Streamline Your Line: How to Use Kitchen Bins 🍟🥩
In a fast-paced kitchen, success is all about pacing. If your line cooks are constantly scrolling through individual tickets to count how many sides of fries or medium-rare steaks they need to prep ahead, your service can slow down.
The Kitchen Bins feature is designed to answer a crucial question for your line team: "How much do I owe right now?"
A bin provides a live, real-time count of a specific item—or group of items—that your kitchen needs to batch-produce. Instead of guessing, your team gets an at-a-glance tally of exactly what they need to cook across all active tickets combined.
📊 Where Bins Show Up & How They Work
Your active bins live right on the Kitchen Video (KDS) screen. When you open the Items view (the same panel that displays your "All-Day" list), your kitchen bins appear pinned securely at the very top of the sidebar as a row of labeled tiles.
💡 The Anatomy of a Kitchen Bin
Real-Time Math: Each bin adds up its tagged items across every active order at that station, not just a single ticket. When a new order is rung up, the count goes up instantly; when a cook bumps (completes) that ticket, the count comes right back down.
Modifiers Count Too: Bins aren't limited to standalone menu items. If you create a bin for "Sweet Fries," it will automatically scan your tickets and count those fries even if they are tucked away as a modifier inside a custom combo meal or burger layout.
Multipliers Are Respected: If a guest orders a "Double Burger" and your item is configured with a multiplier of 2, the bin reads it perfectly. For example, ordering three Double Burgers will cause a "Burger Patty" bin to instantly read 6.
Station Specific: Your staff won't get distracted by data they don't need. The fryer station will only see fry-related bins, while the grill station will only see its steak or burger bins.
⚙️ Bins vs. All-Day: What’s the Difference?
While they look similar, they serve two distinct operational purposes:
All-Day: This is a complete, running list of every single item your kitchen currently owes, broken down by station. Use this to keep an eye on the complete, macroscopic food layout.
Bins: This is a highly focused, always-visible shortlist of just the few items you choose to batch-produce ahead of time (like wings, fries, or patties). Use bins to perfectly pace your fryer drops and grill space.
🛠️ How to Set Up Kitchen Bins
Setting up your bins is done in the back-office portal and takes effect immediately without needing to reboot your kitchen hardware.
Step 1: Create the Bin in the Portal
Log into the NX Portal and navigate to the Kitchen section on the left sidebar.
Click on Bins and select + New.
Give your bin a Name and a Short Name (this short name is what actually prints on the KDS tile, like "FRIES").
Under the Items block, click the purple + button to add the specific menu items or modifiers you want to track, along with any relevant volume Multipliers.
Click Save.
Step 2: Assign the Bin to a Station
From the left sidebar, navigate to Configuration > Printing > Routing Destinations.
Choose your specific kitchen station (e.g., BW KDS).
Scroll down to the Bins section and select your newly created kitchen bins from the dropdown menu.
Click Save in the bottom right corner! Your tiles will appear on the KDS screen within seconds.
Need Help? 💡
Do kitchen bins stop working if our restaurant's internet goes down?
Not at all! Bins are calculated locally on the Kitchen Video devices using the orders already flowing across your in-house network. As long as your kitchen terminals remain powered on and connected to your local router, your bins will continue counting perfectly offline!
Why isn't a specific menu item showing up in my active bin count?
First, double-check that the item is explicitly added to the bin's profile in the back-office Kitchen Builder. Second, verify that the bin itself has been assigned to that specific KDS station under your Routing Destinations page!