Sending Orders to Kitchen

Once you’ve built the ticket, you send it to the kitchen. DishInk uses a KDS-first model with printer fallbacks and full offline resilience — the waiter experience is instant regardless of network state.

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Overview

Sending orders is fire-and-forget from the waiter’s perspective:

• Tap Send to Kitchen in Review Ticket.
• The cart clears immediately, the view switches to Manage, and a toast confirms.
• Behind the scenes, DishInk delivers the order via the best available channel: Supabase (online), LAN broadcast (same Wi-Fi), and offline queue (queued for later).
• If a kitchen printer is configured, a paper ticket also queues automatically.

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Send from Review Ticket

1. Tap the floating cart button or open Review Ticket.
2. Confirm the items and total.
3. Tap Send to Kitchen (or Print Ticket — see below).

4. The sheet closes optimistically. You’ll see:
   • Cart cleared for this table.
   • View switches to Manage to show live kitchen status.
   • A toast: Sent to kitchen · Table 7 (green) — or Saved offline · Table 7 (amber) if the network is down.

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The send pipeline

DishInk delivers the order through a layered fallback chain: The waiter sees one toast. All layers run in the background.

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Kitchen ticket printing

When thermal_print_enabled is on and a kitchen printer is configured, the Review Ticket sheet shows two action buttons instead of one:

• Print Ticket (primary red) — sends to KDS and queues a printed ticket.
• Send (secondary, ghost) — sends to KDS only.

Both buttons clear the cart and switch to Manage identically. The only difference is whether a paper ticket queues. Paper tickets include:

• Table name and order number (time-based).
• Staff name and role.
• Every item with quantity, modifiers, and notes.
• Paper width auto-selects 58 mm or 80 mm from the printer config.
• Device name: Android · Kelvin or Waiter · Kelvin for auditability.

See Kitchen Printers.

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LAN broadcast — why orders arrive even when the internet drops

DishInk devices on the same Wi-Fi network run a LAN side-car that broadcasts every meaningful event (order sent, bill requested, table opened). This means:

• If Supabase is unreachable but the KDS tablet is on the same Wi-Fi, it still receives the order in real time.
• If both the waiter and the POS are offline from the internet but on the same LAN, the POS still sees the new items on the bill preview.

You don’t need to configure anything — it “just works” when devices share a Wi-Fi network. See Network Issues for edge cases.

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Offline sending

If the Supabase call fails or the device is offline:

1. The cart still clears immediately (optimistic).
2. The table status is optimistically patched to ordering.
3. The order is queued as edge_function / waiter-operations / send_order_to_kitchen with your staff ID and the full item payload.
4. The LAN broadcast still fires.
5. Toast reads Saved offline · Table 7.

On reconnect, the queue replays automatically. If it fails permanently (e.g. someone deleted the session), you’ll see it in the offline banner’s error state — tap to review.

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Split-bill guard

If the table has an active split payment, sending is blocked — the Send button disables and a warning shows in the footer:

Split bill active — items can’t be added until the split is cancelled (POS → split panel → manager PIN).

This is because the split totals are frozen; sending more items would silently under-bill. Cancel the split first.

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Kitchen ticket for retroactive prints

If the kitchen prints on paper only (no KDS), items you send show Printed status in the Bill Preview. This tells you: paper ticket queued, check with kitchen for prep state. The Bill Preview shows an orange banner:

Kitchen ticket printed — 3 items sent via paper ticket. Tick each item below when it arrives at the table.

You then use the checkboxes to mark items served as they land. See Requesting Bills.

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Tips & best practices

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Common mistakes

• Waiting for a spinner. There is none by design — the send is fire-and-forget. Toasts confirm state.
• Sending during a split. Blocked. Cancel the split first.
• Assuming a queued (amber toast) order is on the KDS. It isn’t yet — it’s in the offline queue.
• Ignoring the Unsent Orders filter. If you see it climbing, you have carts sitting on the tablet that never got sent.
• Sending to the wrong table. Once sent, use Moving Items to correct — don’t void and re-punch.

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Related pages

• Taking Orders
• Editing Orders
• Moving Items Between Tables
• Requesting Bills
• Kitchen Display / Receiving Orders
• Kitchen Printers
• Split Bills