Multi-vendor order fulfillment has long been the operational weak point of food hall concepts — and Central Park St. Pete Food Hall in St. Petersburg, Florida, has found a hardware-software answer. The venue has standardized on Epson OmniLink TM-L100 liner-free thermal label printers at every vendor stall, paired with OmniLink mSeries receipt printers at bars and expo stations, to give guests a name-labeled, single-transaction pickup experience across multiple independent kitchens.

How the System Works

The back-of-house engine is Kluck, a cloud-native restaurant technology platform that lets guests order from several food concepts in one transaction — via kiosk or QR code — and routes each sub-order simultaneously to the correct vendor kitchen. Epson's ePOS™ networked printing technology ties directly into Kluck's platform, automatically triggering a label at the precise vendor location the moment an order is accepted. Each label carries the guest's name, so staff at every stall can stage items without manual cross-referencing. "Getting orders to the kitchen isn't the challenge — it's everything that happens afterward," said Cary Hicks, co-founder of Kluck. "Epson's solutions allow us to automatically generate labels at the correct vendor location in real time, ensuring every item is clearly identified and ready for pickup without adding extra steps for staff."

Operator and Dealer Implications

For operators and foodservice consultants specifying multi-tenant venues, the Central Park St. Pete build-out illustrates a critical infrastructure point: standardizing on a single print platform across a facility simplifies deployment, reduces support burden, and keeps day-to-day vendor training manageable. Rather than mixing printer brands across stalls — a common pain point in food hall buildouts — Central Park selected Epson as its exclusive printer provider, creating one support chain for hardware across the entire property.

The liner-free format of the TM-L100 is itself an operational advantage worth noting. Eliminating the silicone-coated backing liner reduces consumable waste, cuts label-roll change frequency, and removes a common source of printer jams in high-volume service environments — a tangible back-of-house benefit for prep-and-storage operations running continuous ticket flows. Natalia Levey, co-owner of Central Park St. Pete, noted that the technology "allows guests to focus on enjoying the food rather than figuring out which order belongs to them" — but the upstream impact on kitchen coordination is equally significant.

Scaling the Model

Kluck is now extending the same Epson-integrated solution to additional food halls and multi-vendor operators nationwide, treating Central Park St. Pete as a proof-of-concept deployment. For equipment dealers and manufacturer reps, that signals a repeatable specification package — Epson TM-L100 units at vendor stalls plus mSeries units at service bars — that can be positioned for any multi-concept venue undergoing a kitchen buildout or technology refresh.

Ian Livesay, product manager at Epson America, framed the broader trend directly: "Whether it's a traditional restaurant or a multi-vendor venue, accurate labeling and reliable networked printing play an important role in creating efficient workflows and positive guest experiences." The food hall format continues to expand as operators seek lower individual-concept risk while sharing common ware-handling and front-of-house infrastructure, making networked label printing an increasingly standard line item in venue specifications.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.