The kitchen hears it in the back
An order goes in at the counter. The kitchen ticket comes out in the back, the drinks ticket at the tap, and the guest gets a slip with a number. Three printers, one press, and nothing that has to keep running on a computer.
Try it
First say how your place is set up, then tap a few things and press through. The order stays the same; only where the paper comes out changes. What you see is drawn by the same code that drives the real printer.
Nothing tapped in yet
What went over the wire
One call per printer. This is the whole integration.
Send an order through and it shows up here.
When a printer is off
The order is not lost. It waits in the queue and comes out the moment that printer reports back — and the answer says which of the three did print and which one did not. That matters more than it sounds: a screen that only says “something went wrong” gets an order passed on twice.
What you need
The printers you already have
Any ESC/POS receipt printer. Epson TM-T88 and TM-T20 are the usual ones behind a bar; almost every other brand speaks the same protocol.
One bridge
A box the size of a phone charger, on wifi or ethernet. Two USB printers per bridge, so a busy place has two of them.
Whatever you use as a till
A POS, a tablet, a browser tab, a booking system. If it can make an HTTP request, it can print.
Questions from behind the bar
Does the kitchen printer need to be on the same network as the till?
No. The bridge makes an outgoing connection; the till talks to us. Guest wifi in the front and a cable in the back is fine.
What happens during a wifi drop?
The order stays in the queue and comes out as soon as the bridge reports back. It expires after an hour — nobody wants a ticket from last night.
Two people press at the same time. Two tickets?
Not if you send the order number along as an idempotency key. Two presses, one ticket.
Can drinks and food go to the same printer?
Yes. Point both at the same name and you get one ticket per place instead of two.
On your own printer
Make an account, plug a bridge into a printer you already have, and the same call prints on paper.