Kitchen and printing

Printers, routes, the kitchen screen, and what the ticket and the receipt say.

How do food orders get from the till to the kitchen?

Every item has a route, and a route points at a printer, a kitchen screen, or both. When the order is sent, the food lines print at the kitchen and the drinks at the bar, each with the table number and any modifiers. Voiding a line strikes it off the kitchen screen too.

Routes

Settings → Printing

A route is a place work goes: the kitchen, the bar, the pass. Every item on the menu points at one, or at nothing if it is just a bill line — a chocolate bar needs nobody to make it.

A route can be pointed at a printer, at a screen, or at both. That single choice is what stops the bar’s drinks appearing on the kitchen’s display and the kitchen’s tickets printing behind the bar.

Printing settings: printers, routes, and the receipt and ticket layout editors — ESC/POS receipt printers — the ones every till supplier sells. Add one, then press Test print, which is the only way to know.

A printer is either on the network, added by its address and port — hold FEED while switching most of them on and they print their own address — or plugged into the machine CoinOp runs on, chosen from the printers that machine already has. CoinOp lists them, so the name is picked rather than spelled: on Windows a printer’s name and its share are different strings and only one of them works, and a trailing “(Copy 1)” is invisible until a receipt does not come out.

A USB printer on Windows does not need to be shared. CoinOp sends raw ESC/POS through the Windows spooler by name.

The kitchen screen

What is waiting, and how long it has waited. Bump it when it goes out — off the board, and still on the bill.

A kitchen display is a browser on the same network, enrolled as a device, with the routes it should show pointed at it. It needs no keyboard and nobody signs into it during service.

The kitchen display with four tickets, each headed by the table that ordered it, and a bump button — Tickets arrive as they are rung up, headed by the table, tab or sale they belong to, with modifiers and notes underneath. The timer on each one is how long it has been waiting.

Bump takes a ticket off the screen when it goes out.
Recall brings back the last one, for when it is bumped by a sleeve.
Sound makes a new ticket audible over an extractor fan. Browsers require one press of Test before they will make noise.
A− and A+ set the text size for that screen — a display three metres from the pass needs bigger type than one at head height.

A device enrolled as a kitchen screen with no route pointed at it shows nothing, on purpose, and says so. It used to show everything, which put the kitchen’s work on a floor tablet and let somebody bump a ticket there — taking it off the screen of the person who still had to cook it.

What the ticket and the receipt say

Both are laid out in CoinOp, on the Printing page, and previewed as you change them. The receipt carries your venue name, your TRN, the tax breakdown a VAT invoice needs, and whatever footer you want at the bottom. A logo can go at the top.

The kitchen ticket is deliberately plainer: the source, the items, the modifiers, the time. Nothing that is not needed by the person reading it in a hurry.

If a printer is unplugged

The order is still taken and still on the bill. CoinOp tells you the print failed rather than losing the ticket quietly, and a route pointed at a screen as well as a printer means the kitchen still sees it.