What is a KOT? A simple guide for restaurant owners

Walk into any busy restaurant kitchen at 1:30 PM and you will see small paper slips pinned above the tawa. Those slips are KOTs, and they are the reason the kitchen knows that Table 4 wants two butter naan and not three.

What does KOT mean?

KOT stands for Kitchen Order Ticket. It is the order as the kitchen needs to see it: the table or token number, each dish, its quantity, and any note such as "less spicy" or "no onion". It has no prices on it. Money belongs on the bill; the kitchen only needs to know what to cook.

KOT vs bill: what is the difference?

• The KOT goes to the kitchen the moment the order is taken. A table can have many KOTs in one meal: starters first, main course later, one more round of rotis at the end.
• The bill goes to the customer once, at the end, and adds up every KOT for that table with GST.

Keeping the two apart is what lets a waiter send a second round to the kitchen without touching the bill, and lets the cashier bill the table without asking the kitchen what was served.

Why every restaurant needs KOTs

• No missed orders. A spoken order is forgotten in a rush. A ticket stays until it is cooked.
• No arguments about what was ordered. The ticket shows what the waiter sent, with the time.
• Nothing cooked that was never billed. When every dish goes to the kitchen through the billing app, every dish that leaves the kitchen is on a bill. This is the simplest way to stop leakage.
• Faster service. The kitchen starts cooking while the waiter is still at the table.

How a KOT works in ZingBills

The waiter or cashier opens the table on the floor map, taps the dishes and sends the KOT. Only what is new goes to the kitchen: if Table 4 adds two more naan, the second KOT has just the two naan, not the whole order again. When the table is done, one tap turns every round into one GST bill.

The ticket can print on a 58 mm or 80 mm thermal printer in the kitchen. If you have a kitchen with separate counters (tandoor, Chinese, drinks), the KOT can be split by category so each counter gets only its own slip. Takeaway orders get a token number that is the same on the slip, the kitchen screen and the bill.

Paper KOT or a kitchen screen?

Paper works and it is cheap. Many kitchens move to a screen once the rush gets bigger, because a screen shows how long each order has been waiting and which dishes are ready. We compare the two in KDS vs KOT printer.

See it on your own menu

ZingBills is a restaurant POS for restaurants, cafés, bars, QSRs and cloud kitchens, on an Android phone or in any browser. Book a free demo and we will set it up on your own menu, or see the plans.