Kitchen Display System for Restaurants
A kitchen display system — a KDS, or a bump screen — puts every order on a screen in the kitchen instead of on a paper docket. Foodship's kitchen display system is part of the same system as your POS, your online ordering and your QR codes, so an order placed anywhere lands on the right kitchen screen the moment it is sent.
No printer to reload, no docket on the floor, no order anyone missed. Restaurants, cafes and takeaways around Australia run the Foodship KDS, and every setting is scoped to the branch — so a two-venue group can run two kitchens two different ways.
No contract · No setup fee · 1 month free trial
In three numbers
nothing printed, nothing on the floor, nothing thrown out with the roll
grill, fryer, salad, bar — or one kitchen display screen for the whole room
yellow, red and pulsing red, at the minute marks you set yourself
Nine minutes on the kitchen display
One order, from the moment it is sent to the moment it clears off the bump screen — and the record it leaves behind.
Scroll the timeline to follow it →
The order is sent
From the till, the website, a QR code at the table or the kiosk. The kitchen display system does not care which.
Tags decide where it goes
Each item carries its printer-route tag, so the burger goes to the grill and the pint goes to the bar.
It lands on the station screen
With modifiers under each line, the table number, and whether it is dine-in, takeaway or delivery.
The kitchen is told
A chime and a toast in the corner — or a centre modal somebody has to acknowledge.
The badge turns yellow
Three minutes gone. Your warning threshold, your colour.
Lines come off as they fire
The chef bumps each line on the touchscreen as it is plated.
The ticket marks itself Ready
Last line bumped, so front of house knows without anyone calling out.
Thirty seconds on the ticker
The All ready countdown holds it on screen in case it has to be recalled.
The time is recorded
Nine minutes, sent to bumped — on the report with every other ticket that service.
One screen for every order
Walk-in, POS, online, QR at the table and kiosk orders all land on the same kitchen display screen. There is no second system to watch and nothing to re-key, because the restaurant POS system and the KDS are one piece of software rather than two that have been bolted together.
That is the whole point of a POS kitchen display system: the order arrives once, in full, and it arrives in the kitchen.
Counter, online, QR and kiosk orders in one queue on the kitchen screen.
The table number on the card, so nobody has to ask where it is going.
Dine-in, takeaway or delivery marked on every ticket before the first line is read.
Modifiers under the line they belong to — "no onion" sits on the burger.
Route by station, with tags you already use
A KDS station filters the kitchen screen by tag. Each station — grill, fryer, salad, bar, dessert, pizza — is backed by one or more of the printer-route tags you have already set on the Menu Tags screen, so you are not maintaining a second routing table just for the kitchen order display system.
Give the station a name, point it at its tags, set where it sits in the sort order, and turn it on. Pizzas go to the pizza screen. Drinks go to the bar. Sides go to the line.
Stations are built from the printer-route tags already on your menu.
Run one kitchen display monitor for the whole kitchen, or give every section its own.
Multiple kitchen screens cost nothing extra to set up — same list, filtered differently.
Turn a station off for a quiet Tuesday without deleting anything.
Bump, recall and mark lines ready
Chefs bump from the screen. With per-line bumping turned on, each line can be bumped as it fires, and the order marks itself Ready once every line is gone — so front of house knows the plate is up without anyone calling out. Turn it off and the per-line buttons disappear, leaving a single bump for the whole ticket.
Bumped an order by mistake? Recall it. Once an order is bumped, an "All ready" countdown holds it on the ticker before it clears — thirty seconds by default, anywhere from nothing to two minutes, so there is a window to pull it back.
Bump each line as it fires, or bump the whole ticket at once.
The order marks itself Ready when the last line is bumped.
Recall a bumped order while the countdown is still running.
Set the countdown anywhere from zero to two minutes — thirty seconds by default.
Colours that tell you how long a ticket has been sitting
Every ticket carries an elapsed badge, and you set the minutes at which it changes colour. Yellow at your warning threshold, red at danger, pulsing red at critical. A chef glancing at the kitchen display system from across the pass can see which order is in trouble without reading a single number.
Those thresholds are yours. A cafe doing coffee and toasties will want them tighter than a dining room doing steaks.
Yellow at the warning mark, red at danger, pulsing red at critical.
Minutes counted from the moment the order was placed, not from when it was read.
Set tight for a cafe, loose for a dining room — it is a per-branch setting.
Readable from across the pass, which is the only place it matters.
Set the screen up the way your kitchen works
Two layouts. Detailed shows everything. Compact hides line notes and tightens the rows for a high-volume rush, which is what most QSR kitchens run. Switch between them without touching the screen in the kitchen.
Choose what each card shows, and choose which end new tickets arrive at. New first puts the freshest ticket at the top, which suits a screen where the chef pulls from the head. Old first keeps the oldest at the top so nothing slips past. Neither is right for every kitchen, which is why it is a setting.
Detailed or Compact, switched from the admin rather than at the screen.
Show or hide modifiers, the table number and the order type on each card.
Newest on top, or oldest on top so nothing slips past.
Every one of these applies to this branch's kitchen display screens only.
Sound, alerts and an expo screen
A new ticket can land as an unobtrusive toast in the top-right corner, or as a centre modal that demands someone acknowledge it. It can clear itself after a few seconds or stay until a chef taps it. It can chime, or land in silence — and one master audio switch mutes every kitchen screen at once, whatever the individual screens are set to.
Pin any paired KDS terminal as the master screen and it becomes an always-on view of every station at once. That is your expeditor screen: one display at the pass showing what the grill, the fryer and the salad section are each sitting on, while each of those sections sees only its own work.
A corner toast, or a centre modal that has to be acknowledged.
