Restaurant and fast food POS: counter, kitchen and delivery
How orders get from the counter to the kitchen, and the hardware each type of restaurant needs.
A restaurant POS has one job the retail shop does not: getting the order to the kitchen correctly and quickly. How that happens depends on whether you run a takeaway counter, a dine-in hall, deliveries, or all three.
The kitchen ticket (KOT)
When the cashier takes an order, the POS prints a kitchen order ticket in the kitchen at the same moment the bill prints at the counter. No shouting, no handwritten slips. This needs a second printer in the kitchen, and it should be a LAN printer so it can sit away from the counter PC.
By type of restaurant
- Takeaway / fast food: touch PC at the counter, receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer
- Dine-in: add table management and a waiter order screen or tablet
- Delivery: customer phone lookup, rider assignment, delivery charges on the bill
- Several branches: central menu and reports across all outlets
Touch screen or keyboard?
For food, touch wins. A menu of burgers, deals and drinks is faster to tap than to search, and new staff learn it in an hour. An all-in-one touch PC also takes less counter space and has fewer cables for oil and water to reach.
Deals and modifiers
Check how the software handles "Deal 3 with extra cheese, no onion". If modifiers are awkward, cashiers type them as notes, and the kitchen gets it wrong on a busy night.
Common questions
Does the kitchen printer need its own computer?
No. A LAN kitchen printer connects to the network and the counter PC sends tickets to it.
Can we see sales from home?
Yes, with software that sends a closing report or syncs sales online. Ask for a sample report.
Written by iPOS.NET Wazirabad · updated 2026-09-21