How to set up your prep stations and kitchen display

What the kitchen display and a prep station are

A kitchen, here, is a prep station: the grill, the cold station, the bar, the pastry station. Each one has its own screen — the kitchen display — which you open on a TV, a wall-mounted tablet or an old laptop at the station. The screen shows only that station's items, live, has its own password and, if you want, also sends the order to a thermal printer.

The menu is what ties it all together: every item has a station in charge of it. When the waiter sends Table 7's tab with a picanha and two beers, the order splits up on its own as it's sent — the picanha shows up at the grill, the beers at the bar. Nobody shouts anything across the dining room, nobody types the same order twice, and each station works at its own pace.

Why separate hot, cold and bar

• Each station sees only what it prepares. The bar doesn't have to scroll past a dessert, and the grill doesn't lose a rack of ribs in the middle of ten lines of drinks.
• The order splits up without anyone deciding anything. The waiter builds a single tab; the split by station happens when it's sent, based on what's set up in the Menu.
• Each station moves at its own pace. The beer goes out in a minute and disappears from the bar's screen; the ribs stay on the grill's screen, without holding up the rest of the order.
• No more lost slips or shouting across the dining room. The screen is the official queue, and when the station marks READY the waiter gets the alert instantly, on their phone.

Step by step: create and open each station

You can do it all from the Dashboard, in one go, without installing anything anywhere.

1. Open the Kitchens screen

   On the Dashboard, scroll down to Manage restaurant and open the Kitchens card. Every restaurant starts with one station called Kitchen, and it receives everything until you create the others. The screen is a grid of cards: one card per station, with the screen's link, the password and how many orders are in the queue at that moment.

2. Create a station for each work area

   Click New kitchen, give it a name the crew can recognize from a distance (Grill, Cold, Bar, Pastry) and choose a password of at least 4 characters. Confirm with Create kitchen and the card shows up right away, with the screen's link ready. Repeat for each station that prepares a different kind of thing — if your restaurant is small, a single station does the job.

3. Note the screen's password

   On the card, the Display password box keeps the password in plain text: click the eye to see it and pass it on to the station's crew. It's a password for a shared device, not your account password, so it can be short and easy to say out loud. When someone leaves the team, the Change button sets a new password and the device asks for the new one the next time it's opened.

4. Open the screen at the station

   Copy the Display link (something like qmen.us/your-restaurant/k/1/) and open it on the device that will stay at the station. You type the password once per device and the screen stays signed in; if the tablet has no physical keyboard, the on-screen keyboard button takes care of it. Orders come in on their own, without refreshing the page, and while nothing has arrived the screen shows "No pending orders."

5. Point each menu item to its station

   Go to Menu, open each item and choose its Default kitchen. This field is what makes the order split up on its own: the picanha goes to the grill, the draft beer goes to the bar, and each screen shows only its part. An item with no station set goes to the first active kitchen on the list, so it's worth checking your older items after creating new stations.

   Tip: For a custom item — the one the waiter types in on the spot — the waiter picks the station, right in the tab.

6. Choose how the station marks things done

   In Settings, the Complete item by item switch sets the station's rhythm. When it's on, each line gets a READY? button and disappears from the screen on its own as soon as it's ready. When it's off, the station closes out the whole order at once with ORDER READY?. Either way, the item turns Ready and the waiter is alerted instantly to come pick it up.

7. Turn on the thermal printer (optional)

   On the station's card, click Set up under Printing and turn on Print orders. Choose the paper width (80 mm or 58 mm) and how many copies print for each order, from 1 to 5. The screen gives you an address and a token to paste into the print app running at the restaurant — the printer backs up the screen, it doesn't replace it.

8. Rename or deactivate without breaking anything

   You can rename the station whenever you like with Rename, and the screen's link stays the same. In the same place you can deactivate the kitchen: it stops receiving new items, but its history stays put. With Remove, if the station already has items in its history it's deactivated instead of deleted — and the restaurant is never left without a kitchen.

Frequently asked questions

Glossary

Kitchen

The display where orders show up and move from Preparing to READY.

Prep station

The station that makes one kind of thing: grill, cold station, bar, pastry.

Kitchen display

The wall screen that shows that prep station's queue live, protected by a password.

Default kitchen

The field on a menu item that says which prep station makes that item.

Custom item

An item the waiter types in on the spot, picking its prep station by hand.

Ready

An item's status after the prep station marks it done; the waiter is alerted right away.

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