To help back-of-house employees keep track of how long ordered items are taking to fulfill, the KDS device displays a ticket time on every ticket. When you enable the item fire by prep time feature, a second "fire time" appears on every ticket.
This section describes what ticket times measure and what fire times measure on prep station and expediter tickets.
Every kitchen ticket that appears on a KDS device includes the ticket time, which is a stopwatch-style digital clock, in the upper right corner. The ticket time starts counting at 0:00 when a server sends an order to the kitchen (using Send, Stay, or other order screen buttons as configured for your restaurant) or an online order comes in. It runs until the ticket is completely fulfilled, on the KDS device prep station screen and also on the expediter screen (in restaurants that use single-level fulfillment) or on the second, level 2 expediter screen (in restaurants that use two-level fulfillment).
In this example, the ticket time is circled on a prep station screen.
If you use prep times to automate item firing, a "fire" time appears above the item name on the prep station ticket. The fire time shows how long ago the Toast platform sent the item to the prep station. To determine the fire time for a prep station ticket, the system subtracts the item's prep time from the ticket time.
In this example, the fire time is boxed and the ticket time is circled.
When the ticket time and the fire time are the same, as in this example, the ticket is for the item that has the longest prep time in the order. Items that have shorter prep times have fire times that are different from the ticket time.
In the following example, the prep station screen displays the tickets for an order with two appetizers and two entrees. Ticket times are circled and fire times are boxed to show the differences.
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The ticket for the appetizer with the longest prep time, which fired at the same time the order was sent.
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The ticket for the second appetizer, which has a prep time that is 15 seconds shorter than the first appetizer.
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The ticket for the entree, which is currently on hold. (This restaurant has the Kitchen > Pacing > Meal pacing > Course Pacing configuration option set to Enable course pacing. This reveals the Sending Courses configuration option, which is set to Send all courses to kitchen immediately.)
Showing both the ticket time and the fire time on the same prep station ticket gives employees information about how long ago the order, and items in that order, fired.
If you use prep times to automate item firing, a fire time appears above the item names on all expediter tickets. The fire time gives expediters information about how long ago the order fired, and how long ago any held items in that order fired. To determine the fire time for an expediter ticket, the Toast platform subtracts the held time from the ticket time.
The following example shows the expediter tickets for an order with two appetizers and two entrees (the prep station tickets for this order are shown here). The server sent both of the appetizers at the same time and held the entrees. The ticket time and fire time for the appetizers are the same.
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The ticket for both of the appetizers, and the fire time shows when the first appetizer was sent to the prep station.
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The ticket for the entree, which is currently on hold.
Later, the appetizers are fulfilled and the server sends the entree to the kitchen. The item with the longest prep time fires, while the other item remains unfired based on its defined prep time. The order now appears on the KDS device expediter screen as shown in the following illustration.
The ticket time shows how much time has elapsed since the appetizers in this order were sent to the kitchen. The fire time shows how much time has elapsed since these previously-held entrees were sent to the kitchen.