What is a kitchen display system?
A kitchen display system (KDS) is a screen in your kitchen that shows every order the second it's taken. It does the job paper tickets used to do — but it never gets lost, smudged, or stuck in a printer.
Tabres KDS is the kitchen side of Tabres. It shows all the open orders in one branch: every ticket, every dish, who it's for, and how long it's been waiting. Cooks tap a dish when they start it, and tap again when it's plated.
- What it costs
- Free, forever. Every screen, every branch, every cook.
- What you need
- A screen with a web browser. A wall display, a tablet on a stand, an old iPad, even a phone in an apron pocket.
- Where orders come from
- Your Tabres POS, or a guest scanning the QR code at their table.
- How fast
- Live. Tickets appear the moment the order is placed.
- Languages
- 10 languages (we are adding more...). The whole screen reads right to left in Arabic.
- Setup
- A manager sets the screen up once. After that, cooks start a shift with a PIN.
Three tabs, one board
Your kitchen sees its work in three ways. All three show the same orders, so they always agree.
What the kitchen is cooking now
Every order still in the making, oldest first. On a big screen they sit in tall columns you scroll sideways. The oldest one is always the first you read, so nothing gets buried.
Plated and waiting to go out
Orders where every dish is ready. They sit side by side, because this is a short list to clear — not a queue to work through. Your dish totals sit right next to them.
Put a mistake straight back
Everything cleared in the last 30 minutes, newest first. Each one has a button that sends it back to the board.
Read a ticket in one look
Every card carries what a cook needs to make the food, and nothing else.
- The order number, big. Next to a small symbol for dine-in, pickup, delivery or self-service.
- A timer that changes colour. Calm at first. Amber after five minutes. Red and blinking after eight. The edge of the card changes too, so you never have to rely on colour alone.
- Who it's for. The table for dine-in. The name to call out for pickup and delivery.
- Where it came from. Your till, or a guest's own phone at the table.
- Progress, as 3/4 ready. You can see how far along an order is from across the room.
- A NEW label. It sits on the card for the first few seconds, so a fresh order gets noticed.
Allergy notes are impossible to miss. An allergy note turns red across the whole card, with a warning sign next to it. Allergens the guest told you about get their own full line, so nothing is squeezed or cut short.
One tap moves a dish forward
Each card shows one big button. It changes with the order, so a cook never has to guess which button to press.
| Where the ticket is | Button on the Board | Button at the Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing started | Start | — |
| Something cooking | Mark ready | — |
| Everything plated | Bump | Hand out |
Tap one dish and only that dish moves on: waiting, cooking, ready. On the board it stops at ready. Handing it out is marked at the pass — that's the one place where someone can say the guest really has it.
Fixing a mistake takes one tap. Bump clears a finished order off the board, and it happens right away — no “are you sure?” in the middle of service. A short message offers Undo. Miss it, and the order is waiting for you in Recall. Inside an order, every dish can move forward or back, with buttons big enough for busy hands.
Cook in batches. See where the pressure is.
A kitchen doesn't cook a to-do list. It cooks in batches. So the board also answers "how many portions do I owe right now?", not only "what's next?".
Filter by station
You name your own stations — Grill, Fry, Bar — and each one shows how many dishes it owes right now. Pick one and the others fade instead of vanishing. The grill cook still sees the burger goes out with fries.
Dish totals
How many of each dish the kitchen still owes in total, biggest first. This is what tells you to drop twelve portions of fries at once, instead of one by one. Weights and litres add up properly too.
How busy each station is
A small bar per station shows how many dishes are still open there. Two dishes never look busy, even on a quiet Tuesday.
Late orders
The top of the screen counts how many orders are running late, all service long.
Built for a kitchen with bad Wi-Fi
Thick walls, wet hands, tablets that fall asleep, and Wi-Fi that comes and goes. The board expects all of it.
