topic Re: making printer louder in Restaurant Operations

making printer louder

denacannon — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:36:18 GMT

Our bar printer makes no noise when tickets come out. Thus, the bartenders rarely hear it and and the servers are having to wait for drinks. However, the kitchen printer is significantly louder (making that "ticking" noise kinda like an old adding machine). Is there a way to change the setting on the bar printer to make it louder?

Re: making printer louder

au79teahouse — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:43:47 GMT

what's the model of your printer?

Re: making printer louder

denacannon — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:55:12 GMT

I may have to get back with you tomorrow on the model. I do know that the kitchen printer uses 2-ply paper and the bar does not. Could that be the difference?

Re: making printer louder

au79teahouse — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 20:14:55 GMT

If you use thermal printer paper for bar, most likely you have a toast printer, which has built-in chime and will beep when receiving an order. You can access the printer setting by doing the followings:

1) press and hold powder button for 1 - 2 seconds to turn off printer
2) press and hold the FEED button (triangle symbol) while turning on printer
3) Press and hold FEED to configure printer. Printer will print out a configuration menu.
Go to "Configuration" - 3 >> "Beep Settings" - 8 >> "Enable Internal Buzzer" -3

You can also choose "beep mode" which is just variations of beep alarm, such as 1 long beep or 4 short quick beeps. There are 8 different modes.

To navigate through the config menu, press and hold FEED for more than one second to register your input. For example, to go to configuration sub-menu press FEED 3 time and follow by pressing and holding FEED for 1 sec.

Re: making printer louder

rcmck — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 18:14:07 GMT

Here is a video of how to do it as well. https://central.toasttab.com/s/article/Configuring-the-Toast-TP200-Printer-Beep-Sounds

Re: making printer louder

josh212 — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 04:59:10 GMT

So your bar printer is a thermal printer therefore its not going to be loud.

Due to the heat in the kitchen your kithen printer uses a ribbon and actual ink to print (dot-matrix) printer. If you want that style of printer for your bar you can order another printer for the bar and use it specificially for service tickets. Youu can also take any tablet for put a KDS at your bar for drinks and have it make a noise for each order and print upon fulfillment. (unoficcially you can literally take any android tablet and use it for this, like even an old grubhub tablet etc..)

Re: making printer louder

denacannon — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 11:44:43 GMT

Thank you! This is exactly what the issue is. The responses about making it beep or chime certainly would’ve solved the problem of bartenders not hearing it, but that solution wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I’ve worked in restaurants where the printers made a chime or beep but you come to dread that noise and hear it in your sleep. The old dot matrix feed is what is needed. Thanks again!

Re: making printer louder

Logger — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 04:32:30 GMT

You will come to dread the dot matrix printer sound even more!

Re: making printer louder

josh212 — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 04:41:24 GMT

Yes you may but there is nothing like hearing the order from the characters that’s it prints. And you know what the order as it prints lol