Auto-dismiss after a few seconds, or hold until a chef taps it.
One master audio switch mutes every kitchen screen in the branch.
Pin a terminal as the all-stations expo screen at the pass.
How long every ticket actually took
The elapsed badge tells the kitchen what is late right now. The report tells you what was late last week. Every ticket records the time from when it was sent to when it was bumped, so a service can be read back afterwards instead of argued about.
Look at it by station and you can see which section is holding the pass up. Look at it by hour and you can see whether seven o'clock is genuinely your problem or whether it only feels that way. It is the part of a kitchen display system a printer could never give you.
Time from sent to bumped, recorded on every ticket.
Read it by station to find the section that is holding the pass up.
Read it by hour to find the part of service that actually hurts.
Compare branches on the same measure, not on anyone's recollection.
Online and delivery orders, on the same screen
Online orders are where paper hurts most. A website order prints while the printer is out of paper, or it prints and nobody notices, and the customer is in the car park waiting for food that was never started. A kitchen display system for online orders removes that failure: the order appears on the screen, it ages in front of everyone, and it cannot be thrown out with the roll.
Website orders
Orders from your own online ordering system land on the kitchen screen beside the counter orders, in the order they arrived.
QR and kiosk
A QR code order from table six and a kiosk order at the door reach the same bump screen the same way.
Delivery orders
The order type on the card tells the kitchen it is a delivery before the first line is read, so it is packed rather than plated.
Runs on the screens you already have
The Foodship kitchen display system runs on a modern Android or iOS tablet as well as on a dedicated KDS display, so you can start with a tablet on a stand and move to a mounted kitchen touch screen display later.
A tablet or a TV
An iPad, an Android tablet or a large screen on the wall — paired from the Devices page and it is on.
As many as you need
A screen per station and a master screen at the pass, with no per-screen software licence.
No bump bar to buy
Bumping is done on the touchscreen, so there is no keypad to wire in or keep clean.
Tags you already have
Stations reuse the printer-route tags from the Menu Tags screen rather than a second list.
One system
The KDS, the POS, online ordering, QR and the kiosk all run on one restaurant system.
Set per branch
Every KDS setting applies to one branch, so a group can run each kitchen its own way.
Already have a non-touch monitor and a bump bar? Talk to us before you order the screen.
Cafes, takeaways, QSR and everything in between
The same KDS software runs all of them. The stations change. The system does not.
Cafes
One kitchen display screen behind the machine, compact mode, tight ageing thresholds.
QSR
A screen per station and an expo screen at the pass, because volume is the whole problem.
Takeaway
Order type on every card, so nothing gets plated that should have been packed.
Pizza shops
Dough to one screen, drinks and sides to another, routed on the tags you already use.
Bakeries
Counter and online orders in one queue instead of two piles of paper.
Food trucks
A tablet on the bench. No printer, no roll, no power draw you have to plan for.
What a kitchen display system costs
Most kitchen display system pricing in Australia works out as a monthly fee per screen, on top of whatever you already pay for the POS. Foodship's KDS is part of the platform rather than a separate product with its own licence, so there is no per-screen software fee stacked on top.
You pay for the hardware you choose — a tablet you may already own, or a dedicated display — and the kitchen display system comes with the system that is already taking your orders.
What else feeds the kitchen screen
Each one shares the same menu, the same orders and the same customers. Turn on what your restaurant needs.
Kitchen display system questions we get asked
A kitchen display system, or KDS, is a screen in the kitchen that shows incoming orders in place of printed dockets. Orders arrive from the POS, the website, QR ordering and the kiosk, are routed to the right station, and are bumped off the screen as they are finished.
The same thing. Bump screen is what most Australian kitchens call it, after the action of bumping a finished order off the display. Kitchen display system, kitchen screen system, KDS and bump screen all describe the same piece of equipment.
A bump bar is a physical keypad wired to a non-touch kitchen display monitor, used to bump tickets without touching the screen. Foodship's KDS is touch-first, so a bump bar is not required.
An order is taken on the POS, the website, a QR code or the kiosk. The system reads the tags on each item, sends each item to the station that handles it, and shows it on that station's screen with its modifiers, table number and order type. An elapsed badge counts up and changes colour as the order ages. The chef bumps each line as it fires, the order marks itself Ready, and it clears off the screen.
A kitchen printer gives you one piece of paper, once. It does not tell you an order is eight minutes old, it cannot re-route an item to a different section, and it cannot be recalled once the docket is lost. A kitchen display screen does all three, and it records how long the ticket took. Most kitchens that move to a KDS keep one printer for the pass or for delivery bags, and stop printing everything else.
Most vendors charge a monthly price per screen on top of the POS subscription, and then sell you the display. Foodship includes the KDS with the platform, so the cost is the hardware plus whatever plan you are already on. The comparison worth running is total cost per venue per month, not the sticker price of the screen.
Yes. Orders from your website, from a QR code at the table and from the kiosk all land on the same kitchen screen as the POS orders, tagged with their order type so the kitchen knows whether it is plating or packing.
Yes. Run a screen per station and a master screen at the pass as an all-stations expo view. There is no limit set by the software.
Yes. A cafe usually runs one screen in compact mode with tight ageing thresholds. A takeaway usually wants the order type on every card. Both are settings, not different products.
If you are printing dockets for one section and nothing ever goes wrong, probably not. If you are running more than one section, taking orders from more than one channel, or losing orders in a rush, a kitchen display system pays for itself quickly.
Put your kitchen on one screen
Foodship's KDS comes with the POS, the online ordering and the QR codes — one system, one order, one screen. Tell us how your kitchen is laid out and we will show you how the stations would be set up.
No contract · No setup fee · 1 month free trial