Sending an order to the kitchen, properly

The ticket arrives at the grill: table nine, two steaks, one salmon, one risotto. The cook starts the steaks. A minute later the server appears at the pass: one steak is medium rare, one well done, the salmon guest is allergic to dairy and the mains should have been held because the table has not had its starters yet. All of it was said at the table. None of it was sent.

Sending an order to the kitchen sounds like the simplest step in service: press a button and the kitchen has it. In practice, it is where much of the information gathered at the table is lost. The kitchen can only cook what it receives, and it receives only what the floor sends.

This guide covers what the kitchen must receive with every order, in what order, how timing and courses should travel, and the three details the floor most often forgets to send. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

To cook an order correctly, the kitchen needs a short list of things, every time. The table, so the plates reach the right place. The dishes and their quantities. Every choice and change: cooking points, sides, removals and additions. Any allergy, clearly marked as an allergy. The timing: what to cook now and what to hold. And any note that changes how a dish is made.

If any of those is missing, the cook has to guess, ask or cook it wrong. Each of those costs time, and the last costs a remake and a disappointed guest.

The floor's job, when sending an order to the kitchen, is to make sure every item on that list arrives with it.

The most important rule is that an order should be complete before it is sent. A dish sent without its cooking point, followed by a shout from the pass, is an order sent twice: once incomplete and once by voice. The second part is often missed.

Systems help by making essential choices required: a steak cannot be sent without a cooking point, a burger without its side. Servers help by checking the order on the screen before pressing send, and by reading it back to the guest first.

An order that arrives complete can be started at once, and the kitchen never needs to come looking for the server.

The table number is the order's address. It must be on every ticket, clearly, and it must match the table the guests are actually sitting at. Table numbering matters more than many venues think: tables that have been moved, joined or renumbered for an event are a common source of plates delivered to the wrong place.

Keep table numbers clear and consistent, on the tables themselves and on the floor plan, and check them whenever the room is rearranged. Train new staff on the numbering before their first shift.

Seats help too. A dish linked to a seat lets the runner place each plate without asking. Agree a seat numbering for every table and use it every time.

Every change a guest asks for must travel with the dish it changes: the cooking point, the side swapped, the ingredient removed, the sauce on the side. The kitchen should see each change directly under its dish, in a form that cannot be misread.

Changes entered as taps, from the dish's own options and ingredients, arrive clearer than changes typed as notes. Notes are for what the options do not cover. Our guide to modifiers on the ticket: no onions, really covers how changes should appear.

An allergy must reach the kitchen as an allergy, not as a preference. "No dairy" might be a preference or a serious allergy, and the kitchen handles the two very differently: an allergy means separate utensils, a clean board and a check at the pass.

Record the guest's allergy in the way your system treats as an allergy, so it stands out on the ticket, not buried in a note. Tell the kitchen in person as well when the allergy is severe. Our guide to allergy notes: the record that must not fail covers how allergies should be recorded.

The kitchen must know what to cook now and what to hold. Starters are usually cooked at once; mains are held until the table is nearly ready for them. An order that sends mains to the kitchen as active, when they should be held, starts them too early.

Send each course with its timing: starters to cook now, mains held. Fire the mains when the starters are nearly finished, with one action that changes the held ticket into an active one. Our guide to course firing: mains away when the starters clear covers who fires and when.

A note can help the kitchen or confuse it. Helpful notes are short and specific: "sauce on the side", "cut in half for a child", "birthday, candle with dessert". Unhelpful notes repeat what the options already say, mix an allergy with a preference or ask the cook to "see server".

Use the dish's options for everything they cover, and keep notes for the rest. If a note is longer than a few words, it is often better said in person at the pass as well as written.

Within a ticket, the order of the dishes matters to the cook. Many kitchens prefer dishes grouped by course and by station, so each station sees its own work together. Tickets that list dishes in the order the guests spoke them, mixing starters, mains and sides, are harder to read at a glance.

