May 31, 2022
By equipping a restaurant with modern digital solutions, you’ll observe a variety of benefits that hit the bottom line – a kitchen display system (KDS) is one such item that provides a handful of benefits for most establishments.
Here, we’re going to cover several reasons why you want to outfit a restaurant with a good KDS.
5 reasons a kitchen display system is a good addition for most restaurants
Tech has to move at the speed of your service or it will only serve to bottleneck operations which will frustrate staff and customers. It’s much harder to deliver exceptional service after your entire staff rage quits so let’s take a look at how a good kitchen display can keep things running smoothly.
1. A KDS improves accuracy
Just like how most prescriptions are sent digitally to pharmacies to prevent issues deciphering your doctor’s chicken-scratch handwriting, a KDS helps in much the same way.
Source: Jesse McCall on Unsplash
Provided you’ve configured everything correctly, a KDS should clearly display everything a customer could possibly want immediately after an order is finalized.
The free SimpleKDS connects directly to a Clover merchant account which automatically populates a customer’s order on a unit where it’s installed once it’s been submitted. This prevents issues from surfacing in the kitchen from lost tickets or those that are difficult to read.
It also makes it easier for the server or customer placing the order to review everything before submitting the order.
2. A KDS is faster than hand-written tickets
Just as it’s more accurate to use a KDS, it’s also much faster than manually running orders between tables and the kitchen.
Even when you’re properly staffing your restaurant, busy periods tend to produce a lot of “movement” from your staff as they buzz between locations. Removing this one extra step with a system that quickly and accurately removes some of the burdens from staff so they can stay on top of service.
3. It’s a cleaner process with less “pen theft”
With a global shift towards less contact, a KDS does help prevent some of the touching and other manual processes that come with taking an order.
Source: Joshua Rodriguez on Unsplash
Sure, there’s still touching when delivering a customer their food (among other instances) but this does help in a couple of areas:
– If you eliminate paper receipts, there’s less chance of customers walking away with your server’s pens.
– Less touching means less transmission of undesirables means you’ll keep the virus circulation in your establishment to a dull breeze.
This also helps prevent the rare but embarrassing moments of order tickets getting baked into customer food which is usually an upsetting find mid-meal.
4. Having a KDS inherently helps with other restaurant processes
Most KDS systems come as part of a package with different POS systems or, like SimpleKDS, can integrate with your setup.
For example, the Clover POS system and other merchant tools provide some of the biggest digital pieces to a functioning restaurant. When your system is properly configured and maintained, it’s much easy to keep track of inventory, analyze data to put together sales projections, and better understand the businesses.
Less guesswork means you can plan better which helps with everything from staffing, preventing waste, and ensuring you always have the right amount of inventory on hand.
5. It runs on an Android tablet which has multiple uses
While this doesn’t hold true for all KDS products on the market, SimpleKDS is a free app available through Google Play that can install on just about any Android 4.1 tablet and higher.
You don’t want your staff getting down on some Minecraft during a lunch rush but other apps have their place. Other apps like a timeclock or third-party delivery services like DoorDash (among many others) can also live on the tablet, thus putting everything kitchen staff’s fingertips.
Start using SimpleKDS today for free
SimpleKDS is a free app to download and use on the Google Play store for those using Clover. It’s easy to set up and use – most people are up and running in less than 5 minutes!
