Auto-Fulfillment of items not requiring prep

[Anduzzis]

ISSUE: soups, salads, chips, etc. are all taken care of by the food runner but they still need to be on the expo screen. When the kitchen fulfills all food items, the order does not go to the front of the KDS because the sauces are showing up as not fulfilled. Sometimes our KDS is 4 screens back so it is not feasible for the food runner to manually fulfill these items.

SOLUTION: How do I get these items to be marked as completed automatically when they are rang in?

[T3ddy_Fre5h]

Also to answer your other question our situation is identical. We have items like soup and cold dips that the food runners make right away when they hit the expo screen but if they always go to the back during peak volume, then those items will not be prepared quickly.

[AH22]

Marking 2 years and 6 months of this post in particular.... of this still being an issue, and 6 years for myself, of it still being an issue. I have the same problem and there is no workaround for this... STILL. There are complaints all over forums, even outside of this one (like Reddit), complaining of the same thing. I have previously remapped my entire prep station workflow years ago from single expeditor to two-level (2019/2020) to reroute everything because of this issue (forcing the cooks to see every ranch, soup, salad, etc that just distracts them and makes them panic when they are 5 screens deep). I now have just spent weeks rebuilding my menu and wanting to have an option to fix this, again, 6 years later hoping there would be a fix by now. Still no fix. Most restaurants operate just like this... ranch dressing doesn't need to go to the kitchen, but we still want to see it on the expeditor screen, but because we want to see it, now the ticket cannot fulfill? That makes absolutely no sense for a POS that is built specifically for restaurants... and people have been asking for it for years! I have had the issue for a long time now that my servers just won't ring in their extra dressing and such because it hangs up their tickets and they don't know when they are ready... so they just skip charging for them at all. I can't allow my online orders to opt for certain sauces because I worry that my servers won't catch that the order is even ready while they are busy. Wild. (I apologize for my rant, but after another 3 week long wild goose chase, deep dive into every forum, back-end setting, help center chats, AI consults, trials and errors, poke-and-hopes, etc, I am extremely frustrated that this has not been addressed. Other than this issue... I still am a DIE HARD Toast Fan... but for the love... can we fix this issue PLEASE!

[T3ddy_Fre5h]

Let’s keep squawking about this till we get a fix. Standard feature on other POS systems.

[brandiw1017]

I also am seeking to find an issue for the same problem! Following!

[Rob · Accepted solution]

Thanks for reaching out with this feedback!
I shared this feedback with the team, and this was their reply

Yes—it’s possible to stop “no-prep” items from blocking the kitchen, but it’s not typically done via “auto-fulfillment.” The clean Toast-native pattern is to route those items so they don’t land on prep-station KDS queues in the first place.

Best-practice fix: route no-prep items to Expediter only
Toast prep stations have a specific mode for exactly this use case:
• Expediter only= item skips prep stations and goes straight to expo
(recommended for things like bottled drinks, pre-packaged sauces—same idea as chips, soups that aren’t cooked-to-order, runner-only items)
That way:

• kitchen stations aren’t blocked waiting on runners
• expo/runner can still see the item on the expediter screen/ticket

This is especially important if you’re using Sequenced Prep to Expo Fulfillment (which prevents expo fulfillment until all prep stations are complete). Toast even calls out that in that setup you should configure an expo-only prep station for items that do not require preparation.

Alternate options (depending on your workflow)

• If you truly want these items off KDS entirely: you can remove their prep station assignment so they don’t route to kitchen devices (but you’ll want to make sure they still show where runners need them—often expo).
• If runners need to “mark delivered” separately: Two-level fulfillment + Runner Fulfillment can help runners mark items as delivered on the KDS, but it’s still manual (not auto-fulfill).