Thermal printers and the hardware you actually need

Restaurant hardware is where budgets go to die, usually because someone bought a complete “POS package” before finding out what the software actually needs.

Here is the honest version.

ESC/POS is the thing to look for

Almost every thermal receipt printer on the market understands ESC/POS, a command language originally from Epson that became the de-facto standard. Text, bold, alignment, cut, cash-drawer kick — all of it is ESC/POS.

That matters because a printer that speaks ESC/POS is a printer your system can drive without a vendor-specific driver. When you are shopping, “ESC/POS compatible” and “80 mm” are the two phrases worth searching for. Most 58 mm printers work too; 80 mm just gives you a more readable receipt.

Three ways to connect, and when to use each

For most restaurants the answer is: network printers for anything that stays put, Bluetooth for anything carried. A network printer has an IP address the system prints to, which means any till in the building can use it and nothing has to be paired.

Two practical notes on network printers: give the printer a fixed address (either a static IP or a DHCP reservation on the router), and put it on the same network as the tills. Ninety per cent of “the printer stopped working” is one of those two things.

What screens you actually need

• The till. Any Android tablet with a decent screen will do. A ten-inch tablet on a stand is a completely respectable point of sale, and it costs a fraction of a branded terminal.
• The kitchen. A tablet on a stand, or a TV with a small Android box behind it. The kitchen display is a web-and-app screen, not special hardware. Choose the biggest thing the wall can hold.
• The office. Any laptop or desktop with a browser. The manager dashboard is a browser app; there is nothing to install.
• Waiters and drivers. Their own phones, if you are comfortable with that. Otherwise a cheap Android handset each.

You do not need a branded all-in-one terminal. They are well built, and if you want one it will work — but the software does not require it, and the difference in money is usually a month of rent.

The rest of the shopping list

• A cash drawer that opens from the printer. Almost all of them do this through a kick cable, which is why the printer, not the tablet, is the thing the drawer plugs into.
• Receipt rolls in the width you chose. Buy a box, not a pack.
• A stand for each tablet. Cheap, and it is the difference between a till and a tablet lying on a wet counter.
• A small uninterruptible power supply for the router and the network printer, if power in your area is unreliable. This is the least glamorous item on the list and the one people wish they had bought.

The order to buy in

1. One tablet and one printer. Set them up, take real orders for a week.
2. Then the kitchen screen, once you know your prep stations.
3. Then the rest of the tills, in the same model you already tested.
4. Then the extras — second drawer, waiter handsets, driver phones.

The mistake is buying six of everything on day one. Hardware is the easiest part of this project to reverse, but only if you have not already unboxed all of it.

And when the internet is out

Worth knowing, because it changes what you buy: a locally connected printer keeps printing when the connection drops, because the till talks to it directly. That is one more reason to prefer a printer on your own network over anything that routes through a cloud service to reach a machine three metres away.