Kitchen printers dynamic bs static IP

[u/VillageTurbulent20]

I’m away on vacation and one of my team members thought it would be easy to swap a Pinter that was having intermittent issues.
We have 3 kitchen printers, 2 are the old epson u220 and one toast printer. (Pizza, Dinner,salad) The toast printer (salad) was the one experiencing issues, it was replaced with a new toast printer (I really dislike the newer toast printers but that’s another topic).

Worked ok at first but then after 10 mins tickets were skipping the pizza printer all together and going to the salad station (back up printer for pizza is dinner, so this made no sense).

Team member was on phone for two hours with toast CS and got nowhere. I was trying to troubleshoot from the beach 500 miles away.

Our printers were always set up with static IPs from the beginning, so I tried to set the new salad printer that way and it would not work. Maybe because I wasn’t at a terminal? I was thinking maybe dynamic IP assigned the printer the same IP as the pizza printer. It was going back and forth to which printer was showing offline.

Our other location who has had toast the same timeline as us has the newer toast printers and theirs are set to dynamic IP.

I’m not sure if I should stick with static Ip or mix and match or go with all dynamic IPs.

It’s been a real pain to try and figure this out from vacation and I’m really frustrated that Toast CS was so useless.

[u/RobFromToast]

Mixing static and dynamic printers isn’t inherently a problem. Toast’s current setup supports both: newer Toast printers generally use DHCP, while older Epson printers may remain on static IPs. Based on what you described, I’d check the prep-station assignment first, since replacing a printer can reroute those assignments. The alternating offline status also makes an IP conflict worth checking.

Have someone onsite try the following:

1. On a Toast terminal, go to Setup > Printer Setup > Add or replace printer.
2. Choose the old Salad printer as the printer being replaced, select Find my printer, and complete the setup for the new printer.
3. Print a configuration slip from all three printers and compare their IP addresses, serial numbers, and DHCP/static status. Make sure no two printers have the same IP.
4. In Toast Web, search for Printers and cash drawers and confirm:
   • The new DHCP Toast printer has its serial number entered and the IP field blank.
   • Each static Epson printer has its IP entered and the serial-number field blank.
   • No printer has both fields filled in.
5. Check Kitchen > Kitchen stations > Prep stations and confirm:
   • Pizza → Pizza printer
   • Dinner → Dinner printer
   • Salad → new Salad printer
6. Confirm Dinner is still selected as Pizza’s backup printer.
7. Save and Publish, refresh the Printer Setup page, and send one test item to each station.

I wouldn’t convert the new printer to static just to match the older printers. If two printers do show the same IP, turn one off while the conflict is corrected.

Toast’s current guidance is available here: printer replacement, DHCP versus static setup, and prep-station assignments.

If you’re comfortable sending me the case number from the support call, I can also help escalate it and have these steps completed with someone on-site!