Receipt and ticket printer

Turns a completed order into paper — a guest's receipt at the counter, a production ticket at the bar, or both from the same order.

Two printing mechanisms sit behind almost every unit and they suit opposite environments. A direct-thermal printer runs coated paper past a heated head; there is no ink, it is fast and near-silent, and the mark is a chemical change in the paper itself — which is precisely why heat, steam, sunlight and solvent all erase it. An impact printer strikes a pin through a ribbon onto plain paper, so the mark is deposited pigment: slower, noisy, and indifferent to a hot, greasy, steamy position. The second question is how the printer is addressed. A printer wired to one till lives and dies with that till; a printer on the venue's network can be driven by any terminal and re-routed when one fails, which is what makes multi-station ticket printing possible at all.

• Decide first whether the bar needs paper at all, or only the guest does. That single answer settles the mechanism, the count and the placement, and it is the same decision as the display-versus-paper choice — make it once, for the whole bar, rather than accumulating print points as each station complains.
• Match the mechanism to the position, not to the price at the counter. Thermal belongs at the dry till. An impact printer belongs anywhere a steam wand, a hot pass or a fryer lane will cook the ticket. A thermal ticket left somewhere warm becomes a blank slip, and a blank slip becomes a drink the barista guesses at.
• Standardise on one roll type across every print point in the venue. A bar carrying two roll widths will run out of the wrong one during the rush, and the spare that is sitting under the other till will not fit. Consumables belong on the same par discipline as milk.
• If you run more than one terminal, make sure the printer can be driven by more than one terminal. Otherwise a printer failure takes a till out of service rather than degrading it.
• Look at the cutting mechanism, because that is the part that fails. An automatic cutter is a moving assembly in a paper-dust environment; a manual tear bar cannot jam. Decide which failure you would rather have at peak.
• Confirm roll-change access before the joinery is built. A printer built into a cabinet whose lid cannot open with the counter loaded is a printer that gets its paper changed late — which means it gets changed mid-rush, which is the moment you bought the printer to avoid.