Impact Receipt Printers

Two reasons. Impact printers strike an inked ribbon, so they work with multi-part carbon paper when you need a customer copy and a kitchen or file copy at once. And the printed mark survives heat and grease, which thermal paper does not, so a ticket sitting near a grill stays readable. That is why impact printers remain standard for kitchen tickets even in restaurants using thermal printers at the counter.

Considerably, and they are noticeably louder. Thermal printers produce a receipt in a couple of seconds; impact printers take several times longer and make a distinct mechanical noise. At a busy front counter that difference matters and thermal wins. In a kitchen, the noise is arguably useful as an audible alert that a ticket has arrived, and the speed difference is irrelevant because the ticket is not being handed to a waiting customer.

Impact printers use plain bond paper, not thermal paper, and can take two-ply or three-ply carbon sets where multiple copies are needed. Common widths are 76mm and 3 inch, narrower than the 80mm standard for thermal receipts. Do not load thermal paper into an impact printer expecting it to work well. You also need ribbon cartridges as an ongoing consumable, which thermal printers do not require.

Away from direct heat and splash, ideally on a wall bracket or shelf above the pass rather than on a work surface. Most kitchen printers connect by Ethernet so they can sit anywhere with a network drop, rather than being tethered to a terminal. Consider a printer cover for grease protection, and plan the cable run at the same time as the install, since retrofitting network cable in a working kitchen is disruptive.

Ribbon life is quoted in characters or lines printed, and in practice a busy kitchen may change ribbons monthly while a low-volume site goes far longer. Print becomes faint before it fails completely, so faded tickets are the signal to replace. Keeping spare cartridges on site is worth doing, because a printer with a dead ribbon still appears to work and quietly produces unreadable tickets.

Most restaurant POS platforms support kitchen printing, but they differ in how it is configured, whether printers are assigned per station or per menu category, and which models are certified. Confirm the exact printer appears on your platform's supported list, and check whether it drives the printer directly over the network or routes through the terminal. Kitchen printing is a separate configuration from receipt printing and is often licensed separately.