recall. An order that has been cleared can be brought back. On paper, a bin is a bin.

What paper is still better at

One thing, and it is not trivial: a paper ticket can travel with the food.

It goes on the counter, onto a bag, into a rider's hand. It is a physical token that says this order exists and belongs to that bag. Kitchens that pack takeaway and delivery frequently keep a printer for exactly this, alongside a screen, and that is a sensible arrangement rather than a failure to commit.

What to check before buying one

What happens when the connection drops. Ask for the limit in minutes, not adjectives, and ask what happens to orders that arrived during it.
Whether it can be used with wet or gloved hands. Ask to try it. This is a real problem and a demo on a clean desk hides it.
How it handles a modified order. Somebody changes an item after it is fired. Does the screen say so clearly, or quietly change a line nobody re-reads?
Whether it takes orders from more than one source. A screen fed only by the counter is half useless in a restaurant that also takes delivery and messages.
Screen size and mounting. Grease, heat and steam are the working environment. Ask what the warranty says about a kitchen.

That fourth question is the one that separates products. A kitchen display system inside a restaurant management system usually only shows what that system's own counter produced, and your other orders arrive somewhere else entirely.

"Half the kitchens we see have a screen for the counter's orders and a phone on the wall for everything else. The screen was sold as the fix and it only ever saw part of the traffic."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

Where the orders should come from

A screen is only as useful as what feeds it. In this market a large share of orders arrive as messages, and WhatsApp is the channel rather than a workaround, with a documented platform built for business use.

The ordering layer that handles those needs no hardware and runs beside whatever counter system you own:

Your own ordering page, with 12 page layouts so the menu reads the way you want it to.
A QR menu for the tables and the window, printed from a designer rather than a generic sticker.
Table routing. The code carries the table, so the kitchen ticket already says where it is going.
A menu you edit yourself, with options and add-ons carrying their own prices, and required choices the kitchen can trust. That last setting is the one that stops a ticket arriving with a decision missing.
Orders that price themselves. Every line is re-priced from your live menu at checkout.
Messages nobody types. A confirmation to the customer the moment they order, a ticket to the kitchen, and for delivery a link carrying the GPS pin dropped at checkout. That is 3 messages in about 2 seconds.
Live stock on items and on options, greying out what has gone, so the kitchen is not told to make something that ran out an hour ago.
One bill for a group, with everybody ordering from their own phone.
Loyalty stamps, and tiers your regulars grow into, each carrying its own automatic discount.
A wallet card in the customer's phone with no app to install, with a designer for the card's colours and logo.
VAT invoices carrying your TRN, downloaded as a PDF without the customer logging in.
Coupons, upsells and bundles with caps, exclusions and expiry dates, and never two automatic discounts at once.

The POS add-on includes a kitchen screen: pair an Android tablet or phone and counter, table, ordering-page and delivery-app orders show up as tickets, per station if you like. Either way, Get Menu makes sure the ticket is complete: every required choice made, every option priced, and the table or the address already attached.

Who actually has to like it

The person who decides on a kitchen screen is usually not the person who will use it for 10 hours a day, and that gap is why some of these end up unplugged after a month.

Bring the head chef or the senior cook into the demo, and let them drive it rather than watch. Ask them three things afterwards: could you see the oldest order without hunting for it, could you tell at a glance which station each item belongs to, and did anything require two hands.

If the answer to the last one is yes, it will be used wrongly, because in a kitchen the second hand is holding something. That is not a small objection, it is the whole reason paper survived this long.

The cheaper first step

Before buying screens, try fixing the tickets.

Most kitchens that feel they need a display system are actually suffering from incomplete tickets and orders arriving through three different doors. A ticket with every choice on it, arriving from one place, removes most of the shouting on its own. If the timing problem survives that, buy the screen, and you will buy the right one because you will know exactly what you need it to do.

Our trial runs 15 days without a card, which is enough to find out. Pricing sits on the pricing page rather than in this article. Payment is cash or your own card machine at the door or the table, with no online payments in the system, so no card details are held in it and old order details clear automatically after 120 days.

Frequently asked questions

Is a kitchen display system better than a printer?

Better at timing, sequencing, never running out and recalling a cleared order. Worse at one thing that matters for takeaway: a paper ticket travels with the food. Many kitchens run both.

Does Get Menu include a kitchen display system?

Yes, with the POS add-on, which includes a kitchen screen on a tablet or phone. Without it, Get Menu sends a complete kitchen ticket, with every required choice made and the table or address attached.

What should I check first?

Offline behaviour, whether it works with wet or gloved hands, how it shows a modified order, and whether it can accept orders from more than one source.

Will it work in a hot kitchen?

Ask what the warranty says about grease, heat and steam specifically, and get the answer in writing before you buy.

How do customers pay?

Cash or your own card machine when the food arrives. The ordering page never takes payment, and the POS only records how a sale was paid.