Choosing and setting up a 58 or 80 mm receipt printer
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A receipt printer feels like a small purchase until it goes silent on a busy Saturday night. Chosen well and placed well, it runs for years without anyone thinking about it. Here is how to pick between 58 and 80 mm, which connection to choose, and how to set it up without surprises.
Start the free trialBefore you buy: what will each printer do?
Start by listing the tickets you need: bar tickets, kitchen tickets, the guest's bill, invoices for companies, and an end-of-day report. Then ask who reads each ticket, where, and in what conditions. A cook standing at a hot grill does not read a ticket the way a cashier sitting at the counter does.
A small café can get by with one printer at the counter. As soon as you have a separate kitchen, a second printer (or a screen) near the stove saves a lot of walking back and forth with scraps of paper.
58 or 80 mm: width changes how easily it reads
A 58 mm printer is compact, rolls are easy to find, and it fits in a corner of the counter. It is enough for bar tickets and short bills with simple item names.
An 80 mm printer leaves room for longer names, quantities you can see from a distance, and notes like 'no onion'. It is the better choice for the kitchen and for invoices, where a company name and its ICE number need to fit cleanly. A simple rule: 80 mm for the kitchen and invoices, 58 mm is fine for the bar of a small café. Once you have picked a width, always buy rolls of that width and check that their diameter fits the holder.
Thermal paper: handy but sensitive
Thermal printers use no ink: heat darkens the paper. That means sunlight, oven heat and the warmth of a coffee machine all fade or blacken tickets. Store rolls somewhere dry, away from the oven and away from the terrace window in summer.
To find which way the roll goes in, scratch the paper lightly with a fingernail: the side that marks is the printing side. Show this to the whole team. If prints turn pale, clean the print head gently with a cotton bud and a little alcohol, with the printer off and cool.
USB, Bluetooth or network?
USB is the simplest: one cable between the printer and an Android phone or tablet. It is reliable, but the device has to stay next to the printer. Bluetooth removes the cable and suits a counter, as long as the phone stays within a few metres with no thick walls in between.
Network printers (an Ethernet cable into your router, or Wi-Fi) suit a kitchen printer far from the counter. A cable is usually steadier than Wi-Fi, especially when the room is full of phones. Either way, ask the seller whether the printer understands ESC/POS, the standard command language for receipt printers, and try it before paying if you can.
Arabic does not print: plan ticket names
Most common receipt printers cannot print Arabic letters: you get symbols or blank spaces. The guest menu can stay in Arabic, but kitchen tickets need Latin letters.
Give every dish a short ticket name, the one your cooks already use: 'Harira', 'Tajine poulet citron', 'Msemen fromage'. Avoid abbreviations only the owner understands. A good ticket name can be read in one second, from a distance, with busy hands.
Install and test before the first service
Keep the printer away from steam, splashes and direct heat, on a stable surface with its own socket. Always keep two or three spare rolls under the counter: a roll running out on a Friday night with no spare means a service run from memory.
Then run a full test: place an order with one drink and one dish, check each ticket comes out in the right place, then switch everything off and on again to see whether the printer reconnects by itself. Every waiter should know how to change a roll and restart the printer without calling you.
Common mistakes
Choosing Bluetooth for a kitchen at the back of the building, putting the printer on top of the coffee machine, writing dish names in Arabic on tickets, forgetting spare rolls, or having only one person who knows how to restart it. Each of these takes ten minutes to fix before opening and costs far more in the middle of service.
With Tablilo
Tablilo prints to ESC/POS thermal printers, 58 or 80 mm, through the RawBT app on Android. Each device gets a role: bar ticket, kitchen ticket, bill, invoice or cash drawer. Every dish can have its own Latin ticket name, and a Z report prints at the end of the day. Not every printer model has been tried yet, so test yours during the free trial before buying more. And if a station has no printer, any tablet can work as a kitchen screen instead.
Related features
- Receipt printer and cash drawer for snack bars and cafés58 or 80 mm thermal printer, bar and kitchen tickets, bills, cash drawer and Z report: the till for your snack bar or café in Morocco, with Tablilo.
- Kitchen display screen (KDS) and bar screenA kitchen display screen on any tablet: drinks to the bar, dishes to the kitchen, tickets that change colour and a 'Prêt' button that alerts the waiter.
- ICE invoice for restaurants and cafésA company invoice with the guest's 15-digit ICE, issued by your venue (ICE, IF, RC), printed or sent by WhatsApp in seconds.