A KOT, or kitchen order ticket, is the slip that tells the kitchen what to cook for one order: the items, quantities, any special instructions, the table or order number, and the time it was punched. In most Indian restaurants it is printed on a small thermal printer the moment an order is confirmed, though some kitchens show it on a screen instead. The customer never sees the KOT. It is the kitchen's copy of the order, and the bill is generated separately from the same data.
Why it matters
Without a KOT, orders travel by shouting or by someone's memory, and the mistakes show up as wrong items, missed add-ons and remakes you pay for. A KOT gives the kitchen one clear sheet per order, lets you cook in the sequence orders arrived, and leaves a paper trail when a customer says the extra raita never came. For WhatsApp orders this matters even more, because the order was typed by the customer and nobody at the counter repeated it back.
KOTs also feed your numbers. When every order has a ticket, you can count how many went out in the lunch rush, which items were ordered together, and how long the kitchen took per order. The KOT system guide covers the formats and the common setups.
Example
A customer orders two butter naan, one dal makhani and one paneer tikka with less spice on WhatsApp at 8:12 pm, total ₹620. The KOT printed in the kitchen reads: order 143, 8:12 pm, delivery, 2 x butter naan, 1 x dal makhani, 1 x paneer tikka (less spice). The cook does not need the price, the address or the payment status, so those stay on the bill and the delivery slip. If the kitchen handles 80 such orders in an evening, the difference between a printed KOT and a verbal order is usually three or four remakes, which at ₹150 of food cost each is ₹450 to ₹600 lost in one evening.
If you are choosing between paper and a screen, read kitchen display system vs printed KOT before buying hardware.
On Tezzu, orders from WhatsApp and the store page land in the dashboard, and you can print a KOT for each one on a thermal printer, with the table number on dine-in orders.