The Setup
Meet Radish Cafe, a fictional coffee shop serving up delicious espresso drinks. Although they don’t actually have a kitchen, Radish Cafe still benefits from using a kitchen display system to display orders at the barista station.
How They Use Fresh KDS
Lightweight Hardware
Radish Cafe uses Square for their point of sale, which sends new drink orders directly to an iPad running the Fresh KDS app. Using iOS for both POS and KDS creates a consistent experience for employees, and the up-front cost to try Fresh KDS on an iPad was low. The clear, bright iPad display makes it easy for the barista to read, and the tech blends in well with the cafe’s aesthetic.
Managing “For Here” versus “To Go” orders
When customers are going to enjoy their drinks in the cafe, Radish serves them in a ceramic mug instead of a to-go cup. To help baristas keep track of which orders need mugs and which orders are to-go they use the Fresh KDS split view, which creates two “rails” on the screen. All the for here orders are on the top row, and all the pickup and to-go orders are on the bottom row. Additionally, Radish integrated Fresh KDS to a sticky label printer, which is used to print labels for the to-go cups. The labels automatically print, one per item including modifiers, when the order is bumped from the screen so the barista can apply them to the cups before handing them off to the customer.
Improving Drink Accuracy
Espresso drink orders can get complicated with multiple sizes, milk choices, and extra shots or pumps. Before Fresh KDS Radish Cafe often made mistakes with specialty milks, which resulted in higher waste. They decided to use the Fresh KDS modifier styles feature to bold and highlight all milk modifiers in blue. This simple change drew attention to the milk choice, and the cafe saw a significant improvement in making drinks with the right milk the first time.
Keeping Track of Large Orders
Most of Radish Cafe’s orders contain just a few drinks, which is very manageable. However, sometimes they’ll get a large pickup order with a lot of items. To keep track of which drinks have been made and which still need to be done, they turned on the Fresh KDS “move completed items to bottom” setting. With this setting turned on, tapping an item to mark it as complete also moves the item to the bottom of the order card. All the un-made items remain at the top. This makes it easier to see at a glance which drinks still need to be prepared, and striking through completed items means they’re less likely to miss a drink on a large order.
Ready to try Fresh KDS in your restaurant?
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