Do I need a POS for inside of food truck?

[Senett]

Hello. I'm a new food truck owner and I recently purchased the Square Kiosk Hardware, a kitchen printer and a compatible ipad. My thought is I would have my customers order and pay at the kiosk at the window outside of the truck and a ticket would print inside the truck. My question is, Do I need any other hardware to make it work this way? I keep seeing people mention having a compatible POS inside the truck but do I need that? I'm a solo operator so no employees as of right now. Any thoughts and insights are greatly appreciated.

[ryanwanner · Accepted solution]

Hello @Senett ! Welcome to the Square Community!

Unfortunately yes you will need a point of sale in your truck in order to run a printer. From this help article: "When Square Kiosk hardware is running with the Square Kiosk app, it can not directly connect to accessories, such as barcode scanners and receipt printers, through USB, Wi-Fi/Ethernet, or Bluetooth. However, you can print Kiosk order tickets through your companion Point of Sale device(s) that are connected to your kitchen printers. Only one companion Point of Sale device is needed, regardless if you have multiple Square Kiosks."

For a food truck setup, though, I think your better bet would be to look into Square KDS. I believe you won't need any additional hardware aside from a compatible android tablet since KDS gets orders through the cloud. As long as you have a solid cell or wifi connection you should be good.

[Senett]

Thank you for reply Ryan! I contacted square to talk about the KDS and they recommended the square terminal to connect to my kitchen printer. That should do the job correct? Are there Any issues with my setup and using the square terminal that you foresee? Thank you for your input!

[ryanwanner]

@Senett  The terminal is a good idea, but be sure you get the accessories hub for it and a USB printer. The best part of the terminal is it takes up almost zero space, you could shove it on a shelf somewhere as long as the printer cable reaches it. The bad part is that the terminal has no cell capability built in. You'll still need to have a hotspot or wifi connection to use it. (Of course, you do with the kiosk as well... depending on how you get the tablet you could have it double as the hotspot)

[Senett]

So I do have a hot spot but the printer I have connects via Ethernet. Will the hub still work for this? Sorry…I’m very new to all of this

[ryanwanner]

@SenettNo need to apologize!

Unfortunately plugging the ethernet cord from the printer into the terminal's ethernet port won't work. You can use the terminal's hub to connect it to an ethernet switch, which is where your printer will connect as well. As long as the terminal and printer are on the same network they should talk to each other. 

The challenge is getting the switch to talk to the hotspot. Usually switches use another ethernet connection to connect to the world, usually via an ISP. I don't know of any switches that talk to a hotspot. I know T-Mobile has the home internet package where they give you a box that talks to the cell network but has ethernet ports off the back. Not sure if they offer a mobile version of that for a food truck or not or if any other wireless providers do, but that would be the easiest way out of this for you.

So I can think of a couple of options here:

-Talk to your cell provider about a "home internet" option for your truck and just plug the printer and terminal into it

-Exchange your printer for a usb version and continue to use the hotspot to link the terminal

Hope this helps!

[Senett]

Great thank you so much Ryan. You have given me a lot to think about. I appreciate it!

[Senett]

Hey Ryan. You seem to be the most knowledgeable person Ive spoken to regarding this issue and I thought I’d reach out to see if you can possibly help me further. I forgot to mention before that I have a netgear nighthawk m1 router for portable WiFi. This has both USB and Ethernet connection options. 
So I received the terminal from square and linked it to the kiosk. No problems there. I also bought an Ethernet switch and a couple Ethernet cables. I ran one Ethernet cable from the nighthawk to the switch, one Ethernet cable from the switch to the printer    (printer connected to WiFi no problem)then ran one Ethernet from the switch to the terminal hub (I think this is the issue). Everything seemed to be communicating but as you stated, I still can’t print kitchen tickets from the kiosk. 
Do you think switching the Ethernet printer for a usb printer will solve this issue now that you have all the information? I notice the kiosk has a hub with 3 usb ports. Would I just run the usb printer straight to that hub? Sorry but I’m at a bit of a loss right now. 

[ryanwanner]

Hey @Senett !

