Choosing a receipt printer for your restaurant

Start with what it will print

Before you look at models, write down what each printer will do:

• Bills at the counter — printed for every guest, often while they wait.
• Kitchen tickets — printed for each section that cooks (the grill, the bar, the dessert counter), often in bursts.
• Both — a small outlet may use one printer for everything.

A café with a counter and one kitchen may need only one printer. A restaurant with a bar and a hot kitchen usually needs a printer in each place, so tickets come out where the food or the drinks are made.

Paper width: 58 mm or 80 mm

Receipt printers use rolls of thermal paper in two common widths.

• 58 mm is narrower. The printers are small and often portable, and fit on a crowded counter or in a food truck. Fewer characters fit on a line, so long dish names wrap.
• 80 mm is wider. More fits on a line, so bills are shorter and easier to read, and kitchen tickets have room for large dish names and notes.

If you have the space, 80 mm is the comfortable choice for a counter and a kitchen. 58 mm suits small counters, mobile setups and very low volumes. Whatever you choose, buy paper of the same width and keep spare rolls where staff can find them.

Thermal printers print with heat, so there is no ink or ribbon to replace. Thermal paper darkens with heat, so keep spare rolls away from the stove.

The connection: USB, network or Bluetooth

How a printer connects matters more than any other feature, because it decides which device can print to it.

• USB connects the printer to one computer. It is simple and reliable, but only that computer can print to it.
• Network (Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi) puts the printer on your outlet's network with its own address. Any device that knows the address can send it jobs, so several POS terminals can share it. A network cable is steadier than Wi-Fi if the printer sits near your router or a network point.
• Bluetooth pairs the printer to one phone or tablet. It suits a food truck, a market stall or a waiter with a handheld, where there is no network or no counter computer.

Many printers offer more than one connection. If you are unsure, a printer with both USB and network gives you room to change your setup later.

Give network printers a fixed address

A network printer is found by its address on your network. Many routers hand out addresses that can change when the router restarts — and then the POS sends jobs to the old address. Ask whoever set up your network to give each printer a fixed address (often called a reserved address or DHCP reservation). It takes a few minutes and saves a lot of "the printer stopped" calls.

The kitchen is a hard place for a printer

A printer near the grill lives with heat, steam and grease. Put it where it is easy to reach but away from direct heat, and check that the paper path stays clean. Some kitchens choose a kitchen display screen instead of — or as well as — a printer; our guide to setting up a kitchen screen compares the two.

Other things worth checking

• An automatic cutter, so staff tear nothing by hand.
• A cash drawer port, if you want the drawer to open when a cash bill prints.
• The letters it prints. If your bills need a currency sign or accents, check the printer prints them. Scripts such as Hindi or Tamil are often not built into receipt printers.
• Speed and noise, for a busy counter or an open kitchen.
• Spare parts and paper you can buy locally.

How BillDine prints

BillDine prints to ordinary thermal receipt and kitchen printers, in three ways:

• The BillDine app on an Android phone or tablet finds Wi-Fi printers on its network and Bluetooth printers paired to it, asks whether to use the one it found, and prints a test page. From then on it prints bills and kitchen tickets for the outlet — including orders taken on a computer — with or without the internet.
• A browser prints through its print dialog, so any printer the computer can use works, including a USB receipt printer.
• BillDine Printer Helper, a small Windows program, sends jobs to Wi-Fi and network printers for an outlet without an Android device.

For a network printer you type its IP address and Port (usually 9100) under Settings → Devices & printing → Printers, choose its Paper size — 58 mm or 80 mm — and the letters it prints, and tick the kitchen sections it prints for. If a router restart gives it a new address, its card says it can't be reached, and Find it again looks for it on the Wi-Fi. A printer can also open the cash drawer.

BillDine lays the bill out for the paper: on 58 mm the dish name has its own line with the quantity, price and amount below it; on 80 mm a short dish fits on one line. Hindi and Tamil, which receipt printers can't print as text, are printed as a picture. See printing in BillDine, and the lesson Set up your printer.

A simple starting setup

• A small café or truck: one 58 mm or 80 mm Bluetooth or Wi-Fi printer and the BillDine app on an Android phone or tablet.
• A restaurant with a kitchen: an 80 mm network printer at the counter for bills and one in the kitchen for tickets, printed by a POS terminal running the app.
• A counter computer only: a USB receipt printer printing from the browser, or network printers through Printer Helper.

Before you buy

1. List what each printer will print and where it will stand.
2. Choose the width: 80 mm if there is room, 58 mm for small or mobile setups.
3. Choose the connection to match the device that will print.
4. Plan a fixed address for each network printer.
5. Buy paper of the right width, and spares.
6. Print a test bill and a test kitchen ticket before your first day.