Kitchen Capacity & Load
The Kitchen Capacity page is where you tell SSP how busy each station can get before food takes longer, and where you watch that load as service runs. Three tabs, one idea: the number of items a station has in hand decides its load level, the load level picks a time multiplier, and the multiplier stretches every dish's prep time on that station. The KDS colours its lines and the waiter's "ready in" estimates from the result.
Stations themselves are created on the Stations tab; items reach a station through routing classes. The thresholds that colour a waiting line orange and red are location-wide and live in KDS settings; this page holds the per-station rules for cooking lines.
Path: [Your Location] → Kitchen → Capacity, Monitor, or Analytics tabs
Required Permission: Manager with Manage Kitchen Stations
How load works
Every station counts the items currently in its queue (sent to the kitchen, not yet plated). That count is compared with three thresholds you set:
| Items in queue | Load level | Multiplier used |
|---|---|---|
| below the Low threshold | LOW | Low load multiplier |
| below the Medium threshold | MEDIUM | Medium load multiplier |
| below the High threshold | HIGH | High load multiplier |
| at or above the High threshold | CRITICAL | Critical load multiplier |
The multiplier is applied to each dish's base prep time when the item is sent: 1.0 leaves it alone, 2.0 doubles it, 0.5 halves it. That adjusted time is what the KDS counts down while the line cooks and what the estimated ready time is built from. A station with no configuration runs at multiplier 1.0 and always reads LOW.
Capacity Tab
Every station from the Stations tab appears here as a card. A station with no configuration yet shows Not configured — No capacity thresholds set for this station yet and a Configure button; a configured station shows its thresholds and multipliers and a pencil (Edit configuration) to change them.
Configure a Station
- On the Capacity tab, find the station
- Click Configure (or the pencil on a configured station)
The dialog is titled Configure [Station] the first time and Edit [Station] capacity afterwards. Its fields:
Load thresholds (items) — required
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Low Load Threshold | Up to this many items in queue the station is LOW. Minimum 1. |
| Medium Load Threshold | Below this, MEDIUM. Minimum 2. |
| High Load Threshold | Below this, HIGH; at or above it, CRITICAL. Minimum 3. |
Time multipliers — required
Low, Medium, High and Critical Load Multiplier: the factor applied to prep times at each level (see How load works). 1.0 is normal speed.
Alarms and timing for this station — optional
These drive the colours and sounds on the KDS for lines this station is cooking. Leave a field empty to use no rule (or, for the unstarted alarm, to turn it off).
| Field | What it does on the KDS |
|---|---|
| Items cooked at once (leave empty if unknown) | How many items the station can have on the go; informational for the load model. Minimum 1. |
| Warn this many minutes before a dish is due (empty = no early warning) | A cooking line turns orange when its due time is this close. |
| Grace period before the late alarm sounds (minutes) | Minutes past the due time before the line turns red and counts as overdue. 0 = red the moment it is due. |
| Alarm if nobody starts an order for this long (empty = off) | Minutes a line may sit Sent and unclaimed before the unstarted alarm fires. Only meaningful with Two-stage bump on. |
| Play sounds on the kitchen screen | Alarms chime on the KDS. On by default. |
| Chime when a new order arrives | New-ticket chime. On by default. |
| Active | Turn the configuration off without deleting it. |
When a line is shown on several stations (a class subscribed by two screens), the KDS uses the strictest rule: the longest early warning and the shortest grace period among them.
Click Create Configuration (or Save Changes) to save.
Monitor Tab
Real-time load for every configured station.
At the top:
- Auto-refresh (5 min) — on by default; the dashboard re-reads itself every five minutes
- Refresh — read now (throttled so it cannot be hammered)
- Last updated — when the data was last read
If nothing shows, no station has a configuration yet: Configure station capacity settings in the Stations tab first.
Station cards
Each card shows the station name, its load level badge (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, CRITICAL), Items and Orders in queue, the Multiplier in force (e.g. 1x), when it was last Updated, and an Override badge if a manual override is active.
Manual override
Apply Override opens Apply Manual Override for that station (or for all stations):
- Time Multiplier — the factor to force, regardless of load (
1.0= normal speed,2.0= double wait time,0.5= half wait time) - Duration — 30 minutes, 1 hour (default), 2 hours, 4 hours, or Indefinite
While the override is active the station uses this multiplier instead of the one its load level would pick; the card shows Override and a Clear Override button ends it early. Use it when the load count does not tell the whole story: a broken fryer, a cook short, a private party arriving.
Analytics Tab
Historical load, read from snapshots the server captures automatically every five minutes while the location is open (retained for a limited period, pruned nightly).
The tab's own subtitle still says snapshots are captured every 15 minutes; the schedule is five.
Filters
- Start Date / End Date
- Station — dropdown, defaulting to All Stations (Default)
- Capture Snapshot — take one now, without waiting for the schedule
Kitchen Load Over Time
A chart of load level per station across the range. When nothing matches the filters: No historical data available for the selected filters.
Related Pages
- Kitchen Stations — create stations, set the Expo, and the location-wide KDS settings
- Kitchen Routing — route menu items to stations
- Kitchen Display: Working a Ticket — what the colours and countdowns look like on the screen