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Zotaki Platform · Kitchen Display SystemKitchen Display System
Screens instead of slips. Orders arrive at the right station as tickets with a live timer, the colour changes as they age, and a cook clears one with a tap. No paper, no printer jams, and no slip stuck under a chopping board.
Why this matters
A paper slip cannot tell you it has been waiting nineteen minutes
Printed KOTs work fine until a Saturday. Then there are eleven of them spiked in a row, two have slipped behind the pass, nobody can tell which came first, and the only way to know how long table seven has been waiting is to walk out and look at their faces.
A screen knows. It knows when the order was fired, what is still outstanding, and which ticket has been sitting longest — and it says so in a colour you can read from across a hot kitchen.
- Slips lost, smudged or stuck under something
- No way to see which order has waited longest
- Modifications missed because the print was faint
- Dishes remade because a slip was never seen
Routing
Each station sees only what it has to cook
One order fans out into station tickets. The tandoor cook is not reading past four Chinese dishes to find their naan.
A screen per station
Tandoor, Indian, Chinese, dessert and bar each run their own display — or one screen filtered by station in a small kitchen.
Colour that ages
Normal, then amber at your target time, then red beyond it. Set the target per station because a dessert is not a biryani.
Bump and recall
One tap clears a ticket when it goes out. Recall brings back one cleared by mistake, or a dish sent back — and logs it.
All-day counts
Fourteen butter naan outstanding across every open ticket, in one number. That is how a kitchen batches during a rush.
Source on every ticket
Dine-in with a table, take away with a token, delivery, or in-room dining with a room number. Priority becomes obvious.
Modifications stand out
Less spicy, no garlic, allergy — shown in a colour that cannot be skimmed past, rather than in faint thermal print.
Course firing
Starters go now, mains stay held until the pass releases them. The kitchen cooks to the table's pace.
Expo and pass view
One screen showing every station's progress on a table, so nothing goes out half ready.
Real prep times
Average minutes from fire to bump, by dish, station and hour — the number that shows what slows your Saturday.
All-day counts
Cook fourteen naan once, not four times
The single most useful thing a screen does that paper cannot. Across nine open tickets there might be fourteen butter naan, six dal makhani and three biryani outstanding — and no human counts that reliably at 9pm on a Saturday.
A tandoor cook who can see the total batches properly. A cook working from slips fires them four at a time and the tandoor never stops.
- Live totals per dish across every open ticket
- Broken down by station
- Updates the moment a ticket is bumped
- Feeds the reorder conversation with your store
One queue
Every order source reaches the same screen
However the order was taken, the kitchen sees one queue in one place — which is the entire point of running the POS and the KDS on one platform.
Run your own numbers
What do missed and misread tickets cost you?
Every kitchen remakes dishes. A slip that was never seen, a modification that was missed, an order fired twice. Most owners have never put a figure on it because nobody records it.
Cost of kitchen errors, a year
₹2,62,800
food you cooked twice and sold once.
- Dishes remade a day
- 6
- Cost a month
- ₹21,600
- Kitchen time freed a day
- 12h 0m
- Kitchen hours freed a year
- 4,380 hours
A screen will not remove every error — a cook can misread a display as easily as a slip. What it removes is the whole category caused by a ticket nobody saw, and it gives you the prep-time data to find the rest.
What you need
Less hardware than you would expect
Any screen with a browser
A television with a streaming stick, an old monitor on a mini PC, or a tablet on a stand. No proprietary terminal to buy.
Touch is optional
A touch screen is convenient in a dry area. A mouse or a physical bump bar works just as well, and survives a kitchen better.
Keep one printer anyway
Most kitchens run a thermal KOT printer alongside as a power-cut fallback. It costs little and it means service never stops.
Worth saying plainly
Three things to be realistic about
Somebody has to bump
If cooks let tickets pile up and clear ten at the end of service, your timers and prep-time reports are fiction. The habit takes a couple of weeks and needs a chef who insists on it.
Kitchens are hard on screens
Heat, steam and oil. Mount the display away from the range, well clear of the pass, and accept that a cheap screen in a hot kitchen is a consumable.
It does not cook faster
A biryani takes what it takes. What changes is that nothing waits unseen, batching gets easier, and you finally learn which dish is actually slowing your Saturday.
Frequently asked questions
What is a kitchen display system?
A screen in the kitchen that replaces printed KOT slips. Orders arrive as tickets with a live timer, each station sees only its own items, and a cook taps a ticket to clear it when the food goes out.
Do I need special hardware?
No — any screen with a browser. A TV with a streaming stick, an old monitor on a mini PC, or a tablet on a stand. See hardware.
Can each station have its own screen?
Yes. Tandoor, Indian, Chinese, dessert and bar can each run their own display, or a single screen can be filtered by station in a small kitchen.
How do I know an order is running late?
Every ticket carries a timer from the moment it is fired, and changes colour as it ages — normal, then amber at your target, then red beyond it.
What are all-day counts?
The total quantity of each dish pending across every open ticket, so the kitchen batches fourteen naan once instead of four at a time.
Can a bumped order be brought back?
Yes. Recall pulls back a ticket cleared by mistake or a dish sent back, and the recall is logged.
Does it show where the order came from?
Yes — dine-in with a table, take away with a token, delivery, or in-room dining with a room number.
What happens during an internet or power cut?
Offline-capable deployment keeps the screen serving on the local network. For power cuts, keep a thermal KOT printer as a fallback.
Does it work with the captain app and QR ordering?
Yes. Counter, captain app, table QR, room QR, your own ordering site and aggregators all reach the same screen.
What reporting does it add?
Real preparation time — average minutes from fire to bump, by dish, station and hour.
See a ticket land on a screen
Thirty minutes. We load your menu and stations, punch an order from the counter and one from a phone, and you watch both arrive at the right station, age through the colours, and clear with a tap.