Had a ticket printer jam on a Saturday night service in Chicago, took me 20 minutes to notice

We were 86 deep on a $65 a plate menu and I was calling out fires left and right. Nobody told me the printer stopped spitting tickets. By the time I looked up and saw the silent screen, we had 8 tables waiting on food that never got put in. I had to comp three entrees and run the pass myself to get back on track. Has anyone else had a kitchen comms system fail at the worst possible time? What do you do to catch it faster?

3 comments

3 Comments

taraross1d ago

...wait, a kitchen timer on the printer itself? that's genius but also kind of terrifying that it even has to exist, you know? like we're out here rigging up timers just to catch a machine failing, that shouldn't be necessary in this day and age. i'm still stuck on the fact that yours went ten minutes without you noticing, that's a whole different level of chaos than my eight tables... i would have lost my mind if it was ten. the dry erase board trick is smart but honestly the thought of training my whole line to use it makes my head hurt, especially on a Saturday when everyone's already running on fumes.

ivan7741d ago

...and honestly a physical backup is the only thing that's saved my ass more than once. We keep a dry erase board by the expo station, old school, and I trained everyone to write down the ticket number and table if the screen goes dark for more than 30 seconds. It's not perfect, you still have to check it manually, but it catches the jam before you're eight tables deep. Another thing I started doing is throwing a cheap kitchen timer on the printer itself, set to vibrate every ten minutes during the rush. If I hear it go off and I haven't seen a ticket in a while, I know something's up. Saves you from that sick feeling when you realize the whole section is sitting there with nothing.

shane_hayes1d ago

That whole kitchen timer thing speaks to a bigger pattern I've noticed everywhere. We build all this fancy tech but still end up duct-taping solutions together because the basics get ignored. @taraross mentioned how insane it is that we even have to do this stuff, and that's exactly it. It's like how my buddy runs a coffee shop and they still use a physical checklist for cleaning because the digital one everyone ignores. Makes you wonder what else we're overcomplicating that just needs a cheap timer and a dry erase board, doesn't it?