The best online ordering system for Florida restaurants, ranked by Zayos.
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
There is no single best system, only a best system per order volume. Under 150 online orders a month, Square Online wins on price. Between 150 and 400, ChowNow or Zayos. Over 400 a month, Zayos at $499 per location beats every percentage plan.
60 seconds. No card. It tells you which band you are in.
What makes a system best in Florida specifically?
A national roundup scores features. Florida is an operating environment, and four conditions here change the answer in ways a feature list never captures. Every system below is scored on these four, not on how many checkboxes it ships.
Does the bill match your season?
Florida does not have one season, it has three that disagree. South Florida from Palm Beach through Broward and Miami-Dade runs November to April on snowbird and visitor traffic, with August as the trough. Central Florida inverts it, filling in summer and again at the winter holidays. The Gulf coast and the Panhandle load Memorial Day through Labor Day. A percentage plan takes the most money in your best month. A flat monthly plan takes the same money in your worst one. Neither is wrong, but signing without knowing your own shape is.
Can you close it from a phone in a storm?
Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, which is half the year. Every Florida operator eventually needs to stop taking orders in under a minute, from a phone, possibly from a car. Then reopen cleanly. A system where pausing means a laptop and a support ticket will happily take money for food you cannot cook, and refunds after a storm are how a restaurant loses the regulars it just spent a season earning.
Does checkout work for the diner who does not read English first?
Florida has one of the largest Spanish speaking populations in the country, plus large Haitian Creole, Portuguese and Arabic speaking communities concentrated in exactly the neighborhoods independent restaurants serve. A checkout flow that only works in English quietly loses orders in Hialeah, Kissimmee, Little Haiti and half of Broward. This is a conversion question, not a courtesy.
Does it price sanely for a second Florida location?
Florida independents grow sideways, not upward: a second unit fifteen minutes away, usually inside the same county. Ask what the second location costs, whether menus can differ by store, and whether one customer list spans both. Some vendors charge full freight per location with no shared brand hub, which turns a two unit operator into two separate customers of the same company.
How do the six systems score on those four tests?
Pricing verified against each vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026, or attributed to the named tracker where the vendor publishes nothing. No stars, because a star rating we made up would be a number without a basis.
| System | Price | Season shape | Storm pause | Language | Second location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zayos | $499 / $599 / $699 per location, per month | Flat. Same bill in August as in February. | Pause ordering from a phone. Direct and app orders on one tablet. | Spanish storefront copy available. Florida based support. | Priced per location. One brand hub across locations. |
| Square Online | $0 / $49 / $149 per location, per month | Cost tracks volume, because processing is the real bill. | Items and pickup windows toggled from the Square app. | Multi language storefront support. | Per location plans, one Square account. |
| ChowNow | $229 to $449 per month, plus setup $119 to $499 | Flat subscription, plus 2.95% and 29 cents processing. | Order throttling caps tickets per 15 minute slot. | Not a published strength. | Per location subscription. |
| Toast online ordering | Reported near $75 per month on a Toast POS plan | Flat module, plus online processing reported 3.09% to 3.69%. | Handled in the POS, so the manager on shift can do it. | Not a published strength. | Strong once every location runs Toast. |
| Owner.com | $249 per month plus 5%, or $499 per month flat | The 5% plan bills hardest in your best month. | Standard dashboard controls. | Not a published strength. | Per location. |
| DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub | 15% to 30% base commission, 25% to 35% blended | Costs the most in season, exactly when volume peaks. | Pause per app, per location, in three portals. | Consumer apps are multi language. | Per store listing in each app. |
Marketplace figures are the published partnership rate cards from DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, stated as approximate because tiers and regional terms change. Card processing is excluded from the Zayos row because it depends on the merchant account you connect. Confirm every line with the vendor in writing.
Zayos
Best for
Independents doing real online volume that want a flat bill and their own customer list.
Square Online
Best for
A first ordering page, or any kitchen under roughly 150 online orders a month.
