Cloud kitchens and catering kitchens share one trait that changes the whole calculation: no dining room, no walk-in customers, and no till where anyone pays. Every order arrives through an app, and every payment happens somewhere other than your premises.

The consequence is simple and uncomfortable. When the connection drops, the kitchen doesn't get slower, it stops receiving orders entirely. And nothing tells you, because an order that never arrived leaves no trace.

What must stay connected

  • Order tablets, usually one per delivery platform. The most important device in the room, and the most troublesome.
  • The kitchen printer that prints tickets to the cooking stations.
  • Stock apps and supplier ordering.
  • Cameras, which matter more than usual in a shared kitchen where several brands use one room.

All light. A busy kitchen rarely exceeds a few Mbps in total. A 20 Mbps plan is already generous, and raising it to 100 fixes none of the problems that actually happen here. What to judge is the provider's reliability, not the number (choosing a business plan).

Tablets that log themselves out

The most frequent and most expensive complaint. The tablet shows Wi-Fi connected, but the app drops its session, or new orders don't chime. The app is rarely the cause.

In a kitchen, tablets usually sit on a shelf near the door or at the end of a bench, often behind stainless shelving. Metal reflects and blocks signal far more than a wall, so signal at that exact spot can fluctuate even with the router only metres away. When it disappears for a few seconds, the app reads that as the session ending.

What fixes it, cheapest first:

  • Move the tablet, not the router. A few dozen centimetres away from a metal surface is often enough.
  • Add one dedicated access point near the tablets, on cable, if the kitchen is long. Not a repeater, which adds exactly the handovers causing the problem (mesh or repeater).
  • Turn off battery saving on the tablet. Many cut Wi-Fi when the screen sleeps, and orders arriving then never chime.
  • Keep tablets permanently on power, using their original adapters.

The kitchen ticket printer

Kitchen printers share the habit of printers everywhere: they vanish from the network after a power cut or router restart, because their address moved. Here it bites harder, because an unprinted ticket means food never made for an order already accepted.

A kitchen is the worst place for a router

Steam, grease, and heat work slowly but reliably. A thin film of grease in the vents traps heat, and a hot router becomes unstable long before it actually fails. The symptom is distinctive: fine in the morning, troublesome by midday, fine again the next morning.

  • Put the router in the office or goods-in area, not in the kitchen. If the kitchen is too far, run cable to an access point rather than moving the router.
  • Not on top of the fridge, not near the extractor. Both look tidy and both are wrong (overheating routers).
  • Use a ventilated enclosure if there's genuinely no alternative (choosing a network rack).

Power isn't steady here either. Fridges, freezers, and electric ovens cycle all day, and each start dips the voltage briefly. The router is the first device to give up, and the symptom looks exactly like a provider fault (Wi-Fi drops when the aircon or pump starts). A small UPS settles it (a UPS for your router).

Backup connections, and why they're ordinary here

In most businesses a backup line is a luxury. In a cloud kitchen it's plain arithmetic. Work out one lunchtime hour of revenue, then compare it with a monthly data SIM. The comparison is rarely close.

The simplest form is one 4G modem left switched on alongside the main line, with a router that fails over on its own. Hardware and setup in backup internet for businesses and choosing a MiFi or 4G router.

One thing worth testing and almost never tested: unplug the main line during a quiet hour and confirm the tablets genuinely start receiving orders again over the backup. A failover that's never been tried is of unknown status, not ready.

Shared kitchens, several brands

If one room hosts several brands or tenants, separate the networks from the start. Not out of suspicion, but because one tenant's devices have no reason to see another's printer, cameras, or tablets. Steps in separating a guest network, and where the router supports it, VLANs make it cleaner.

Agree too on who holds the router admin password and who gets called when something breaks. In a shared room, that question always arrives at the worst possible moment.

What to do

Router outside the kitchen, a cabled access point near the tablets. Ticket printer on cable with a fixed address. A small UPS, because fridges and ovens make power dips a daily event. One backup connection, genuinely tested once. After those five, orders stop disappearing without trace.

Frequently asked questions

Why do order tablets log themselves out while Wi-Fi shows connected?

Usually because the tablet hops between access points or the signal dips briefly, and the app reads a few seconds offline as the session ending. The fix is stable signal where the tablet sits, not the app.

How much speed does a kitchen with no dining room need?

Very little; around 20 Mbps is more than enough. What matters is reliability, not speed. The cheapest plan that never drops beats the fastest one that drops weekly.

Is a backup connection necessary?

For a kitchen whose entire income arrives through apps, yes. Work out one lunchtime hour of revenue, then compare it with a monthly data SIM. The comparison is rarely close.