Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Fast Food Personal Pager

Employees can get more done
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I work in the kitchen at Burger King. The kitchen is divided into several different "stations" for different employees to work at. One is the Front Board. This station makes all the hamburgers. The other one is the Side Board. This station makes fries, chicken nuggets, chicken sandwiches, chili, and pretty much all the miscellaneous items.

We have a computer system that splits the input from a cash register and puts out the different parts of the order to different screens. For example, if someone orders a hamburger and a chicken sandwich, only the respective stations' screens show what that single station needs to make.

Throughout the day, it's necessary to do things that are away from the station i.e. go to the freezer, fill up ketchup bottles, etc. A bunch of orders can appear silently on your screen without you knowing it. This leads to paranoia, walking all the way across the kitchen to glance at the screen several times a minute. This leads to inefficiency. It's too loud with all the machinery for the units to simply beep.

What is needed is a pager device with a clip to be worn on the belt that vibrates when a new order comes up on one's screen. For the respective screen, simply set it to that station's channel. The pagers should be able to accept input from more than one channel at a time for employees working at more than one station. The pagers should also have a large pressure pad for "bumping" items off the screen i.e. removing an item when it's been taken care of.

fogfreak, Jul 24 2003

Restaurant Pagers http://www.restaurantpager.com/index.htm
[Cedar Park, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

[link]






       Baked. Restaurant pagers are widely available [link]. You'll have to get someone to integrate them into your particular system, though.
Cedar Park, Jul 25 2003
  

       That's similar, but not baked. They kitchen staff still has to dial in a number. It's not for alerting when an order comes up, either, it's for when food's ready. I'm looking for something hooked into the already-existant computer system that pages automatically, with remote controlling capability of the screen.
fogfreak, Jul 25 2003
  

       A generic version of this that could detect events occuring on your PC (new email, IM window popped up, etc) could also be useful. Anyone who does a bunch of work on a PC, but also has to be away from the keyboard a great deal, would appreciate it.
krelnik, Jul 25 2003
  

       I'm with [krelnik]. presumably this can be done with bluetooth....
neilp, Jul 25 2003
  
      
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