In a small kitchen the order travels by voice. The cashier calls it over the counter, the cook repeats it back, and on a full Saturday one of them is wrong. Paper tickets help until one is dropped, smudged or stuck to the wrong pan. A kitchen display puts every order on a screen the moment it is rung up, with a timer that turns red when it is taking too long. Here is how it works in Fuze Store and what you need to run one.
Tickets on a screen, not on a spike
The Kitchen Display add-on shows every incoming order in real time on a dedicated screen in the kitchen. Each ticket carries the order number, the customer name or table, the time it was placed, and every item with quantity, modifiers and notes. A timer counts up from the moment the ticket was created, colour-coded by the thresholds you set, so the cook sees the oldest order without reading the clock.
The register and the kitchen stay in step. When an item is voided at the register, it disappears from the kitchen screen live. If you set a Preparation Time on a product, the Kitchen Display uses it to show how long the ticket should take. And when you turn it on under Configurations → Preferences → Order, an order moves to Processing when cooking starts and to Ready when every ticket is done, so the counter knows without asking.
The bump flow
A ticket has three states: Pending, Preparing and Completed. Tap a ticket to start it. Tap it again to bump it when the food is up. Long-press a ticket that is waiting or being prepared to void it. Every change syncs back to the POS.
Bumped too soon? Tap Recall in the kitchen screen's header. It lists the tickets finished in the last 30 minutes; tap Recall next to one and it returns to the screen as Pending. The order itself does not change. Only staff who may change kitchen tickets see the button, and if the connection is down the recall waits on the device and is sent when it is back.
The timing thresholds are yours to set under the same Order preferences. Warning after and Critical after, in seconds, are when a ticket turns amber and then red. Keep finished tickets for decides how long a bumped ticket stays visible, and sound alerts are a toggle on the same screen.
What the free Hub does, and what it does not
Fuze Store Hub is a free desktop app for Windows, Mac or Linux. You install it on one computer in the shop that stays on during business hours: a mini-PC, an old laptop, the back-office computer. On your local network it does three jobs: it bridges USB and serial receipt and kitchen printers, it powers the kitchen display, and it drives the customer-facing display.
For KDS there are two modes. In Cloud mode, tickets sync through the Fuze Store cloud, and the Hub is not needed as long as each kitchen device has internet. In Local mode, tickets live on the Hub's own local database and the kitchen screens read them from the Hub over your Wi-Fi; the Hub pushes a copy to the cloud when it is online. Local mode is on by default once the add-on is active, and it is the recommended setting when your internet is unreliable because the kitchen keeps working during an outage. You can switch it off from Settings → Modules on the Hub.
Be clear about what that means. The Hub keeps the kitchen screen and your printers running on the local network when the connection drops, and queued tickets push to the cloud when it returns. It is not an offline register. The Fuze Store app that takes the order still needs internet. If your line goes down often, the Hub keeps the kitchen moving on the orders already placed; it does not replace a stable connection at the counter.
Hardware: use what is lying around
The docs are specific about how little this needs. The kitchen screen can be an old iPad, a laptop, a Raspberry Pi, or the same computer the Hub runs on. Open the Fuze Store app on it and go to Displays → Kitchen Display. For Local mode you add the Hub computer; for Cloud mode you do not even need that. There is no proprietary monitor to buy.
Two practical notes from the kitchen side. The screen gets grease and steam, so a tablet in a cheap case on a shelf at eye level beats a laptop on the pass. And a kitchen screen is a display, not a register: it needs to run Fuze Store, but nobody rings orders on it.
Setting it up
- Turn on the add-on. Under Account → Add-ons in the app or on the web dashboard, activate Kitchen Display. On a free trial it is included automatically.
- Install the Hub on the computer that stays on, if you want Local mode or you have USB or serial printers. Sign in, pick the store, and paste the activation key generated in the app under Configurations → Integrations → Fuze Store Hub. The walkthrough is in First-Time Setup.
- Open the kitchen screen. On the kitchen device, open Fuze Store and go to Displays → Kitchen Display. Tickets appear the moment an order is placed at the register.
- Set your thresholds. Under Configurations → Preferences → Order, set Warning after and Critical after to match your menu, and decide whether orders should move to Processing and Ready on their own.
- Check the sync. On the Hub, open Kitchen Display to see Last sync, Unsynced (normally 0) and Last error. If Unsynced keeps growing, check the internet and use Force sync now.
No separate token or password is needed for KDS. Once the Hub is connected to your store, the kitchen display works from that connection.
A routine for the first week
- Day one, run paper and screen side by side. Let the cook bump on the screen while you still print tickets. Switch the printer off when the screen is trusted.
- Set Critical after to your real promise. If you tell customers fifteen minutes, red at fifteen minutes is the honest setting.
- Teach Recall before you need it. The first mis-bump happens on a busy night.
- Watch the colour, not the list. Amber is the cook's cue; red is the owner's.
For a restaurant with one cook and one cashier, this is the whole upgrade: a tablet in the kitchen, the free Hub on a laptop, and the register you already use. The full guide is Kitchen Display (KDS), with Working Offline for what happens when the internet drops. Fuze Store is free to start, and the Hub is a free download.