For Toast POS, the order ready notification built into the POS does not work for third-party ordering partners like AppFront. You'll need to enable this functionality on the AppFront side, and make sure your Toast kitchen setup matches your notification settings.
How it works
When order ready notifications are enabled, AppFront checks with Toast to confirm that every item on the check has been marked ready — across all of your kitchen's prep stations, printers, and KDS screens. As soon as everything on the order is ready, the order ready SMS (and/or push notification) goes out to the customer.
Enable order ready notifications in AppFront:
The first step is to enable Order Ready Notifications in AppFront:
Go to the location you want to enable, in the Advanced Settings > Configure > locations page (link here)
Scroll down on the bottom right hand side to find this toggle:
Switch on this toggle and make sure to select the settings that open up according to your preferences:
a. Text message - enter the order ready text message you want to use. you can use {orderNumber} in the message text if you would like to send the order number.
b. Notify when ready from KDS - only select this if you have a KDS in your kitchen, this will automatically connect to Toast and check the order status to notify right when the order is marked as ready
c. Notification channels - you can decide if you would like to notify with push , text or both.
d. the following options are explained further later in the article if your kitchen setup requires them.
Just by enabling this toggle, you will now see the following option on your Activity Log:
Send Text Message for Order Ready - with a nice send button or "SENT" label. You can always click this if you do not have a KDS and the customer will immediately receive the order ready notification.
Setting up Toast for your kitchen configuration
How you configure Toast depends on your kitchen setup:
Single prep station / printer
This is the simplest setup. Just make sure that the items on the menu which show up in your AppFront online ordering site have the correct prep stations assigned, and marking items ready from the KDS screen will send the order ready notification. You have the option to select "Enable individual item fulfillment" in the Kitchen and Ticket setup page in Toast so each item can be prepared and marked ready separately, depending on your kitchen's workflow.
Multiple prep stations, no final expo/pass station
If you have a few prep stations set up (for example, pizza and salad each on their own printer or KDS, or even multiple steps for one station like bake and finish) and there's no separate final expo or pass station that packages the whole order, no special Toast configuration is required for the notification to work correctly. AppFront's readiness check confirms that all items on the ticket are ready before sending — so simply using "Notify when ready from KDS" is sufficient, even with several prep stations reporting in.
Multiple prep stations with a final expo / pass station
If your kitchen has multiple prep stations that feed into a final expo (or "pass") station before an order goes out to the customer, best practice is:
Have your Toast support team mark your main expo device as Expo 2 in Toast. This is a Toast-side setting, so your Toast team will need to configure it for you.
Ideally, every other prep station/printer stays set as Expo 1, with your main expo as Expo 2 acting as the final, master fulfillment point.
Once that's set on the Toast side, go to Advanced Settings on the location's page in AppFront and set the order ready notification to send from Order Hub. With this setting, the SMS/push notification goes out once the order is confirmed ready at your Expo 2 station. You do not need to keep the Order Hub screen open on a device for this to work — it's simply a setting.
You can always check out Toast University's information about KDS setup here: https://central.toasttab.com/s/article/Item-and-Order-Fulfillment-on-KDS#fulfill_item
Best practice: avoid shortened links
If your order ready message text includes a link, do not use a shortened link (like a Bitly link). Shortened links can cause the SMS not to send.