Most systems sort dishes for the kitchen automatically, by course or station. If yours does not, train servers to enter the order in a consistent sequence, so every ticket reads the same way.

Tables order in rounds: drinks, then starters and mains, then desserts, perhaps more drinks in between. Each round should be sent when it is taken, not saved up. A drinks order held until the food order is taken leaves guests waiting for their first drink.

Each round should also be sent complete. A round sent in pieces, a dish at a time as the server remembers them, gives the kitchen a confusing picture and makes timing harder.

Drinks and food usually go to different places: drinks to the bar, food to the kitchen. A system that sends each part to the right place, from a single order, saves the server a trip and gets the drinks out first.

Check that drinks orders reach the bar as quickly and completely as food reaches the kitchen. A cocktail with a change, or a bottle of wine for a particular course, needs the same care as a dish with a removal.

Three details are forgotten more often than any others. First, the allergy, recorded as a note or not at all, rather than as an allergy the kitchen cannot miss. Second, the timing: mains sent active when they should be held, or held and then never fired. Third, the changes made after the order was sent: a guest who swaps a side or cancels a dish after the ticket has gone.

Each of the three causes its own kind of wrong plate. Training servers to check for all three before pressing send, and to pass on every later change through the system rather than by voice, prevents most of them.

Changes made after the order has been sent need special care. A shout across the pass may reach the wrong cook, or none. A new ticket for the same dish may be cooked as a second dish.

The safest approach is to change the order in the system, so the change shows on the kitchen's ticket: the old line struck through, the new one added. Then tell the kitchen in person if the dish may already have been started.

If a dish has already been cooked, decide quickly whether it can be used, and record the remake or the void with its reason.

When a dish comes back, the remake must reach the kitchen as clearly as the original order: which dish, for which table and seat, and what was wrong. A remake shouted across the pass is often made the same way again, or made twice.

Send the remake through the system where you can, marked as a remake rather than a new dish, so the guest is not charged again and the kitchen knows it is urgent. Record why it came back, so patterns can be found later.

Good kitchen tickets need no explanation. A cook should be able to read a ticket in a second or two and know what to cook, for which table, how and when. Nothing should need a question to the floor.

That depends on the ticket's design as much as on the floor's discipline: changes under their dishes, allergies at the top, held courses clearly marked, the table number large. Our guide to kitchen tickets that never need a shout covers what a good ticket shows.

The kitchen's side of the exchange matters too. A station that starts service with its mise en place complete can start each order the moment it arrives. One still prepping when the first tickets land falls behind before the rush begins.

The floor can help by letting the kitchen know what is coming: large tables, early fires, a room that will fill all at once. A short word at the pre-service briefing is often enough.

Large parties send more information to the kitchen at once, and more of it can go wrong. Where possible, take the party's order in advance, or use a set menu, so the kitchen knows what is coming before the guests arrive.

On the night, send each course complete for the whole table, with seats and allergies, and agree the timing with the kitchen in advance: when the starters will be fired, and roughly when the mains will follow. A large party fired without warning can swamp a station.

Sometimes an order is sent for a dish the kitchen can no longer make. The faster the kitchen says it has run out, the fewer such orders are sent: an 86 on the till, made the moment the last portion goes, stops the next server from ringing it in. Our guide to 86 an item so nobody orders it at five past covers the routine.

When an order for a missing dish does arrive, the kitchen should tell the server at once, so the guest can choose again before the rest of the table's food is ready.

Sometimes an order cannot be sent: the system is down, the network has failed or the table is not set up. Have a fallback ready: order pads at the pass and a routine for carrying paper orders to the kitchen, in order.

When the system returns, enter the paper orders so the checks and the figures are complete. Our guide to POS offline mode: the night the internet died covers the wider plan.

Sending the order is one step in a chain: taking it, sending it, cooking it, passing it and serving it. Order management is about making each step hand over cleanly to the next, so nothing is lost between them.

