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EatNow prints your reservation slips on an Epson TM thermal printer, 80mm paper. This page covers how the chain works and how to connect a printer. For what triggers a ticket, routing by room and the print queue, see Receipt printing.

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How it works

The printer is in your restaurant; EatNow’s servers are in the cloud. The two cannot talk to each other directly: a device in the room bridges them.
1

A reservation changes status

You mark a table Showed up or Seated, from the app or the back office.
2

EatNow prepares the ticket

The server composes the full slip — guest, table, allergies, notes, payments — and queues it. The ticket is frozen at that moment: if it comes out five minutes later, it still describes the reservation as it was when the table was seated.
3

A device in the room takes the ticket

EatNow devices that relay printing watch the queue. The first one available takes the ticket; the others leave it alone. No risk of a double print, even with five tablets on the floor.
4

That device sends it to the printer

Over the restaurant’s network, or down the cable if it has one. The outcome goes back to the queue: printed, or the exact error.
With no relay device awake, nothing prints. A ticket nobody takes waits ten minutes and then expires — a slip landing on the pass half an hour after the table sat down gets in the way rather than helping.In practice: leave one tablet on and plugged in during service.

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Two ways to connect a printer

Network

The printer is on your network, over Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Any tablet or phone in the restaurant can send it a ticket.

USB cable

The printer is plugged straight into an iPad or iPhone. Only that device can send it a ticket.
When in doubt, choose the network. It is the only option that survives a flat tablet, one left on a charger, or one that went home in someone’s bag.A cable earns its place when the restaurant’s Wi-Fi is unreliable, or when a fixed station — the pass, the host desk — has its iPad and its printer side by side and neither ever moves.

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Connecting a network printer

1

Put the printer on the network

Connect it over Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and make sure it is on the same network as your tablets.
2

Search for it from the app

In the EatNow app, open Settings → Printers and tap Search for printers. Every printer found shows up with its address and a Network label.Tap Add on yours. Its address and model come across automatically — nothing to copy off the back of the machine.
3

Ask for a fixed address

A printer’s IP address can change on its own when your router reshuffles addresses. EatNow recovers from that: when a ticket cannot reach the printer, the device searches for it on the network and remembers the new address for everything that follows. The first affected ticket simply takes a few seconds longer.A static DHCP lease — ask whoever manages your network — removes that delay at the source.
4

Turn on relaying on the floor tablets

Still under Settings → Printers, turn on This device relays printing on the devices that stay in the room.Leave it off on a phone that leaves the restaurant.
5

Test

Tap Test on the printer’s row. A ticket should come out within a few seconds.

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Connecting a printer over USB

iPad and iPhone only. USB is not available on Android today.You also need a printer fitted with Epson’s Apple-certified Lightning/USB interface — an ordinary USB port on the back of the machine is not enough. If you are unsure, your Epson reseller can tell you whether your model has it.
1

Plug in the cable

Connect the printer to the iPad. If iOS offers to open EatNow, accept.
2

Search from that same iPad

Open Settings → Printers and tap Search for printers. The plugged-in printer appears with a USB label.
This search has to be run from the device the cable runs into. No other device, and not the back office, can see a USB printer — which is also why it cannot be added from the web.
3

Confirm the binding

The app asks you to confirm before adding. This matters: adding a USB printer binds it to that device permanently. No other tablet will ever be able to send it a ticket.
4

Leave that device relaying

Check that This device relays printing is on for that same iPad, and that it stays on during service.If that device is not relaying, the printer’s row says so in orange — nothing will come out until it is active.
5

Test

Tap Test on the printer’s row.

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What to know about a USB printer

A USB printer can only be reached by the device it is plugged into. If that iPad goes into a bag, is switched off, or runs flat, its tickets wait and then expire — and no other tablet can step in.That is the trade-off of a cable: no dependency on Wi-Fi, but no redundancy either.
A USB printer belongs to the device it is plugged into. If someone signs out of that iPad, or leaves the restaurant, EatNow no longer knows that device: the printer stays in the list, with its settings and its history, but is flagged as waiting for a device.To bring it back: plug the cable in, sign in on that iPad, and run a new search from Settings → Printers.
The back office shows a USB printer, which device it belongs to, and lets you change its name and paper. It cannot add one, or give it an address: it has no way of seeing what is plugged into an iPad.To move it elsewhere, delete it and run a new search from the new device.
Nothing stops you having a network printer on the pass and a USB one at the host desk. Routing by room works the same for both.Just think through what happens if the host desk’s iPad goes off: that room’s reservations stop printing, while the pass carries on.

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Next

Receipt printing

Which statuses print, routing by room, the print queue and reprinting.

When nothing comes out

Reading the print queue and knowing what to do with each error.