the kitchen runs on paper

We tried a screen system for five months. Last week the tickets went back on the rail, and the pass got faster the same night.

The pitch was good: fewer mistakes, better timing data. What actually happened is that the cooks stopped looking up. A rail of paper tells you at a glance how deep you are. A screen tells you one ticket at a time.

We kept exactly one thing from the experiment — a timer on the fryer — and gave the rest back.