Service is where the system either disappears into the background or becomes the thing everyone is fighting. This is the working knowledge that keeps it in the background.
Order types decide everything downstream
The first choice on any ticket — dine-in, takeout, delivery, bar tab — is not cosmetic. It can change the tax applied, which receipt prints, whether a service charge attaches, and how the sale appears in reporting. Correcting it after items are on the check is usually possible but rarely clean. Train staff to get it right at the top.
Modifiers carry the kitchen’s instructions
A modifier is structured data; a free-text note is a hope. Anything the kitchen must act on should be a modifier, because modifiers print reliably, route with the item, and can be made mandatory.
- Required modifiers stop the ticket until answered — steak temperature, choice of side, spice level. Use them wherever an unanswered question would send the item back.
- Optional modifiers cover preferences: no onions, dressing on the side, extra lime.
- Priced modifiers add to the item total. Check that the price shows on the guest receipt the way you expect before you rely on it.
- Allergy information deserves its own dedicated modifiers, visually distinct on the ticket. Never leave it to a typed note.
Coursing and firing
Coursing lets a server build the whole table’s order at once while controlling when each part reaches the line. Starters send immediately; mains sit on hold until the server fires them. This is what stops four entrées landing while the table is still on bread.
It only works if the kitchen and the floor agree on what a course means and who owns the decision to fire. Configure the courses to match how your line already talks, not the other way round.
Splitting checks
Three approaches, and it pays to know which one you are using before the table asks:
- By seat. Requires seat numbers to have been used when the order was built. Cleanest result, but only if the discipline was there from the start.
- By item. Drag items onto separate checks after the fact. Flexible, slower, and error-prone with a large table.
- Evenly. Divide the total by a number of ways. Fastest, and fine until someone had only a soda.
Shared items — a bottle of wine, a plate of starters for the table — usually need to be split across checks explicitly. Decide your house convention and teach it, rather than letting each server improvise.
Voids, comps and discounts are three different things
Staff use these words interchangeably. The system does not, and neither does your accountant.
- Void — the item should never have been rung. It leaves the check and, if it had already been sent, generally leaves a record for the kitchen too. Voids of already-fired food also mean waste, which is why they are worth watching.
- Comp — the item was made and given away. It stays on the check at zero charge. Food cost is incurred; revenue is not. Comps are a hospitality decision with a real price attached.
- Discount — the guest pays a reduced amount. Applied to an item or to the whole check, by percentage or fixed value.
Require a reason code on every one of them. Reason codes turn an unreadable list of adjustments into a report you can act on — and they are the difference between spotting a pattern in week two and discovering it in month six.
86ing an item mid-service
When the kitchen runs out, mark the item unavailable in the system rather than shouting it across the floor. It disappears from ordering screens immediately and stops being sold by the server who was not listening. Put it back the moment it returns — an item left 86’d overnight is a silent revenue leak the next day.
Make one person responsible for 86ing. Usually the expo or the shift lead. Shared responsibility for this reliably becomes nobody’s responsibility.
Payments and tips
Card, cash, gift card and split tender across several of them. A check with a partial payment stays open until the balance is settled — a common source of “missing” checks at close that are simply unfinished.
Tips can arrive on the terminal, on the printed slip, or through a handheld prompt at the table. Whichever you use, the number that matters is the one recorded in the system at close — see Reports & Closeout for how that flows into declarations and payroll.