KOT (kitchen order ticket)
A KOT is the printed slip kitchens read to start preparing an order. A KDS does the same job on a screen, not paper. The acronym stands for kitchen order ticket and predates digital order boards by decades.
What it means in operation
In a paper-driven kitchen, the waiter writes the order on a duplicate pad, drops the top copy at the pass, and clips the carbon for the bill. Some restaurants print KOTs from a POS via thermal printer on the line. The cook reads the ticket, fires the dish, and clips the ticket overhead until the plate goes out. Some venues run mixed mode for years: paper for kitchen, digital for the bar. The format is short by tradition because legibility under heat and grease matters more than detail. Bigger venues run one KOT per station so the grill cook reads only grill items.
Why it matters
The KOT is the legal and operational record of who ordered what. Tax authorities in some markets check that printed KOTs match end-of-night totals. Operationally, a missing KOT is a missing dish and a comp, which is why most growing restaurants move to a KDS as soon as volume passes the threshold where two tickets in one service get lost. The shift is rarely all at once: bar and dessert often go digital first, hot line last, because hot-line cooks have hands on flames and prefer not to tap a screen.
Related terms
- KDS: the digital replacement for the paper KOT.
- BOH / FOH: the back-of-house team that reads the KOT.
- Kanban order board: the screen layout most KDS systems use.