Which label printer should a small bakery buy?

It is one of the most-asked questions in every baking group: someone has started selling, needs labels on their bakes, and wants to know which printer everyone else uses.

This is our answer, from the printer that has done all of our own labelling.

The short answer

Buy a direct thermal label printer: the kind sold for printing parcel labels. They need no ink or toner, they print one label at a time from a roll, and they pair with a phone or laptop.

Ours is a SVANTTO 63C Bluetooth thermal label printer. We have put tens of thousands of labels through it. The only maintenance it has needed is a wipe of the print head now and again, and a new roll when the old one runs out.

SVANTTO or MUNBYN?

The name you will see recommended most is MUNBYN. It is a good choice, and it is the same kind of machine: a direct thermal printer sold as a 4 × 6 inch shipping-label printer, with a roll width that adjusts down to food label sizes.

We went with the SVANTTO because it is usually a little cheaper and does the same job. We have not run a MUNBYN through the same volume, so we will not claim one is better than the other. If you already have a MUNBYN, there is no reason to change. If you are buying your first printer, the SVANTTO is the one we can vouch for.

Prices on both move around, so compare on the day you buy.

What matters in any label printer

• Direct thermal. No ink, no ribbon. The paper darkens where it is heated. The print fades over months in sun or heat, which does not matter for food with a shelf life of days.
• An adjustable roll width. Shipping printers are built for 4 × 6 inch labels. Check the guides close in far enough for the labels you want; most food labels are 2 to 3 inches wide.
• Bluetooth, USB or both. Bluetooth means you can print from your phone at the bench. USB is steadier for long runs from a laptop.
• It prints an image. Every printer in this class has an app that will print a picture file. That is all you need from it.

How we print: a plain PNG, straight from BakeCheck

The printer apps come with plenty of extras: borders, fonts, icons, templates. They are easy to install and easy to use. We do not use any of the styling. We prefer a simple, plain label, and we already have it.

Our routine:

1. Approve the label for the product in BakeCheck.
2. Download it as a PNG. It comes out at the label size you set (3 × 2 inches by default) at 300 dpi, so the text is sharp on a thermal print head. To do several products at once, select them and download the labels together.
3. Open the image in the printer's app, pick the label size that matches your roll, and print.

There is a reason to keep it this plain beyond taste. A label you approved is a record: this wording, these allergens, on this date. Once you retype it or edit it inside a printer app, the printed label is no longer the one you approved, and nothing will notice when the two drift apart. Printing the file as it downloaded keeps them the same.

Rolls and sizes

The rolls we buy are L LIKED 3 × 2 inch direct thermal labels: perforated, permanent adhesive, with a black backing that stops an old label showing through when you label over it.

The printer is the easy part. The label size is where people go wrong, because the longest ingredient list has to fit at a readable size. Our label printing guide covers the sizes that get used and the adhesive problems with cold and greasy boxes.