Guides

Table ordering: best practices from real shifts

How to brief staff for a QR shift, when to keep approval on, when to switch to auto-approve.

Running a QR-ordering shift cleanly

Restaurants that install QR ordering and treat it like a turnkey product run into the same problems: an unwatched approval queue at lunch, a kitchen tablet on a wet counter, a host who forgets to print fresh QR cards before a Friday open. The system is reliable; the shift around it is what determines whether guests get their food in 12 minutes or 25. This guide is eight rituals from a pre-shift brief to a post-shift debrief, drawn from MobiTaste pilot venues running between 10 and 60 tables.

The rituals are operational, not technical. They assume the QR menu setup guide is done and the system is live. If you need the underlying mechanism for waiter approval, the explainer guide is the deep-dive.

Step 1. Brief staff before service

Run a five-minute stand-up before service starts. Open the order board and the approval queue on a tablet so everyone sees the layout. Name the person watching the approval queue for the shift. Confirm the kitchen tablet is on, charged, and at eye level for the senior cook.

The brief is not a training session. It is a reminder of who watches what. A new server might need 30 seconds of orientation on the Pending column; everyone else needs the role assignment for today’s shift.

Step 2. Set approval mode for the shift

Decide before service whether approval stays on or flips to auto. The default rule:

Approval on for lunch service in a street-facing venue.
Approval on for dinner service everywhere.
Approval on for hotel F&B and patio service that touches the public.
Auto-approve for breakfast in a corner cafe with the owner on the floor.
Auto-approve for a slow weekday afternoon if the host is also the only server.

Flip the setting in the dashboard under Service Mode. The change applies immediately; existing pending orders stay pending until taps land or the session expires. The waiter approval feature page covers the mechanism.

Step 3. Print fresh QR cards the night before

Walk the floor with a printed test scan card. Check every table’s QR for: peeling sticker, fingerprint smudge on the code area, scratch from sliding cutlery, fading from sunlight. Any QR that fails the test gets reprinted from the Tables page that night. A pile of fresh cards on the host stand at open is a 30-second insurance policy against a Saturday-rush reprint scramble.

A laminated QR ($2 per sheet at a copy shop) survives 6 to 9 months of restaurant use. Without lamination, expect to reprint every 6 weeks on a busy patio.

Step 4. Position the kitchen tablet

The kitchen tablet sits at eye level for the senior cook on the line. Two things to avoid:

Flat on a wet counter, where steam settles on the screen and grease softens the case glue.
Above the heat lamps, where the screen heats past the iPad’s thermal envelope and throttles.

A $20 articulating mount on the back wall is the simple solution. Keep the screen brightness at 80 percent so the cook can read tickets from two meters in fluorescent light. Pin the kitchen URL to the home screen so a stray tap does not switch to Safari’s browser chrome.

For multi-station kitchens (grill, espresso, cold), one tablet per station is the standard layout. The restaurant use case covers the multi-tablet pattern.

Step 5. Assign one host to the approval queue

During peak service, one person watches the approval queue. The right role depends on the venue:

Cafes: the barista, who glances at the tablet between drinks.
Full-service restaurants: the host at the host stand.
Hotels: the duty server with a backup on the dashboard.

The host’s only job, for the 30 seconds after an order lands, is to tap Approve. Anything that pushes the tap past two minutes is a problem to escalate to the manager. The audit log catches slow approvals after the shift; the host catches them during.

Step 6. Watch idle session expiry

Idle session expiry clears the QR cart on a table that has not moved for the set window. The default is 30 minutes. Adjust per service style:

Brunch (leisurely): 60 to 90 minutes.
Lunch (brisk): 30 minutes.
Coffee shop (quick): 15 to 20 minutes.
Hotel poolside (variable): 90 minutes.

Set the window per restaurant in Service Mode. The turn-time glossary entry explains why session windows pair with table turn time. The cover glossary entry covers the underlying capacity term.

Step 7. Debrief at end of shift

Open the audit log and the orders export after service. Flag two things:

Any approval that took over 90 seconds. The host was either distracted or under-staffed.
Any order that was rejected. The rejection event is in the log; the manager checks whether the rejection was correct.

A five-minute debrief at the end of a Friday dinner catches patterns. A pile of slow approvals on tables 8 to 12 might mean the host stand cannot see that section; the kitchen tablet was too far for the cook to glance at; a station was understaffed. The audit log surfaces what the dining room obscures.

The debrief is also where you decide whether the approval setting was right for tonight’s service. If staff tapped approve on every first order without thinking, you might switch to auto for slow nights. If a prank order landed in Pending and the host caught it, approval earned its 1.5 seconds per ticket.

Step 8. Adjust approval mode for tomorrow

Based on the debrief, adjust:

If approvals piled up at peak, add a backup approver or extend the auto-approve window.
If no pranks landed in Pending across three weeks, consider auto-approve for the slower service.
If staff complained about the friction, walk the cost: 1.5 seconds per first order is roughly 90 seconds across a 60-cover dinner. That is one host’s attention, well spent.

Adjust in the dashboard under Service Mode. The setting takes effect on the next order; nothing on the guest side changes.

Once a week, open the audit log filtered to menu changes. Look at:

Items added during the week and whether they sold.
Items 86’d repeatedly (out of stock signal; consider a recipe adjustment).
Price changes and whether the kitchen and the floor know.

The review is a 10-minute job and it keeps the menu honest. The FAQ page covers the standard menu-edit questions.

What does not change

The rituals above are about the people running the shift, not the software. The software runs the same way on a quiet Tuesday and a packed Saturday. The difference is whether someone is watching the approval queue, whether the kitchen tablet is positioned to be glanced at, and whether the host has fresh QR cards on the stand.

A clean shift looks boring from the outside. That is the point.

Where to go next

If you have not read the waiter approval explainer, it pairs with this guide. If you run a full-service venue with 30+ tables, the restaurant use case walks the staffing pattern. For the specific operational questions, the FAQ page has the short answers.