DineKit includes a full Kitchen Display System — a live New → Preparing → Ready board with per-ticket timers, station routing and a fullscreen mode for a kitchen TV. No monthly fee, no proprietary screen, no add-on tier. It is part of the free plugin.
Every kitchen that runs on printed tickets has the same three problems, and none of them show up on a P&L where you can see them.
The first is that a printer only tells you what arrived, never what is late. A docket that has been on the rail for four minutes looks exactly like one that has been there for twenty. The only thing standing between you and a forgotten table is somebody remembering — during service, with a full section, while three other things are going wrong.
The second is that paper does not update. An order gets amended, a guest changes a side, a table cancels before the pass — and the ticket in the kitchen still says the old thing. Somebody has to walk over and say so, and if they do not, food goes out wrong and gets remade.
The third is the one nobody mentions: a printer gives you no picture of the whole service. You cannot look at a rail and know how many orders are actually cooking right now, which ones are close to going out, or whether the kitchen is 3 minutes behind or 15. You find out when a guest asks.
A kitchen display fixes all three, which is why every serious POS vendor sells one. The catch is what they charge for it.
DineKit’s KDS puts every order on a three-column board — New, Preparing, Ready — and moves tickets across it with a single tap. Orders land in New the moment they are accepted, whether they came from a table on the floor, a QR scan at the table, or an online order for collection or delivery. One board, every channel, in the order it actually arrived.
Because it reads live from the same database as the rest of the plugin, it never falls out of step. Amend an order at the till and the ticket changes in the kitchen. Void a line and it disappears. Nobody walks anywhere to deliver the news.
Every ticket carries a running clock from the moment it lands, and the colour escalates as it ages. A board tells you at a glance which order is the oldest thing in the kitchen — the one piece of information a paper rail can never give you.
Start it, and it moves to Preparing. Finish it, and it moves to Ready. Chefs with full hands need one deliberate tap, not a menu — and the board reorders itself as things move.
Dine-in, collection, delivery and QR-at-table each carry their own mark, so the kitchen can see instantly whether a ticket is walking to a table or going in a bag — and plate it accordingly.
Every round you fire from a table becomes its own independent ticket. Firing mains later does not disturb the starters already cooking, and only the new items appear — so the board reflects how the kitchen actually works.
Each dish routes to its own station, so drinks land at the bar and food lands in the kitchen. Print all, kitchen-only or bar-only — the split follows the dish, not the order.
A dedicated fullscreen mode turns any screen with a browser into the display — an old tablet, a spare laptop, or a TV with a cheap stick behind it. Nothing to buy, nothing to mount that you do not already own.
A table orders two starters and two mains. Front of house takes it on the order pad and fires the starters. Those two lines appear on the kitchen board in New, timestamped, with the table number and any allergen notes attached to the guest.
The section chef taps once. The ticket moves to Preparing and its timer starts climbing in view of everyone. When the plates are up, another tap puts it in Ready — and front of house can see from the floor that it is ready to run, without walking to the pass to check.
Later, mains are fired as a separate round. They arrive as their own ticket, with their own clock, while the starters have already left the board. The bill stays open and payable at the till the whole time; a served round leaving the kitchen display has nothing to do with settling the tab.
The result is that the board only ever shows what is actually cooking — not a rail of paper where finished and forgotten look identical.
Kitchen display is where restaurant software vendors tend to draw the upgrade line.
| What you need | DineKit KDS | Typical POS kitchen display | Paper tickets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of the kitchen display | £0 — included in the free plugin | Usually a paid add-on or a higher subscription tier, per site | Printer, paper and ribbon, forever |
| Screen you can use | Any device with a browser — old tablet, laptop, TV | Often a proprietary display you buy or lease from the vendor | N/A |
| Wait timers per ticket | Yes, colour-escalating as an order ages | Usually yes | None — every docket looks the same age |
| Updates when an order changes | Instantly — same database as the till | Usually yes, within their ecosystem | Never — somebody has to walk over |
| Independent coursing tickets | Every fired round is its own ticket | Varies by vendor and tier | A new bit of paper, unconnected |
| Works with your existing website | It is a WordPress plugin — it is your site | A separate platform you also pay for | N/A |
| Contract and lock-in | None — open source, your server, your data | Fixed terms, and the hardware is theirs | None, but no data either |
Vendor pricing and packaging change often — check the current terms of any product you are comparing before you commit.
There is no DineKit hardware, because there does not need to be any. The KDS is a web page in fullscreen mode. If a device has a browser and can reach your site, it is a kitchen display.
In practice that means an old iPad on a stand, a cheap Android tablet, a laptop on a shelf, or a TV with a streaming stick behind it. Most kitchens already own something that works. Wall-mount it away from the heat and the steam, keep it on the same network as the till, and that is the installation.
Because it is browser-based, it also means you are never holding a bricked proprietary screen when you decide to change software. The display is yours; DineKit just draws on it.
A screen is not always the answer. Some kitchens want a physical ticket for the pass, and DineKit still does that — the display and the printer are not either/or.
Tickets can print automatically the moment an order is accepted, so nothing depends on somebody remembering to hit print. Station routing applies to printing as well as the board, so you can send everything, kitchen-only, or bar-only. And DineKit can email tickets straight to a network thermal printer through Epson Connect or Star CloudPRNT, which means the printer needs no computer attached to it at all — the plugin talks to it directly, with buying guidance built into the app if you do not have one yet.
DineKit is a free WordPress plugin. Install it, connect the screen you already own, and the kitchen stops running on paper.
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See also: free restaurant POS · restaurant EPOS system · commission-free online ordering · kitchen display setup guide · all DineKit features
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