Routing Orders to Your Kitchen Printer and KDS

Online orders are useless if your kitchen does not know about them. OrderFriendly delivers every order to a printer, a screen, or both, in the layout your team is used to.

Three places an order can land

• Kitchen printer — paper ticket, prints automatically on every new order.
• Kitchen Display System (KDS) — a screen with order tiles your line cooks tap when done.
• Tablet or phone alert — for very small kitchens, a beeping tablet works too.

You can use all three at once. Most kitchens use a printer for hot line and a KDS for prep.

Connect a kitchen printer

The fastest is a Clover-connected printer if you signed up through Clover.

1. Open Settings → Devices → Kitchen Printers.
2. Click + Connect Printer.
3. Pick Clover Printer and select the one from the list.
4. Click Print Test Ticket.

A test ticket should appear within five seconds. If it does not, check the printer is on, has paper, and is connected to the same network.

Other printer types

We support most modern receipt printers:

• Network printers (Epson TM-m30 / TM-T20 / TM-L90, Star TSP100 / TSP650, and similar).
• USB printers connected to a computer running a small print agent.
• Bluetooth printers for tablet-based setups.

Open Settings → Devices → Kitchen Printers → + Connect Printer and pick the right type. The wizard walks you through naming, testing, and assigning.

Connect a KDS screen

A KDS is any browser-capable screen — a wall-mounted Android tablet, a kitchen monitor with a tiny PC, an iPad on a stand.

1. Open Settings → Devices → KDS.
2. Click + Add KDS Screen.
3. Name it (Hot Line, Cold Prep, Coffee Bar).
4. We give you a one-time setup code.
5. On the screen, go to kds.orderfriendly.com and enter the code.

The screen will refresh and start showing live orders.

Marking items done

Each item is a tile. Tap once to mark Started. Tap again to mark Done. When every item is done, the whole order moves to the Ready column.

You can change this to a one-tap mode in Settings → KDS → Tap Mode.

Sending the right item to the right place

Most kitchens send hot food to the line and cold items to the prep station. To do this:

1. Open Settings → Devices → Routing Rules.
2. Click + New Rule.
3. Pick When item category is [Burgers, Mains, Hot Sandwiches] send to [Hot Line].
4. Repeat for Salads, Cold Sandwiches, Sides → Cold Prep.
5. Save.

Now a burger ticket prints at the hot line, and the salad part of the same order goes to cold prep. The customer gets one ticket; the kitchen gets two specialized ones.

Reprinting an order

A ticket got torn or covered in sauce. From the Orders screen, open the order and click Reprint. The ticket prints again. Reprints are tagged REPRINT in big letters so the line knows not to double-make the dish.

Pickup vs delivery tickets

Tickets show the service type at the top: PICKUP, DELIVERY, or DINE-IN — TABLE 7. Train your line to look at this first.

Alerts when no one tapped the KDS

If an order has been sitting unstarted for more than five minutes, the dashboard pings whoever has Manager access. Open Settings → Alerts to adjust the threshold or turn it off.

When the printer goes silent

Three quick checks:

1. Power. The light should be on. If not, plug it in and switch on.
2. Paper. A roll lasts about 100 tickets. Replace.
3. Network. Most kitchen printers connect by ethernet. If the cable is loose, swap it.

If all three are good, open the dashboard. The icon next to the printer name should be green. If it is grey or red, click it and choose Reconnect.

For deeper printer issues see Troubleshooting Common Issues.