Volunteer-run counters: what to set up before they arrive
A volunteer gets one shift and no run-up, so everything they need has to be decided, labelled and printed before they walk up to the counter.
Plan for one shift, not for training
A volunteer committee is not a short-staffed kitchen. The people standing at the counters are there for an evening, often a single evening, and they will not be back to get better at it. Whatever they have to understand, they have to understand on arrival, standing up, with somebody already waiting in front of them. That is a setup problem rather than a training problem, and it is solved in the days before the gates open, not on the morning itself.
The test to apply is simple: could somebody who has never seen the site work this counter correctly knowing only what is written at it. If the answer depends on finding the person who built the menu, the counter is not ready. Volunteers rarely ask twice. They guess, reasonably and consistently, and a dozen reasonable guesses at a dozen counters is how a night stops adding up.
Decide and label everything before anybody arrives
Name the counters the way the site already talks about them, and spell them in the software exactly as they are spelled on the sign above them. Somebody reading a ticket should never have to translate a name into a place.
Fix which items belong to which counter and then leave it fixed. An item moved mid-service lands orders at a counter whose staff were told they do not sell it, and they will set the ticket aside rather than make it.
Label the device and the printer at each counter with that counter's own name. Equipment gets carried about during a build, and a printer that quietly changed stands is the easiest way for an order to be made at the wrong end of the site.
Keep the spare paper at the counter, not in a central store, and point at it during handover rather than when a roll runs out. Stock kept elsewhere has to be fetched by whoever can be spared, which during a rush is nobody.
Let the paper do the explaining
A printed ticket suits a volunteer counter because it assumes nothing about who is reading it. The ticket carries the guest's name and the items that counter has to make, and it arrives only at the counter that has to make them. Nobody has to hold a running order in their head, work out which part of a large order belongs to them, or shout a question down the line. Their printer prints their part, and the guest collects it from them.
Call the guest by the name on the ticket and hand over against the list. That is the entire procedure, and it is the only one worth taping to the wall.
Keep finished tickets in order on a spike or a rail instead of binning them. At close they are what you count against what the counter took, and a counter that cannot be counted is a hole in the night's figures.
The first ten minutes of a shift
Walk the counter with the person rather than past it. Print one test ticket while they watch, so they have seen paper come out of the machine once before it matters. Read the item list with them, point at the paper, the power lead and the printer's own switch, and give them one name to find when something stops. Ten minutes spent this way at each counter removes most of the questions that would otherwise arrive later, when answering them is expensive.
Hand over at the counter when shifts change, never at the gate. Two minutes of the person leaving telling the person arriving what has happened so far beats any briefing given before doors.
Check paper, power and the printer at close rather than at open. A dead counter found in the evening leaves you a night to deal with it; found in the morning, it gets fixed while a crowd is already coming through the gate.