Choosing Restaurant POS Hardware: A Practical Buyer's Guide

Hardware is where restaurants both overspend and under-plan. A cloud POS runs in a browser, which means your choices are wider and cheaper than a vendor selling a bundled terminal will tell you.

The terminal

If your POS is browser-based, any machine that runs a modern browser will do. That includes all-in-one touchscreen terminals, an ordinary laptop, or a tablet.

What actually matters at the counter:

• Screen size and angle. 15 inches upward for a full menu grid. Being able to tilt it away from guests matters more than resolution.
• Touch quality. Cheap resistive panels need a firm press, which is exhausting over a shift. Capacitive is worth the difference.
• Wipeable surfaces. This machine will be touched by hands that just handled food.
• Fanless, if possible. Kitchens are greasy and fans pull that in.

You do not need a high-specification machine. Billing is not demanding work. Spend on the panel and the build, not the processor.

Printers: 58mm or 80mm

Thermal printers come in two common widths and the choice is mostly about content.

58mm is cheaper, and the paper rolls cost less. Fine for short takeaway receipts. It gets cramped once you have long item names, modifiers and a tax breakdown.

80mm is the sensible default for a restaurant. Item names fit on one line, modifiers sit legibly under their dish, and the tax section does not wrap awkwardly. Kitchen tickets in particular benefit from the extra width.

Buy ESC/POS-compatible printers — this is the near-universal command set, and anything supporting it will work with most software. Check whether you want USB or network: network printers are easier to share between counters and easier to place away from the billing machine, which matters for kitchen printers.

One practical note: keep a spare printer. Not a spare on order — a spare in the cupboard. A dead printer at 8pm on a Saturday stops service in a way a dead screen does not, because you can always bill on a laptop.

Cash drawers

Nearly all cash drawers are triggered by the receipt printer through an RJ11 cable rather than connecting to the computer. This means the drawer is chosen to match the printer, not the POS.

Get a drawer with a removable coin tray and a proper lock. The mechanism is the part that fails; the box itself lasts forever.

Customer and pole displays

A second screen facing the guest showing the running total is genuinely useful — it reduces disputes at payment and looks professional. A small pole display showing the total is the cheap version; a full tablet showing the itemised order is the better one.

Neither is essential on day one. Add it when the counter is otherwise settled.

The part people forget: the network

A cloud POS needs internet. This is the single most common source of trouble, and it is almost always cheap to fix.

• Wire the billing counter. Ethernet to the terminal, not wifi. Wifi is for guests and tablets.
• Have a second connection. A mobile hotspot or a second broadband line. Outages happen at the worst time.
• Put the router on a UPS. A power flicker that reboots your router costs ten minutes of service.
• Do not share guest wifi with the counter. Fifty phones streaming video will make your billing screen crawl.

A sensible starting setup

For a single-counter restaurant: one touchscreen terminal, one 80mm printer at the counter, one 80mm printer in the kitchen, a cash drawer on the counter printer, wired internet with a mobile backup, and a UPS for the router and terminal. Add customer displays and additional kitchen printers as the operation grows.

How MealNix handles it

MealNix runs in the browser, so it works on hardware you already own or can buy from any supplier — there is no proprietary terminal to purchase. It prints to standard 58mm and 80mm ESC/POS printers over USB or network, supports separate billing and kitchen printers per counter, and a desktop print agent handles instant printing without a browser dialog.