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Recipe Kiosk: your recipes on a tablet

Recipe Kiosk turns the recipes you already have into a one-tap lookup for your staff. Mount a cheap tablet above the drink station, and anyone can tap a drink and see how it’s made. No more printing and re-printing recipe cards.

What it is

Recipe Kiosk is a board of tiles, one per menu recipe, grouped into sections you choose. Tap a tile and the recipe card opens with the ingredients, the steps, and any allergens. A prep recipe’s card also says how much the batch makes, so nobody reads a batch amount as one serving, and has a batch stepper, so you can make 1¼ or 3¾ batches and every amount scales to match. It’s included in your ShelfCount plan at no extra charge, and it works on any tablet with a modern browser.

Set it up

Go to Settings → Recipe Kiosk (open Recipe Kiosk). Only admins and managers can change it.

  • Sections group your tiles (“Hot drinks”, “Cold drinks”, “Food”). Add, rename, and reorder them.
  • Tiles are your recipes. Pick which recipes go in each section.
  • New (automatic) is the last row in the section list. It holds menu recipes you haven’t put in a section, so a recipe you add today is on the tablet today. From there you can move them all into a section or hide them all. To start from scratch, delete your sections and pick Hide them when asked, or turn off Show new recipes automatically.
  • Sizes are stacked into one tile when recipe names differ only by size (see Sizes below).
  • Icon or photo sets what each tile shows (see Icons vs photos below).

Changes save on their own, and tablets pick them up within a minute. There’s no publish button.

Put it on a tablet

Install first, then pair. Installing puts a Recipe Kiosk icon on the tablet’s home screen so it opens full screen, without browser bars. Pair from that icon, not from the browser, so the tablet stays paired.

iPad

  1. Open getshelfcount.com/kiosk in Safari.
  2. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
  3. Open Recipe Kiosk from the new home-screen icon.
  4. In Settings → Recipe Kiosk on your computer or phone, choose Pair a tablet, then enter the 6-digit code on the iPad. The code works for 10 minutes.

Android and Chrome

  1. Open getshelfcount.com/kiosk in Chrome.
  2. Tap ⋮, then Add to Home screen, then Install.
  3. Open Recipe Kiosk from the new icon.
  4. Enter the 6-digit code from the builder.

Fire tablet

  1. Open getshelfcount.com/kiosk in Silk.
  2. Open the menu and choose Add to Home.
  3. Open Recipe Kiosk from the icon and enter the 6-digit code.

Keep the screen on

The kiosk asks the tablet to stay awake, and asks again when someone taps the screen. If the tablet still says no, a small Screen may sleep badge shows in the kiosk header. Tap it to see these steps on the tablet. The tablet setting below is what keeps the screen on for sure:

  • iPad: Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. This is the setting to rely on. If you use Guided Access, it has its own auto-lock setting that replaces this one while it’s on: Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access → Display Auto-Lock → Never. Low Power Mode can also let the screen sleep, so keep the iPad plugged in.
  • Android: Settings → Display → Screen timeout to the longest value, and turn on Stay awake while charging in Developer options if your tablet has it. Keep it plugged in.
  • Fire: Settings → Display → Screen timeout to the longest value, and keep it plugged in.

To stop staff from leaving the app, turn on Guided Access on iPad (Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access, then triple-click the side or home button) or app pinning on Android and Fire.

What the tablet can and can’t see

The tablet shows recipes only: names, ingredients and amounts, steps, allergens, photos, and videos. It never sees costs, counts, orders, vendors, or sales. The only thing it can change is today’s prep list: what’s on hand and what got made. To take a tablet off, unpair it under Devices in Settings → Recipe Kiosk. It goes back to the unpaired screen within about a minute (sooner if the tablet’s screen is woken).

Prep lists

The kiosk can also run your morning prep. Build a list of prep recipes and pars in Settings → Recipe Kiosk, and a Today’s prep button shows in the kiosk header. Staff enter what’s on the shelf, the tablet works out how many batches to make, and each recipe opens already scaled. The tablet never sees costs here either, and checking pars doesn’t change your counts. The full walkthrough is in Prep lists on the Recipe Kiosk.

Sizes

Recipes whose names differ only by size are stacked into one tile with size buttons, for example “Latte 12 oz / 16 oz” shows as one Latte tile. If a stack is wrong, use Unstack in the builder. To add a size to a tile, use Add size.

POS size modifiers: If your sizes are a POS modifier (Square size modifier lists, Toast or Clover size groups), the kiosk shows the base recipe for now. Add one recipe per size if you want size pills.

Icons vs photos

Tiles show an emoji by default. You can upload your own PNG icon for any tile. Photo mode shows a picture of the drink or dish instead, which looks great but loads more slowly on cheap tablets. Try it on your actual tablet before switching everything over.

Writing steps

The recipe editor has a toolbar for the steps. The numbered-list button starts a list, and pressing Enter continues the numbering. Two templates, Drink build and Prep batch, give you a starting layout. Bullets under a step show as sub-lines on the tablet. Recipes with numbered steps read best on the kiosk, so convert long paragraphs into steps.

More on recipes in Building recipes that cost right. Running kitchen checks on a tablet already? See Kitchen checks and the kitchen screen.