Online ordering for halal restaurants, the Zayos shortlist.
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
Halal restaurants sell big platter and catering tickets, so flat fees beat percentages. Zayos fits platter and catering volume at $499 to $699 a month. Menufy and Square Online are cheaper for small takeout shops. ChowNow handles Ramadan and Friday capacity best of any published system.
What does a halal restaurant need that a generic ordering platform misses?
Six patterns that break software designed around an 11am to 10pm Tuesday-to-Sunday default. Judge every demo on these, not on the feature list.
The ticket is bigger, so a percentage hurts more
A family platter, a tray of chicken over rice, or a mixed grill for six is a $60 to $200 order, not a $22 one. Percentage fees take their largest bite out of exactly the orders you want more of. A 5% guest fee on a $120 platter is $6.00. A flat $2.99 delivery fee is $2.99, whatever the ticket does.
Ramadan compresses a whole day into ninety minutes
For thirty nights, most of your revenue lands in the window between maghrib and about an hour after. Hours flip: closed through the fasting day, open from sundown into suhoor. If your ordering system cannot open a pre-order window in the morning, close it before sundown, and hold the kitchen to a capacity it can actually cook, the software will happily sell you a night you cannot deliver.
Friday is a second dinner rush at lunchtime
Jummah prayer releases around 1pm and a mosque-adjacent halal restaurant gets a spike that behaves like a Saturday night, once a week, every week. Capacity control matters more than menu design here.
Halal status is the first thing a diner checks
Zabiha or not, shared fryer or not, which certifying body, whether alcohol is served. That answer belongs on the item and in the menu structure, not buried three clicks deep on an About page. Every platform on this list can do it with item descriptions and section names, and none of them ships a dedicated halal-certification field, so it is on you to write it clearly.
Catering is not a side business
Eid, nikah, aqiqah, mosque iftars, graduation parties and corporate lunches. A platform that treats catering as a contact form is leaving your largest tickets on the phone, where they get taken down wrong.
Your diners read more than one language
Many halal restaurants serve a community that reads Arabic, Urdu, Bengali or Somali more comfortably than English, and answers the phone the same way. Plain menu language and clear photography do more here than any marketing automation.
Longer version, written for operators rather than buyers: Zayos for halal restaurants. Arabic edition: مطاعم حلال.
Which platform fits a halal restaurant best?
We build the platform at number one, so it carries the longest set of caveats on the page, including the volume below which two competitors are cheaper. Every price was checked against the vendor’s own page in July 2026.
Zayos
Our pick, and we build itA halal restaurant with real platter and catering volume that wants one flat bill instead of a percentage on its biggest tickets. Zayos publishes halal-specific behaviour rather than treating it as a config problem: certification and zabiha flags surfaced on the item, a Ramadan hours mode with an iftar pre-order window, Jummah rush handling, and a catering builder with lead-time gates by headcount. On the $599 plan, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub tickets land on the same kitchen tablet through Otter.
$499/month Operator, $599/month Operator + Marketplace, $699/month Concierge, per location, month to month, no setup fee. 0% commission: the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and tips. The diner pays a flat service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine-in, and 10% on catering. Payments run through Stripe, so confirm card processing in your quote.
Disclosure first: we build Zayos, which is why this entry carries the longest list of caveats on the page. It is the youngest platform here. Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast-casual in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, is live and taking orders today; eight more storefronts are built with ordering opening at each launch. And the 10% catering service fee is a percentage, so a $2,000 Eid order carries $200 for the customer. If your online volume is under roughly 370 orders a month, Menufy or Square Online below will cost you less, and we would rather you knew that now.
The Halal App
The community discovery playA halal restaurant that wants to be found by Muslim diners who are already searching for halal specifically, not sifting a general delivery app. It publishes free online ordering with no commission and sells an optional restaurant package that includes native app listings and voice ordering. As a second listing alongside your own site, the cost of trying it is close to nothing.
Published, verified July 2026. Free online ordering with no commission. The restaurant package, which adds native Google and Apple app presence and voice ordering, is a one-time $250. Hardware is sold separately: a tablet at $70 and a receipt printer at $80. The site does not publish card processing rates or a service area.
It is a niche marketplace, not a restaurant operating system, and its reach depends entirely on how many diners near you have the app. Check that before you invest any menu-building time. It also does not publish coverage areas or processing rates, which are the two things you would want in writing.
ChowNow
Best kitchen capacity controlA mosque-adjacent restaurant that gets crushed on Fridays and during Ramadan. ChowNow publishes Order Throttling, which hands out 15-minute capacity slots and hides the full ones, so the storefront forms a virtual line instead of dropping forty tickets on a four-person kitchen at 8:15pm. For the halal calendar specifically, that is the most useful documented feature on this list.
Published, verified July 2026. Launch $229/month on annual billing or $249 month-to-month, Grow $319/$349, Elevate $409/$449, plus a one-time setup fee of $119 to $499 and payment processing of 2.95% + 29 cents. Branded mobile apps add Apple’s $99 annual developer fee. Flex Delivery orders are $7.98 each. 0% commission on direct orders.
