Our order taking app can be connected to multiple Epson thermal printers.

Thermal printers are widely used in restaurants. They are robust, fast, require no toner change and paper costs are close to nothing. Epson and Star are leading manufacturers in this segment.

The app supports three types of printer connection:

• LAN (Ethernet) - the thermal printer is connected by network cable to a WiFi router and accesses the same WiFi network as the order taking device does;
• WLAN (WiFi) - the thermal printer connects wirelessly to the same WiFi network that’s used by the order taking device;
• Bluetooth - the thermal printer connects directly to the order taking device via Bluetooth.

To add a printer, open the order taking app and select Thermal printer from the menu. The app will guide you through adding a LAN, WiFi or Bluetooth printer.

In case you have multiple working stations, you can add several printers and have your orders printed on all of them. The iOS version of the Order Taking App supports adding multiple printers with different connectivity types (like shown in the image below). On Android, all your printers must have the same connectivity type (all LAN/WiFI or all Bluetooth).

*Note: Image may differ due to product enhancements.

We’ve looked at the most popular printers used and picked the ones that perform best. All the printers below are reliable, easy to install and support image printing. So if you want to buy a thermal printer to connect to our order taking app, we highly recommend one from this list.

Printer	Connectivity	Image printing
EPSON TM-T20II Model: Ethernet	Ethernet
EPSON TM-T82	Ethernet
EPSON TM-T82II	Ethernet, WiFi with dongle
EPSON TM-T88V	Ethernet, WiFi
STAR TSP143IV	Ethernet, WiFi
STAR TSP143III Models: Ethernet (LAN) or Wi-Fi (WLAN)	Ethernet / WiFi

Other supported printers

These printers work ok and our app actively support them as well:

• EPSON TM-m30, models: Ethernet only, Ethernet + Bluetooth, Ethernet + WiFi
• EPSON TM-m30II, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-m30II-NT, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20III, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T20X, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T70II, model: Ethernet, WiFi
• EPSON TM-T88IV, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T82III, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T82IIIL, model: Ethernet
• EPSON TM-T88VI, all models have Ethernet built-in and WiFi with dongle
• STAR TSP143
• STAR MCP31, model: Ethernet

Note: Printer list may update on the mobile app, as we are constantly enhancing our product.

Although the order taking app allows you to connect a thermal printer via Bluetooth, we don’t recommend it. Here’s why:

• Discovering the printer via Bluetooth is often times rather difficult. Also, for many printers, once the connection is lost, it cannot be re-established automatically;
• Bluetooth has a range of maximum 10 meters and is prone to interferences from other EM waves (like microwave oven or some WiFi networks);
• We have encountered size limitations with printers from different manufacturers (like Star TSP650II).

USB connection proved to be quite unreliable, that’s why we’ve decided to remove it from the Order Taking App. It turns out that it’s difficult to keep printing and charging at the same time:

• If the device is not charging, the Android system puts the device to sleep mode, so orders might not come through properly;
• When the cable is moved, the Android system may assign a new USB port. The connectivity to the printer is lost, so the device and the printer need to be repaired. In practice, repairing needs to be done several times a day.

We also had to cut out SMS printing. Some orders are long enough to exceed the SMS limit. The end result is that the printout does not contain all items.