Kitchen Receipt Printer vs Thermal Receipt Printer
A kitchen receipt printer is an impact printer that prints in the dot matrix and works with an ink ribbon to print texts. These printers are normally used in a kitchen or bar type environment for your kitchen staff to pick up orders.
Thermal printers don’t need ink or toner but instead, they are sensitive to heat. The heat-generating print head produces texts in black on the paper. These printers are generally just used in the front at the point of sale counter.
The basic difference between Ink Ribbons and Ink cartridges
Ink cartridges
Ink cartridges are meant for inkjet printers. These little boxes of ink known as cartridges contain actual liquid ink in them which is used by the printers to print out any documents or images that you may need from your computer. These cartridges function by depositing ink which is programmed by the printer on select grids in the paper to allow the ink to print images or text on your paper.
Ink ribbons
Ink ribbons are mostly used in dot matrix printers as well as kitchen printers. Unlike other types of printers that come with liquid ink, these types of inking solutions for dot matrix and cash register printers have ink evenly coated on a round spun of ribbon.
Why do I need a kitchen receipt printer?
The kitchen receipt printer also known as an impact printer is the better choice to use in a hot kitchen. When the printed order might be exposed to high temperatures and humidity levels in the kitchen. Furthermore, the texts won’t get blurred or rubbed together which you might want to avoid to get the orders right.
So what are some things I need?
First things first, find out how many printers you might need. While you might want to use a kitchen printer in your kitchen and bar also needs to note that a regular thermal receipt printer will suffice at the front of the house for point of sale. Secondly, check to see what kind of interface you need to match with your computer system. Lastly, while most printers are just plugged and play, you need to make sure that the printers you choose are compatible with your point of sale system and that the POS station that you are using didn’t account for a specific device.
A Few Printer options to consider
There are many brands of kitchen printers on the market and, of course, some are better than others. When shopping around, it’s smart to purchase your kitchen printers as part of an overall point-of-sale, KDS system. Here are a few of the more popular options available:
- Epson
Epson is a household name in the POS industry and offers various options for a full KDS.
- Zebra
Zebra has been around for a while and offers solid KDS solutions for various types of restaurants, bars, cafes, etc.
- Star Micronics
Star Micronics claim to offer “point-of-sale hardware solutions for every corner of the restaurant industry.”
- MICROS
MICROS is one of the oldest and most reliable vendors in the market, and for good reason
