topic Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen in Restaurant Operations

Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

DRC — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 17:08:10 GMT

We have two KDS in our kitchen. Most of the day only one KDS is manned and in use. At dinner both KDS are manned and in use. Is there any way to have tickets alternate between the two KDS rather than each ticket being sent to both KDS?

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

Rob — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 20:38:30 GMT

Thanks for reaching out to the community! There is no way for this to happen automatically; you would need to adjust the backend settings (the prep-stations settings, I believe) each time you wanted it to change. Perhaps the community will have a better workaround to achieve this.

Configure and Assign Prep Stations

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

josh212 — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 07:12:27 GMT

@DRC I need a bit more information to give you the best advice. Are these two fully equipped kitchens that independently handle tickets, each with sauté, fry, and fulfillment capabilities? Could they be working on the same ticket but different items?

Are they both expo stations or prep stations?

Providing more details will help me give you better guidance.

Also, consider item routing by day part or dining options.

You might also want to explore setting them up as assembly lines if one station's task relies on another. For example, with pizza, one person stretches the dough, another adds sauce and toppings, and the oven person is the final step – the ticket doesn't move on until the previous steps are done.

There are other options available, so feel free to reach out.

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

Wow_growup — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 16:27:33 GMT

We’re in the same boat. We don’t have toast yet, but will soon. We currently run 2 “full kitchens”, each with their own printer. We currently have the ability to route specific devices to specific printers. With physical tickets it’s easy enough to pass from one line to another if one side gets behind. Is there any way that line 1 can have its own tickets and line 2 can have its own tickets? If so, is there a way to send an order from line 1 over to line 2 (just like a ticket pass)?

thanks in advance for any info you can provide!

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

DRC — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:08:11 GMT

We have a simple setup and quite frankly it surprises me that we are considered unique. We have one kitchen with two independent and mirrored sides – call them Side A and Side B. There is a shared hot food storage between the two sides. Each side has its own flat top, grill, burners and fryer. Each side also has its own microwaves, KDS, printer and cold storage. They can operate entirely independently and provide the same service for customers. We don't have any additional prep stations or workflows related to the kitchen. All tickets go straight to the kitchen, and when complete are dismissed by one of the two expo stations. During lunch we only need Side A open and staffed by cooks, but for dinner we have additional cooks and we open both sides.

For 25+ years we have sent tickets to each side of the kitchen in alternating order to balance the workload for the cooks. We were told by our Toast sales person that alternating between the two sides was possible but we have found that it is not. The only solution that we have been able to come up requires manual intervention by the cooks. During dinner Side A handles odd numbered tickets, dismissing the even numbered tickets from the Side A KDS screen. Side B likewise handles only even numbered tickets and they dismiss the odd numbered tickets from their KDS. Note that dismissing a ticket from one side of the kitchen KDS does not dismiss it from the other side: only when a ticket is dismissed at one of the two expo stations does it disappear from both sides of the kitchen KDS.

This “work around” has functioned but it is lame, requires full attention from the cooks and results in frequent errors that result in either missing food or double makes of food. Recently we had two cooks call out and the owner happened to be around so he stepped into the kitchen to help out. He has questioned the value vs. cost of Toast since we implemented it, and after three hours of working the kitchen, trying to cook and prepare food while simultaneously figuring out odd/even tickets and dismissing the ones that the other side of the kitchen was working on and witnessing this alternating ticket hack in action he directed me to either find a fix or find a new POS.

Before we moved to Toast we were using Maitre’D that we had purchased in 2008. Before that we were using Aloha if I remember correctly. Both allowed for sending tickets to alternate sides of the kitchen for load balancing. I’m not sure how it worked with Aloha but with Maitre’D it was a simple toggle that the cooks could perform to indicate that Side B of the kitchen was manned and open for tickets. We assumed that Toast would have that same basic functionality, and had hoped it perhaps might even improve on basic load balancing that older POS systems have done for years.

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

Wow_growup — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:24:05 GMT

Yep, we are in the exact same boat. We currently use Micros. We don’t have dynamic routing, but 3 of my workstations go to my Line 1 and 2 of them go to line 2. And all togo orders route to line 1. We can redirect everything to a single side when we break one down.
It is quite bizarre that when I worked at McDonald’s 12+ years ago they had it figured out to evenly split the load, not just # of tickets. I really wish that the people making this decision for our 300+ corporate stores have actually worked in our restaurants and understand that this will only complicate a tough job even more.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! It’s nice to know that there is a workaround at least. Would you mind sharing where the “dismiss” is on the KDS? I haven’t seen it on any training materials I’ve looked at.
If, by chance, this issue was addressed between my team and Toast I will reply and let you know what the config should be.

Re: Alternating between two KDS in kitchen

josh212 — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 06:15:37 GMT

So divide your dining room into two service areas. That would create an even workflow through the night. Route tickets from the first station to the second station if they are in certain dining. Ares. ( you can also do by dining option if they would work better for you). Then when setting up prep stations set the main station where your are routing to the second one as the backup. So when one side is closed turn off and will failover back