Would it be better to arrange orders by FIFO or LIFO for a server UI at a restaurant?

Question

i'm designing a server screen that will be used by the restaurant waitress to deliver food from the kitchen collection station to the customers. This screen shows a list of orders that are ready and the table numbers they need to be delivered to.

In terms of the order of this, i'm curious which is the better to design for LIFO (last in first out) or fifo (first in first out) in terms which dishes the waitress should prioritise. If it's FIFO the most recently ready order would stack to the top of the list. this matters mainly because some dishes need to served hot

Answer 1

This is really a business decision on how they want to operate. So for that reason alone I would suggest you make it a system configurable option.

If we are talking about a generic default between the two options, the go with FIFO. Simply because, tables that have been waiting longer should get priority. This is basic customer satisfaction.

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You raise an interesting point about orders that don't have any hot dishes though. I would say this is a more specific scenario and might be talking it a step too far. However, if you know that this is going to be a common scenario that you will need to deal with then I suggest having another configuration option: IsHotFoodPriority. (Because again, this is a business decision on how they want to operate).

If enabled, the way that would work is a 2-factor sort order. First you order by DoesOrderContainHotFood, and then you sort by the time.