Putting a buzzer number on the ticket, and calling it back
A collection order needs a handle the counter and the customer both hold. A buzzer number on the kitchen ticket and on the ready screen is that handle — as long as it is written where the person plating can see it without hunting.
A sit-down table has a number. A collection order does not, and it needs one — a handle that the person at the counter and the person waiting both hold, so that “order for who?” is answered before it is asked.
The old answer is a name shouted over a fryer. A better one, borrowed from every counter that hands you a plastic disc, is a buzzer number: a short number given at the till, printed on the ticket the kitchen works from, and shown again on the board when the food is up.
Put it where the eye already is
The number is only useful if it is where the person plating is already looking. Buried in a corner of the ticket it gets missed, the food sits, and the queue at the counter grows while a finished order goes cold three feet away. On the top line, big, next to the order number, it is read without hunting — the ticket earns its place by being glanceable, not by carrying every field the database has.
Ready means the same word everywhere
When a ticket is marked ready, the board should say so in a sentence a person can act on — “ready, buzzer 97” — rather than a status code only the developer recognises. The counter reads it, calls the number, and hands the food over. The value is not in the technology; it is that the till, the kitchen screen and the person calling the number are all looking at the same short number and the same plain word.
When you cannot reach them
Some halls want to tell the customer directly rather than call across a room. That is worth doing carefully: a message that quietly fails to send is worse than no message, because the counter assumes the customer knows and the customer is still waiting. The safe shape is to confirm the message actually left, and when it cannot, fall back to the oldest reliable channel there is — a number, on a board, called out.