MiniRestaurants
Local-first

What happens to your tickets when the internet drops

The three network states a kitchen screen can be in, what keeps working in each one, and the one thing that does not.

Published 2026-08-19 by MiniRestaurants.

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The link between the kitchen screen and the internet, drawn with the middle broken A schematic. On the left, a plain rounded rectangle standing for a kitchen screen. On the right, an outline of a cloud standing for the internet. A line runs between them, and its middle section is drawn as a broken dashed line in the accent colour, marked LINK DOWN. The screen and its own segment of the line are unbroken: the work on the near side of the break keeps going.

There are three states, not two

Most kitchen software has one question about the network: is it up or is it down. A kitchen has three answers, and the middle one is the one that decides your shift.

Internet up. Everything is running: new orders arrive from your cloud point of sale and from your local network, and reporting is current.

Internet down, local network up. The cards have not moved. New orders from a cloud point of sale are waiting, but orders over your own network still arrive, every bump is recorded, and reporting catches up later.

Everything down. The cards have still not moved. Every open ticket is on the screen, every bump you make is recorded, and it all syncs when the connection returns.

What you can still do in the worst state

In all three states you can see the orders already on the screen, and you can bump, strike, hold and prioritise them. Screens stay in sync with each other, and printing keeps working.

One thing does not: new orders from a cloud point of sale cannot reach you while the internet is out, because they are not in your building. Nothing can change that, and any product that says otherwise is describing something else.

Reporting is the third case. It does not stop, it lags. Numbers catch up when the connection returns.

The one thing to do on your next shift

Find out which state you are in before you need to know. The screen says so in a banner, in plain words, at the top. Operators can work around a degraded system. Nobody can work around not knowing.

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