Replace the paper KOT and the shouting across the pass with one live kitchen display system. Orders appear the instant they are placed, oldest first, and flip to ready on their own the moment the last item is done.
Orders land on the kitchen screen the instant they are placed. No paper tickets, no lost orders, no shouting across the pass.
Your KOT board, without the paper. It shows only what is active — placed, accepted and preparing — oldest first, with table, quantities and guest notes. Staff accept a ticket, then mark items ready one by one. When the last item is ready the order flips to ready automatically and the waiter is notified.
The kitchen is the pinch point of every busy service. Printed or handwritten tickets pile up, blow off the rail, get splashed, and stack in the order they were torn off rather than the order they should be cooked. When it gets loud, the line resorts to shouting across the pass.
A single lost ticket becomes a table that waits twenty minutes for food nobody is making, a walkout, and a comped bill. And no one downstream knows an order is ready until someone happens to shout that it is.
DinePilot shows the kitchen only what is active — placed, accepted and preparing — always oldest first, so the next thing to cook is always at the top. Each ticket carries the table, quantities and every guest note, and updates the moment anything changes.
The line accepts a ticket, then marks items ready one at a time as they leave the pass. When the last item is done the whole order flips to ready on its own and the waiter is pinged — no shouting, no runner checking the pass, no order forgotten under a heat lamp.
No hardware to buy and no technical skills required — just a few steps to go live.
A QR or waiter order lands on the board in under a second, sorted oldest-first with table, quantities and notes.
One tap moves the ticket to accepted, so the whole team can see it has been picked up and is being cooked.
As each dish leaves the pass the line marks it ready — individually, or all at once for a simple order.
When the last item is ready the order flips to ready automatically and the waiter gets the ping to run it.
Every order is on one screen the instant it is placed. No paper to blow away, splash or misplace.
Oldest ticket sits at the top, so early tables are never stuck behind ones that ordered later.
The board flips to ready on its own and pings the waiter — food runs hot instead of sitting under the pass.
Allergies and "no onion" ride on the item itself, front and centre where the line cannot miss them.
Not a competitor comparison — a comparison with the paper-and-shouting workflow most restaurants run today.
Step
The usual way
With DinePilot
Getting the ticket
Usually — Printed at the pass, or carried down by hand. Both take as long as the walk.
With DinePilot — On the board in under a second, from a QR scan or a waiter, with no walk involved.
Cooking order
Usually — Whatever order the tickets were torn off and clipped in, which is not the order they should be cooked.
With DinePilot — Oldest active ticket at the top, always. The next thing to cook is never a judgement call.
A lost ticket
Usually — A table waits twenty minutes for food nobody is making, and you find out when they complain.
With DinePilot — There is no paper to lose. Every active order is on the screen until it is finished.
Part-ready orders
Usually — Written on the ticket in pen, or held in someone's head.
With DinePilot — Items are marked ready one at a time, so starters can leave the pass before mains.
Telling the floor
Usually — Shouting across the pass and hoping the right waiter hears it.
With DinePilot — The order flips to ready on its own and the waiter who owns the table is notified.
Allergies and notes
Usually — Scrawled in a margin, splashed, and read wrong.
With DinePilot — Attached to the item itself, in the same place on every ticket.
It helps every dine-in restaurant, but these are the rooms where the difference is largest.
Past roughly forty covers the ticket rail stops being a queue and starts being a pile. That is the point where sequencing has to be automatic.
Anywhere the pass is shouted across. A screen does not have to compete with the room to be read.
When starters, mains and drinks leave at different times, marking items ready one by one is what keeps a table's courses in the right order.
Where the machinery is supposed to be invisible. A clean pass with no shouting is part of what the guest is paying for.
Real screenshots from the DinePilot staff app — no mockups, no marketing renders.
Kitchen board
Ticket detail
Live orders
Three moments from an ordinary week, and what happens differently in each.
On paper, table 4 waits twenty-five minutes, complains, and the mains get comped. On the board, table 4's ticket is simply still at the top of the queue, visible to everyone on the line, until someone cooks it. The failure mode does not exist.
A table of six orders across three courses. The line marks the four starters ready as they leave the pass; the waiter is not pinged for the whole order yet, so nothing is run early. When the last main is marked, the order flips to ready and the ping goes out.
On a rail, whichever ticket got clipped in front gets cooked first. On the board, the one that ordered first sits above the one that ordered second, every time — so no early table waits behind a late one because of where a piece of paper landed.
What the restaurants who get the most out of this do — and what trips up the ones who don't.
The board runs in the staff app, so a second screen is a second device you already own rather than a second KDS terminal to buy and license. Adding covers does not change the workflow — a busier night is a longer queue, sequenced the same way, with the oldest ticket still at the top. And because every order carries its timestamps through to analytics, the same data that runs the pass tonight is what shows you which hours your kitchen is genuinely under-resourced.
Ask us anything else — we reply to every message.
No. It runs in the DinePilot staff app on any tablet or phone you already have. There is no dedicated KDS terminal to buy or install.
In under a second. The moment a guest places a QR order or a waiter enters one, it is live on the kitchen board.
The order flips to ready automatically and the waiter who owns that table is notified, so the food is run without anyone checking the pass.
Yes. Items are marked ready one by one, which is ideal when starters leave the pass before mains. You can also mark everything ready at once for simple orders.
Oldest first, always. Only active tickets — placed, accepted and preparing — are shown, so the next thing to cook is at the top and completed orders never clutter the view.
The app keeps working and falls back to refreshing on demand when the live connection is unavailable, then catches up once it reconnects. Order placement is transactional, so a ticket is either fully recorded or not at all.
A kitchen display system, or KDS, is a screen that replaces printed KOT tickets. Orders appear digitally the moment they are placed — with table, items and notes — and the line marks each dish ready as it leaves the pass. DinePilot's KDS runs in the staff app on a phone or tablet you already own, with no dedicated terminal or KOT printer to buy.
DinePilot is one connected system — here is what works alongside this.
Guests scan the QR on their table and order from their own phone — no app install, no login, no waiting for a server.
Every order — QR or waiter-taken — in one filterable list, from placed all the way to completed.
A colour-coded floor map that keeps itself up to date — available, reserved, occupied or cleaning.
Written for owners rather than for us — free to read whether or not you ever use DinePilot.
Browse the Restaurant Growth AcademySet up your restaurant, print your QR codes and take your first order today. Starter is free.
No card required · Nothing to install for your guests