Making a custom Receipt Printer

Hey, I want to make a custom receipt printer for my mates company, it needs to be as small as possible! I have found a company which will 3D print my housing, but for now I want to see how the electronics would work.

I have found this Thermal Mini Printer which I can use for the printer itself: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2752

However they also sell the guts of the printer separately if that would be easier: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2753

Now what is the best Micro Controller to get this working? I was thinking a Raspberry Pi board, however will this printer connect to this board?
The program would be pretty simple, press certain buttons to print out different text

This is probably going to be very ambitious project, but I wouldn't mind giving it a try. Thanks guys.