Entering the order once, at the table, and sending it complete with its timing and allergies is the foundation. Our guide to order management from table to pass covers the whole chain, and our guide to taking an order without writing it twice covers the step before this one.

At the busiest hour, many tables order at once, and the kitchen receives a wave of tickets. The floor can help by sending each order as soon as it is taken, rather than holding several and sending them together, and by firing mains as tables become ready rather than in batches.

The host can help too, by spreading out seating so tables do not all order at the same moment. Our guide to table pacing: stopping four tables ordering at once covers it.

Train servers to send orders well as part of their first week. Show them what the kitchen receives for a typical order and for a difficult one, and walk them through the checks before pressing send: the table, the dishes, the changes, the allergies and the timing.

Let new servers spend a few minutes at the pass during a service, watching tickets arrive and seeing how the kitchen uses them. Few things improve how a server sends orders more than seeing a confusing ticket from the kitchen's side.

The kitchen knows best which orders arrive incomplete. Ask the head chef or the person running the pass to note the tickets that needed a question to the floor, and share the patterns at the briefing.

Patterns point to fixes: a dish whose cooking point is often missing may need a required choice; a server who often forgets to hold mains may need a reminder; a table that is often confused may need clearer numbering.

Every so often, check what the kitchen actually received against what the server meant to send. Stand at the pass for ten minutes during service, or look back at a few tickets after it, and compare them with what the tables ordered.

Differences point to fixes: an option that is hard to find on the till, a habit of typing notes instead of using modifiers, a step in the routine that is being skipped. The kitchen's view is the truest test of how well orders are sent.

An invented bistro's kitchen receives orders on screens, but many arrive incomplete: cooking points missing, allergies in notes and mains sent active when the table is still choosing starters. The pass spends much of each service asking the floor for details.

The bistro makes cooking points and sides required choices, trains servers to record allergies as allergies and to hold mains by default, and adds a quick check before sending: table, dishes, changes, allergies, timing. New servers spend twenty minutes at the pass on their second shift.

Within a month, questions from the pass fall to a handful a night, remakes drop, and the head chef says the tickets finally tell the kitchen everything it needs.

In servearound, a round is sent from the table's check with "Send to Kitchen", or the whole round is sent held, and any dish can be set to hold before it is sent; when the table is ready, one button on the till fires every held ticket at the table. Each dish goes to the station that cooks it with its options, its removals as "No" lines and its note, and a note can cover the whole round or just some of its dishes. The till will not send an order for a table nobody is seated at yet.

On the kitchen screen, each ticket shows the table and its age, with the guest's allergies at its head, and a dish voided after it was sent stays on the ticket, struck through, so the station stops cooking it. Moving a check to another table moves its kitchen tickets with it. See Order Fulfillment.

The table, the dishes and quantities, every choice and change, any allergy marked as an allergy, the timing and any note that changes how a dish is made.

Yes. An order sent incomplete and finished by voice is often cooked wrong.

As allergies, in the way the system marks them clearly, and in person as well when they are severe.

The allergy, the timing of the courses and changes made after the order was sent.

Through the system, so the ticket changes visibly, with a word to the kitchen if the dish may already be started.

The table number is the order's address. Moved or renumbered tables send plates to the wrong place.

No. Send each round when it is taken, complete, so drinks and food arrive promptly.

By noting which tickets needed a question to the floor, so the patterns can be fixed.

Sending an order to the kitchen properly means sending it complete: the table, the dishes, every change, any allergy marked as an allergy and the timing, with starters to cook now and mains held. The three details most often forgotten are the allergy, the timing and changes made after sending.

Make essential choices required, check the order before pressing send, send each round when it is taken, pass on every later change through the system, keep table numbering clear, have a paper fallback, and ask the kitchen which tickets still need a question, so the floor can fix the pattern.