Reading Tickets & Orders
Lesson 3 of 13 in Kitchen Communication · 22 minutes
Read kitchen order tickets like a professional. CLB 3-4 — understand the layout, modifications, allergy alerts, timing notes, and how to prioritize. The ticket is your job for the next 4 minutes.
What you'll learn
- Read a kitchen order ticket end-to-end
- Identify modifications, substitutions, allergy alerts
- Understand timing instructions (fire, hold, on the fly)
- Prioritize multiple tickets correctly
From the lesson
Every order in a professional kitchen starts as a ticket. In Canadian restaurants, the ticket comes from the server's POS (point-of-sale) terminal and prints in the kitchen on a thermal printer. Sometimes it shows on a screen instead. Either way, reading it correctly is the first step to cooking the right food.
A typical kitchen ticket has several parts. At the top is the TABLE NUMBER and SERVER's initials — this tells you where the food goes and who to ask if there's a question. Next is the ITEM list, with quantity first: '2 BURGER' means two burgers, and '1 STEAK MR' means one steak cooked medium-rare. Modifications appear under each item: 'NO ONION, ADD CHEESE, GF BUN' means no onion, add…