Zayos: commission free online ordering for Birmingham restaurants
Zayos is commission free online ordering on a Birmingham restaurant's own branded site. It costs $499 to $699 per location per month, flat, with no setup fee. Diners pay $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in, 10% catering. The restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and tips.
Where is Zayos actually live right now?
Zay Revenue Group is a Fort Lauderdale, Florida company, and we serve the Birmingham market from Fort Lauderdale. No office here, no rep here, no Alabama restaurant on the platform.
One restaurant is live and taking orders on Zayos today: Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast casual brand in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. Running the commission model at 3,000 orders a month, it keeps more than $48,000 a year that would have gone to marketplace commission. Eight more South Florida storefronts are built with ordering opening at launch, including Shishka Lebanese Grill, La Vie Mediterranean, Yummy Grill and Mr. Smoke across 13 locations.
A Birmingham operator gets the identical build, not a pilot.
Why does commission hurt a Birmingham independent more than a chain?
Birmingham's food reputation was not built by franchises. It was built by chef owned rooms, meat and threes, barbecue pits and the family kitchens along the Green Springs and Lorna Road corridor. A city whose flagship dining room took the James Beard award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2018 runs on independents, and independents are who a percentage is worst for. A national brand negotiates its rate down across hundreds of stores. A Southside kitchen pays rack rate out of one location's margin.
Geography makes it worse. The metro sprawls from Avondale out to Homewood, Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills and Hoover, the stretch locals call Over the Mountain. Long delivery legs raise marketplace delivery costs, one reason the blended take climbs from a 15 to 30 percent base rate to 25 to 35 percent in practice. Modeled across order volume, a location keeps $48,000 to $300,000 or more a year at 3,000 to 12,000 orders a month by moving repeat diners off the apps.
What happens to a $600 office catering order on a marketplace?
Birmingham runs on institutional lunch. UAB is the largest employer in Alabama and its medical campus never stops eating, and downtown carries headquarters in banking, insurance and building materials. That means standing tray orders, conference room lunches and shift meals: the highest ticket, most predictable revenue a restaurant has. It is also what a percentage punishes hardest, because the fee scales with the order while the work of making it does not.
| Line | Marketplace | Zayos direct |
|---|---|---|
| Tray order subtotal | $600 | $600 |
| Taken by the platform | $150 at a 25% blended rate | $0 |
| Paid by the person ordering | Service and delivery fees on top | 10% catering fee |
| Restaurant keeps | $450 | $600 plus 100% of the tip |
Illustration at a 25 percent blended marketplace rate on a $600 subtotal. Not a customer result.
So who pays the catering fee?
The person placing the order does, at 10 percent, shown at checkout. That is the whole model: the diner pays a small flat fee, the restaurant pays a flat subscription, and nobody takes a cut of your food or your staff's tips.
What does Zayos cost a Birmingham restaurant per month?
Per location, per month, flat. No setup fee, month to month, no contract. The only money moving at checkout is the diner's flat service fee. Live in under two weeks, with a first direct order usually inside the first week.
Questions Birmingham owners ask before they sign
Do you actually have restaurants in Birmingham?
How does catering work if the restaurant pays no commission?
We are spread across Homewood, Hoover and downtown. Does that change the price?
Do I have to drop DoorDash and Uber Eats to do this?
How fast can a Birmingham restaurant be taking direct orders?
See what Birmingham's apps took from you last month
The free report reads your setup and puts a number on it. No card, about 60 seconds.