Processing is restaurant-paid, so your big platter orders cost you more than your small ones: about $3.83 on a $120 ticket. The deeper marketing tools sit on higher tiers, and there is no catering ordering flow built for headcount-to-pan math.
Square Online
Cheapest way to startA new halal restaurant, or one testing whether its regulars will order direct at all. Square Online publishes a $0 plan, its modifier handling is strong enough for build-your-own bowls and platters with rice, protein, sauce and spice-level choices, and it runs on the same account as your register.
Published, verified July 2026. Free $0, Plus $49/month per location, Premium $149/month per location. Online card processing is 3.3% + 30 cents on the Free plan and 2.9% + 30 cents on the paid plans after the January 2026 rate change. No setup fee, no contract.
The percentage is the price, and on a halal ticket that stings: 3.3% + 30 cents is about $4.26 on a $120 platter. Loyalty is a separate paid add-on billed per location, and Square publishes nothing about Ramadan hours patterns or catering lead times, so you are building those workarounds yourself.
Owner.com
Deepest marketing packageA halal restaurant whose problem is that not enough people in the neighbourhood know it exists. Owner ships the website, a branded app, automated SEO pages, loyalty, and email and text campaigns in one subscription, and it is the only platform here that openly offers a choice between a percentage plan and a flat plan.
Published, verified July 2026. Flexible is $249/month plus a 5% restaurant fee per order. Flat Rate is $499/month with no additional restaurant fees. Guests pay a 5% order support fee at checkout on both plans. Month to month, no cancellation fees, with special rates offered for multi-location groups.
The 5% guest fee is the specific problem for this segment. On a $120 family platter that is $6.00 added at checkout, and on a $2,000 Eid catering order it is $100. Percentage fees and large halal tickets are a poor match, and on the Flexible plan the restaurant pays a second 5% on top.
What does a $120 family platter order cost on each?
The halal ticket is the whole argument. Restaurant-side and diner-side costs are shown separately, because a fee your customer sees at checkout is not free just because you did not pay it.
| Platform | Restaurant pays on $120 | Diner pays on $120 | Commission | Monthly base | Pricing published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zayos | $0 | $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, 10% if booked as catering | 0% | $499 to $699 per location | Yes |
| The Halal App | Not published | Not published | None stated | $0, plus a one-time $250 package | Partly |
| Menufy | Processing not published | Not published | None | $149 to $179 | Plan only |
| ChowNow | About $3.83 processing | None stated | 0% | $229 to $449, plus $119 to $499 setup | Yes |
| Square Online, Free plan | About $4.26 processing | None | 0% | $0 to $149 | Yes |
| Owner.com, Flexible | $6.00 (5%) | $6.00 (5%) | 5%, or 0% on Flat Rate | $249 or $499 | Yes |
Restaurant-side figures are computed from each vendor’s published rate on a $120 subtotal. Menufy, The Halal App and Zayos do not publish an online card processing rate, so treat those rows as a floor and get the rate in writing. Compare all of it against the marketplaces: a 25% blended take on the same $120 order is $30. See what DoorDash charges restaurants.
What halal owners ask us first.
What is the best online ordering system for a halal restaurant?
How do I take iftar and Ramadan pre-orders online?
Do any ordering platforms show halal or zabiha certification on the menu?
Which system is cheapest for large family platter and catering orders?
Should a halal restaurant stay on DoorDash and Uber Eats?
Is a halal-specific ordering app worth listing on?
- The Halal App: free online ordering with no commission, a one-time $250 restaurant package including native apps and voice ordering, tablet $70, receipt printer $80 (accessed July 2026).
- Menufy pricing page: $149/month on a 12-month plan with free equipment, $179/month with no agreement, one plan for everyone, no per-order commissions (accessed July 2026).
- ChowNow pricing page and ChowNow support, order throttling: Launch $229/$249 through Elevate $409/$449, $119 to $499 setup, 2.95% + 29 cents processing, $7.98 per Flex Delivery order, and the 15-minute capacity slot behaviour (accessed July 2026).
- Square pricing and POS USA, Square Fees and Pricing 2026: Free / Plus $49 / Premium $149 per location and the 3.3% + 30 cents versus 2.9% + 30 cents online rates effective January 2026 (accessed July 2026).
- Owner.com pricing page: Flexible $249/month plus a 5% restaurant fee, Flat Rate $499/month, a 5% guest order support fee on both plans, month to month (accessed July 2026).
- Zayos pricing and Zayos for halal restaurants: the tiers, the diner-paid flat service fee, and the halal-specific behaviour described above.
Vendors change plans and some publish nothing at all. Where a row says not published, that is a statement about the vendor’s page in July 2026, not an estimate. Ask for it in writing.
See what the apps take from your platters.
The free AI report runs your real ticket and volume, then shows the commission on your biggest orders instead of a generic one. No card, about 60 seconds, no sales call.