ChowNow
Best for
Small kitchens that get slammed and need capacity control more than anything else.
Toast online ordering
Best for
Restaurants replacing the register at the same time and wanting one vendor.
Owner.com
Best for
Operators whose real problem is demand, not ordering software.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub
Best for
Reaching visitors who will never search your name. Keep them for that.
Which one is right for a restaurant like yours?
Find the row that describes your restaurant. That is the recommendation. If two rows describe you, take the one about order volume, because volume decides the money.
Under 150 online orders a month
Square OnlineAt a $32 ticket, a percentage plan is genuinely cheaper than any $499 flat plan at this volume. Prove your regulars will order direct before you buy a platform. Come back when the arithmetic flips.
150 to 400 online orders a month
ChowNow or Zayos, depending on your passThis is the crossover band. If your bottleneck is a two person line getting twelve tickets at 6:40pm, ChowNow order throttling earns its subscription. If your bottleneck is four tablets and four menus, Zayos earns it.
Over 400 online orders a month
ZayosAbove this line a flat monthly plan is cheaper than every percentage plan on the list, and the gap widens every month you grow. At 400 orders on a $32 ticket, a 25% blended marketplace take is roughly $3,200 a month.
Two to fifteen Florida locations
Zayos or ToastToast if every location runs the same register and you want one vendor across hardware and software. Zayos if you want one brand hub, one menu source and per location pricing without a hardware commitment.
Heavy tourist corridor, low repeat rate
The apps, plus a direct channelIf most covers are visitors, marketplace commission is buying reach you cannot get any other way. Keep the apps for strangers, and run direct ordering so the locals stop costing you 25% to 35%.
Replacing the POS this year
ToastBuying ordering software six months before you rip out the register is doing the same project twice. Sequence it.
At what volume does a flat fee beat a percentage?
Model it at a $32 average online ticket, which is where most Florida takeout kitchens sit. A 25% blended marketplace take costs $8 an order. At 150 orders a month that is $1,200. At 400 orders it is $3,200. At 1,000 orders it is $8,000 a month, every month, forever, on food you cooked in your own kitchen.
At a $32 average ticket, a 25% blended marketplace take costs $8 per order, so a Florida restaurant doing 400 online orders a month pays roughly $3,200 a month in commission for orders it cooked itself.
Against that, a $499 flat plan is $1.25 an order at 400 orders and 50 cents an order at 1,000. That is the whole argument, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion. It is also why the same plan is a bad buy at 80 orders a month, where $499 works out to $6.24 an order.
Across a full year, an independent location running meaningful marketplace volume gives up somewhere between $48,000 and $300,000 or more per location per year at 3,000 to 12,000 orders a month. Naya Grill, live on Zayos in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, keeps $48,000 or more a year that used to leave as commission. Run your own numbers in the savings calculator, or read the Florida commission benchmark.
When is Zayos the wrong answer?
When your volume is low. Under roughly 150 online orders a month, Square Online is cheaper and good enough, and we would rather you start there and come back than sign something you resent in month three.
When you are replacing the register this year. Buy the POS first. Toast couples ordering to the register tightly, and doing both projects at once means doing the menu twice.
When you are a multi state brand with a development team and an existing loyalty stack. Olo is built for that shape of company and Zayos is not.
When your actual problem is that nobody knows you exist. Better ordering software does not fix an empty room. Owner.com leads with marketing, and if demand is the constraint that may be the more useful spend.
Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We serve operators across the state, including markets where we have no customers yet, and we will say so rather than imply otherwise.
Questions Florida owners ask before they switch.
What is the best online ordering system for a Florida restaurant?
Why does Zayos not rank itself first for every Florida restaurant?
Does a Florida restaurant need an ordering system that handles seasonality?
Can I keep DoorDash and Uber Eats and still run my own ordering?
Which restaurants in Florida are live on Zayos right now?
How fast can a Florida restaurant switch?
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