Tiko KDS: kitchen displays that hold up in a real rush

Tiko KDS is our kitchen display system — the screens that replace paper tickets in a kitchen or behind a coffee bar. Orders arrive from the register, your website, or a delivery service and appear on the right station's screen in about a second: drinks on the bar display, food in the kitchen, everything together on the expo screen. It runs every day at Jitter House, our coffee shop in Hoquiam, Washington — which is exactly where its features come from.

What it does

• Routing by rules. Line items route to stations by configurable rules — espresso drinks to the bar, paninis to the kitchen, retail items nowhere. One order can span several screens, and the expo view shows when every station's part is done.
• Touch, scan, or bump bar. Tap an item to bump it, tap again to bring it back — with a short "dismissing…" countdown so a stray finger can't clear a ticket. Every printed ticket can carry a QR code, so a barista can scan the cup to mark it made. Standard USB bump bars work too: select a ticket by number, bump with a key.
• Alerts that escalate. A chime for new orders, a pulsing late badge and a distinct alarm when a ticket blows past its target time, and a customer-facing pickup display that turns green when an order is ready.
• Keeps working when the internet doesn't. The board installs as an app, caches its state on the device, and queues bumps while offline, reconciling when the connection returns.

Built for the delivery era

Every ticket is badged with where it came from and how it leaves: DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, web, phone, kiosk — pickup, dine-in, or delivery. Delivery orders are impossible to miss on a busy board, large orders get flagged, and the expo screen tracks each station's progress so a driver is never standing around waiting for a sandwich that hasn't started.

Printing, when and where you want it

Screens don't have to mean no paper. Tiko KDS prints per-drink chits and bag labels through the same rules that drive the boards — automatically as items fire, only for certain stations or order types, or on demand from a button on the ticket. Chit layouts are fully customizable, and we're particularly fond of linerless label printers: the ticket is cut to the exact length of its content and sticks straight onto the cup or the bag — no liner waste, no pre-cut sizes. That combination is perfect for delivery services, where a labeled bag and a sealed order matter more than a paper rail.

Reporting you can trust

Every action lands in a permanent ledger, so the numbers are honest: make times, on-time percentage against per-station targets, busiest and slowest items, per-person counts. There's even a shift replay — scrub through the day and watch the board exactly as it happened.

Your hardware, your look

Screens are plain web pages paired with a token — no logins on the floor, no proprietary hardware. Tiko KDS runs on iPads, Android tablets, phones, TVs, and regular computers; if it has a browser, it's a station. The look is yours too: board layouts, color palettes (including light modes and a colorblind-safe scheme), and text sizes are all configurable per screen, so the drive-through TV and the bar tablet can each be set up for how they're actually read.

Works with almost any point of sale

Tiko KDS connects natively to Square and WooCommerce today, and anything that can send a webhook or call a small API can push orders in — which covers nearly every modern point of sale and online ordering system. Orders that arrive twice (which happens constantly with open tabs) are deduplicated durably, so a re-sent order never fires a second ticket or a second print.

If your kitchen or coffee bar still runs on paper and shouting, get in touch.