The Waiter App

The waiter app is the phone tool your floor staff use during service. It shows every table at a glance, lets a waiter confirm and serve orders, handles bills and payments, and pings someone the moment the kitchen has food ready or a guest needs help. It's a web app you can add to the phone's home screen, and you'll find it at /w/your-restaurant-slug.

Logging in

Waiters sign in at /w/your-restaurant-slug/login with a username and password. They don't sign themselves up. You, the admin, create each waiter's login on the Staff page, then hand them the username and password. That keeps your floor accounts under your control.

The live table grid

Once logged in, a waiter sees a live grid of every table, refreshing every few seconds. Each tile shows its status so a waiter knows where to go without walking the floor:

• Free: nobody's seated, or the last order is closed.
• New: a fresh order the kitchen hasn't started yet.
• Preparing: the kitchen is cooking.
• Ready to serve: food is plated and waiting for a runner.
• Bill requested: the guest has asked for the bill.
• Served (await pay): the food is out, the table still owes the bill.
• Confirm: a new order is held for waiter confirmation (only when you turn on the confirmation gate, see below).

Tap any table to open it. The waiter sees the order, the items, the running total, and the payment status, so they have the full picture before they walk over. A small envelope badge flags a table that has a pending kitchen note.

Confirming new orders (anti-ghost gate)

If you turn on Require waiter confirmation before the kitchen in settings (it's off by default), new orders don't go straight to the kitchen. Instead the table tile turns purple and shows Confirm, and opening it shows a banner with two choices:

• Confirm order: the waiter checks there's a real guest at the table, then taps Confirm. The order is released to the kitchen.
• Reject: if it looks like a fake order (say someone scanned the QR off-site), the waiter rejects it. The order is cancelled, never reaches the kitchen, and any stock it had reserved is put back.

This blocks ghost orders before they hit your line. Until an order is confirmed or rejected, you can't settle a bill for it.

Serving food

When the kitchen marks an item Ready, a Serve button appears next to it in the table sheet. The waiter taps Serve once the food is on the table, which stamps who served it and when. When every item on an order has been served, the order flips to served automatically.

Adding items at the table

A waiter can add to an order straight from the app with Add items. This opens a searchable menu with category filters, so the waiter can take a spoken order or add a round of drinks. The app even surfaces a couple of pairing suggestions based on what's in the cart, so staff can upsell a side or a drink. Added items join the table's existing bill and go to the kitchen as a fresh round.

Handling bills and payments

From a table, a waiter can mark the order paid when payment comes in. They pick how the guest paid (cash, card, UPI, Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, and so on), which closes the order and frees the table on the grid. Before settling, a waiter can also add or clear a service charge on the bill.

Split the bill: when a table wants to pay across more than one method (part cash, part UPI, or a few cards), the waiter can split the payment. They enter each share and its method, and the app records the breakdown so your Day Close still adds up correctly.

A waiter can also cancel a single item off an order, say a dish the kitchen can't make. Cancelling an item needs a reason note, so there's a record of why. One limit: you can't cancel an item on an order that's already been marked paid (issue a refund instead).

Notes to the kitchen

A waiter can send a quick free-text note to the kitchen from a table, like "rush table 5" or "no chilli". It shows up on the kitchen board until the kitchen acknowledges it, so the floor and the line can talk without anyone leaving their station.

Staff calls

When a guest taps for help in the chat, that's a staff call. It shows up under the bell in the waiter app, and a waiter can dismiss it once they've gone over to the table. So a guest who wants water or a refill gets a waiter's attention without flagging anyone down.

Notifications keep waiters moving

The app can push a notification to the waiter's phone (turn on background alerts from the settings menu) and chime in the app when:

• The kitchen marks an order Ready, so a runner picks up the food fast.
• A guest sends a staff call, so help reaches the table quickly.
• A new order lands at a table, so the floor knows a table just got busy.

These come from the kitchen board and the guest chat, so the floor stays in sync with the kitchen without anyone watching a screen the whole shift.

FAQ

How do I add a waiter?

You add waiters on the Staff page in your admin dashboard. Create a username and password for each one, then share those details with the waiter. They sign in at /w/your-restaurant-slug/login. Waiters can't create their own accounts, so every login stays under your control.

How does a waiter install the app on their phone?

The waiter app is a web app. Open /w/your-restaurant-slug in the phone's browser, then add it to the home screen. After that it opens like any other app, full screen, and (once background alerts are enabled) can receive the push notifications for ready orders and guest calls.

How does a waiter split a bill across payment methods?

Open the table, start to mark it paid, then choose to split. The waiter enters each share and the method it was paid with (for example part cash and part UPI). The app records the per-method breakdown, marks the order paid, and your Day Close reflects the right totals.

What happens when waiter confirmation is turned on?

New orders pause in the waiter app instead of going straight to the kitchen. The table tile shows Confirm, and a waiter either confirms the order to send it to the kitchen or rejects it if it looks fake. It's an anti-ghost-order check, and it's off by default.

What to do next

The waiter app and the kitchen board work as a pair: the kitchen plates the food, marks it Ready, and the waiter gets pinged to run it. Set up both, add your waiters on the Staff page, and decide in settings whether to turn on waiter confirmation, so your floor and kitchen stay in step all through service.