Hi everyone! We have been using SambaPOS flawlessly in our restaurant for 5 months now. We started with the database from Kitchen Display forum post, and from there we have customized it with bits and pieces of things we found in the generous posts of other users in the forum.
The ORDER READY function has always been a hot topic in the forum, specially with people wanting to set order items to Ready individually.
We’ve learned from the previous months that the basic kitchen display workflow posted on the forums could be problematic for our scenario. The kitchen staff would always have a hard time reading the kitchen display because whenever new orders are added to a ticket, old items that haven’t been marked as Delivered (because some items are still cooking in the kitchen)would return to the kitchen display with no indication of which items are already finished/served.
So to solve this problem we’ve modified the kitchen display workflow to suit our own process. We basically removed Order Ready state, and instead the kitchen would notify the wait staff that an order is ready PHYSICALLY by ringing a bell. The waiters would then indicate that they have served the orders individually (in the order line). Served or Voided items would then be indicated in the kitchen display.
Kitchen display
We replaced the Order Ready command with a Cleanup Orders command which removes all the items that have been served or voided, meaning that the kitchen have acknowledged all the changes in that particular ticket. This way, no items will be removed from the kitchen screen without their approval. We also displayed the duration of the time since the order has been placed to help the kitchen prioritize their cooking.
New Orders
Individual items marked as Served
Waiter’s view setting orders as Served in the order line
Shows progress of added orders, served/voided, cleaned up order, and then latest orders served
With the entity states, we retained New Orders and Delivered but with a bit different flow. Since Order Ready is gone, we have set it so that when all orders have been set as Served (or voided) by the wait staff, the entity will be automatically set to Delivered. When the kitchen cleans up a Delivered ticket, it will be set to unpaid.
Orders Status set to Delivered. Ticket Status unpaid. Entity Status Unpaid.
State Table
With this workflow we have drastically reduced confusion in the kitchen, and we have kind of found a way around marking each order item as ready. The actual process behind the scenes (rules and actions) are more complicated than we wanted but we have tested it thoroughly and it so far works.The only slight drawback we found is that the waiters would have to continuously update the tickets of the orders they have served for the kitchen to be able to track the orders properly.
If anyone would be interested in this workflow, we’d be happy to answer questions. We’d also like to thank everybody in the forum that has been actively posting and helping us. You guys are awesome! 
Database File: DATA.zip (854.5 KB)