First, let me answer the questions from the last paragraph: I believe we're almost there, no need to change printers at this point, and when you're running the Kiosk program unfortunately none of the usb ports on the hardware are available. So let's keep troubleshooting:

You mentioned that your terminal is connected to your kiosk. In what way? As a connected device where the customers use it to run cards, or just as a standalone point of sale device? For your setup, you want the terminal to be a standalone point of sale device: the kiosk and its hardware will handle the card transactions.

Your terminal should work just on the wifi alone. You shouldn't have to use the ethernet connection at this point. As long as the printer is on the same network it should work. (disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the nighthawk architecture. Usually any device plugged into the same system will be seen by other devices, wireless or wired)

Once your terminal is signed into your account (and if you have multiple locations, in the same location as the kiosk is), verify your printer is on then head to More -> Settings -> Hardware -> External Printers on the terminal. Your printer should be listed here. After that, you'll need to configure a printer profile that accepts online & kiosk orders. Once you have that profile created, link it to your printer.

Easiest way to think of this setup: customer orders via the kiosk. The terminal "catches" the incoming order and feeds it to the network printer. I really think you're just about there, we just need to hone the network setup.

[Senett]

Again Thank you Ryan.  Ok…still having issues. the kiosk, terminal and printer are all on the same network and all talking. Do I need to have the printer profile configured on both the kiosk and terminal or just the terminal? The kiosk says the printer is not configured and is unassigned. I deleted the printer profile on the terminal and started a new one ( with ONLY online and kiosk order tickets selected) and the terminal says the printer is “ready”. The small receipt printer on the actual terminal is not configured as I won’t be using it to print tickets. Does this all sound correct? 

[Senett]

Oh and to answer your question..the kiosk and terminal are “linked” via WiFi. So the terminal is a stand alone device. No wires connecting them

[ryanwanner]

@SenettIt sounds like you have everything configured correctly then. To be honest, I've only dabbled with the Kiosk software a bit, but from my understanding it behaves basically as an in-person online store, and online store orders are handled by a receiving printer profile on a standalone device.

You mention that the terminal sees the printer, I assume a test print works?

The only thing left that I can think of I got from this help file: on your web dashboard, let's also make sure the printer profile is set to accept online orders.

Dashboard -> Device Management -> Profiles -> Printer Profiles -> [your configured profile] -> ... -> Edit.

After that, I'm at a loss. I'd like to tag a fellow champion @Sam_400º , who has been playing with the kiosk recently and see if he has any other ideas.

[Sam_400º]

Hey @Senett - just picking up @ryanwanner tag there and reading through!

The kiosk is great and I’m just gonna go back to Ryan’s first comment and agree that it’s best paired with the KDS. As a one man pizza van I used a 22” KDS and had all my customers self checkout (online or KDS). This also has the added bonus of being able to message your customers when their order is marked as ready. 

However, on your Terminal you should be able to create a new printer profile and assign online and kiosk orders to print (I’d suggest having all items print out here too). 

If this isn’t working for you is there any way to take a picture of your printer profile on your terminal? I’m not to sure what isn’t set quite right here. 

I’ve not got a kiosk available to me at the moment & can’t remember if there is a printer profile within the app - if there is then you could set from there as everything is already on the same network. 



(I don’t subscribe to posts so always good to @ me if you want me to see something)

[Senett]

Thank you for reaching out Sam. As you can see from my post to Ryan, I got it working. Probably an obvious profile check mark that I missed. I will look into the KDS as you both suggested. I’ll see how this setup goes and may make a change in the near future. Thanks again!

[Senett]

Whew!!! Got it!!! I went into the profile and double checked that online and kiosk orders was checked which it was. Then I toggled on in person orders and it worked.  Seems obvious to me now that that needed to be checked. DOH! 🙄 
Thank you so much for your patience and help Ryan! I really appreciate it! 

[ryanwanner]

@Senett  YAY! I'm glad we got it figured out!

Now go sell a ton of stuff. 🙂

[Sam_400º]

@Senett @Thanks for coming back and letting us know you got sorted 👍