- It catches up by itself. Every time the screen comes back online, it loads the whole board again. Anything that arrived while it was down is there waiting.
- You always know if it's live. A small label at the top reads Live, or Reconnecting. If the board might be out of date, the whole kitchen can see it.
- A sleeping tablet isn't a problem. Tablets doze off, and sometimes a connection drops with no warning at all. The screen notices on its own and reconnects.
- Slow internet still shows your orders. If the live connection is slow to start, the board opens anyway. Your kitchen never stands there watching a loading circle.
- The clock on the tablet doesn't matter. Tablets on a wall often show the wrong time. We time every order ourselves, so late really means late.
- Nothing gets lost. Your orders are saved online, not on the screen. Break the screen, lose nothing.
One honest limit. With no internet, the screen still shows the orders it already has. But it can't move a dish forward until it's back online.
One screen, every shift
A kitchen display isn't anybody's phone. Four people will use it today, and none of them wants to type an email address in the middle of service.
A manager sets the screen up once
They sign in at the screen and give it a name. It takes a minute, and you only do it once.
The screen belongs to one kitchen
It stays signed in on its own, without anyone's personal account. Orders from another branch can never show up on it.
Each cook starts a shift with a PIN
Tap your name on the staff list, type your PIN, start cooking. No email, no password, and no manager needed at shift change.
Ending a shift takes one tap
Confirm, and the staff list comes back for the next cook. The screen stays set up — only a manager can remove it.
Lost a tablet? A manager can remove it in Tabres. You'll see every screen you set up, which kitchen it's in, who set it up, and when it was last online. Remove it and it stops working right away.
Made for everyone in the kitchen
Your kitchen team probably speaks a few different languages. The screen they work from should speak all of them.
10 languages, Arabic included
English, Azerbaijani, Dutch, Estonian, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, and Arabic. The whole screen, not just parts of it — station names, dish names, options and allergens included. In Arabic, everything reads right to left. Each screen has its own language, so the grill and the pass can differ.
Dark by default
A kitchen screen is easier on the eyes when it's dark, so that's how it starts. A light look is one tap away. And it never flashes white when it reloads.
Fits any screen you have
A wall screen or a big tablet shows the full board. On a small tablet, the tabs move to the bottom, within reach of your thumb. A phone keeps only what matters. Turn a tablet mid-service and the board turns with it.
Easy for everyone to use
- Buttons are big, because this screen gets tapped with a knuckle or an elbow.
- Colour is never the only clue. Text and position change too.
- It all works with a keyboard, and with screen readers, in every language.
- Don't like moving things? Turn off animations on the device and the blinking stops.
A kitchen board only ever shows food
Your kitchen screen is on all day, in a room people walk past. So we asked one question about everything on it: does a cook need this to make the food?
What's on the board
The order number. Dine-in, pickup or delivery. The table, or the name to call out. The dishes, how many, the options, add-ons, allergens and notes. The times. That's all of it.
What never is
No prices. No totals. No payment details. No phone numbers, no email addresses, no delivery addresses. A kitchen making a burger needs to know it's table twelve's burger with no onions. It doesn't need to know what it cost or where it's going.
It's not just hidden — it never arrives. The kitchen screen only receives what the kitchen needs. Guest contact details and the bill are never sent to it in the first place. Read more in our privacy policy.
Where the orders come from
The kitchen display is one half of Tabres. Orders reach it from the other half — and all of it is free.
POS System
Waiters and cashiers take orders on the POS. Every one of them lands on the kitchen board the second it's rung up.
QR Menu
Guests scan the code at their table and order from their own phone. Same board, same second, no waiter in between.
Order Management
Delivery, takeaway and dine-in in one place, with your own couriers and no commission on your sales.
Download the kitchen display
Open the board in a browser, or install the app on the tablet you'll put up on the wall.
Put your kitchen on one screen
Tabres KDS runs on the tablet you already have. Set it up once, and every shift after that starts with a PIN.
