Receipt printer vs. kitchen printer
They're the same hardware doing two different jobs. Your Receipt Printer prints what the customer takes home. Your Kitchen Printer prints what the kitchen cooks from, the ticket with the table, the server, the items, and the modifiers, in kitchen-sized type. Tavvi treats them as two separate slots in printer settings, each with its own behavior, so a busy receipt printer never eats a food ticket.
If you're a one-person operation reading your own orders off the screen, you don't need this yet. The kitchen printer earns its cost the day someone else starts cooking.
Buy the right machine
Same shortlist as the receipt printer, because it's the same supported hardware: Epson TM-m30III (the safe default for cafes and restaurants) or Star mC-Print3 (compact countertop). Both run about $200 new, same shops as the receipt printer: Epson or Star direct, Amazon, or a POS reseller. Connect it to the same Wi-Fi network as the device running Tavvi, that one sentence resolves most "can't find my printer" mysteries before they start.
Pair it
Open Settings and head to your printer section.
You'll see two slots: Receipt Printer and Kitchen Printer. Pick the kitchen slot, the app starts Searching for nearby printers...
Select your printer when it appears, then run a test print. Test print completed means the pipe works end to end.
Set Kitchen Printer Behavior. "Print kitchen tickets automatically" is the restaurant default, a ticket prints the moment an order heads to the kitchen, no taps.
What's on the ticket
Each ticket carries a ticket number, the table, the server's name, the items with their modifiers, and, if you've set up stations, which station it's for. The cooks get everything they need without anyone repeating it out loud.
Stations: the organizing layer
If your kitchen has zones, e.g., Kitchen, Bar, Grill, set up Stations under Kitchen Stations in Settings. Stations plus Routing Rules decide which orders belong to which zone, and the station name rides along on the printed ticket. Stations really shine with a kitchen display screen, that's its own guide.
If something's off
- Printer never shows up in the search. It's on a different Wi-Fi network than your device. Same network, then search again. Guest networks that isolate devices are the classic trap.
- Receipts print but kitchen tickets don't. Check which SLOT the printer is paired to, the kitchen job only flows through the Kitchen Printer slot. If you want both receipts and tickets on paper, run two printers, one per slot.
- Tickets print, but nothing routes to the right station. Stations organize; they don't print separately. One kitchen printer prints all tickets, the station name on the ticket tells the kitchen whose it is.