The apps keep 15% to 30% of every Charlotte order. Zayos is how you stop paying it.
Commission-free ordering on your restaurant's own branded site. DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub keep running and land on the same kitchen tablet through Otter. Flat $499 a month per location, no commission on food, no cut of tips, no setup fee.
Zayos gives Charlotte restaurants commission-free online ordering on their own branded website. Delivery marketplaces charge 15% to 30% base commission per order, which lands around 25% to 35% as a blended real cost once delivery, advertising and processing fees stack. Modeled across a year, that is $48,000 to $300,000 or more per location, at 3,000 to 12,000 orders a month. Zayos instead charges a flat $499 to $699 per location per month with no setup fee, and the only per-order charge is a service fee the diner pays: $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine-in, 10% catering. The restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is live and taking orders at Naya Grill in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, and is onboarding Charlotte operators now.
Free report, no card. Most operators are live in under 2 weeks.
Somebody moves here every day. Their first order decides who owns them.
Charlotte grows by taking people from other cities. They arrive from New York, Chicago and Miami with app-first ordering habits already installed and zero loyalty to anybody here. Inside the first month or two in a South End tower or a Plaza Midwood duplex, each of them quietly picks the four or five places they will order from for years. That choice is the most valuable thing happening in your market, and most restaurants have no role in it at all.
If that first order runs through a marketplace, the app now owns the reorder button. Every time that neighbor orders again, from a restaurant they already know by name, the platform takes 25% to 35% blended. You are paying a finder's fee, forever, on somebody who was already found. If the first order runs through your own site with a saved card and a one-tap reorder, the relationship is yours and the second order costs you nothing.
The city gives you four different versions of this. Uptown runs banking-tower lunch, tens of thousands of office workers on a five-day repeat cycle. South End stacks light-rail apartments full of weekly delivery orderers. NoDa and Plaza Midwood carry the independent bar-and-kitchen scene where regulars are the entire business model. And Central Avenue holds one of the best international restaurant stretches in the Carolinas, family-run kitchens where a commission on a $13 order can be the whole profit. Four different rooms, one identical problem.
South End. NoDa. Plaza Midwood. Central Avenue.
Your Zayos site is built to rank in the district a diner actually types, not just the city name.
Plus every Mecklenburg, Union and Cabarrus county community in the greater Charlotte area.
$499 a month per location. Nothing per order.
Operator is $499 a month. Operator plus Marketplace is $599 and adds Otter, the software that pulls DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub tickets onto your kitchen tablet. Concierge is $699 and covers up to 5 virtual brands in one kitchen. All per location, month to month, no setup fee, no contract. The diner pays a small service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine-in, 10% catering. You never pay it, and you keep 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips.
The point where a flat $499 beats a percentage.
A percentage grows with you. A flat fee does not. Take a 25% blended marketplace rate, multiply it by your average ticket, and divide $499 by the result. That is how many direct orders a month it takes before Zayos is the cheaper channel. Every order past that line is money you keep.
The apps take $3.75 per order at a 25% blended rate. Zayos costs less once you move about 133 direct orders a month, roughly 4 a day.
The apps take $5.50 per order at a 25% blended rate. Zayos costs less once you move about 91 direct orders a month, roughly 3 a day.
The apps take $7.50 per order at a 25% blended rate. Zayos costs less once you move about 67 direct orders a month, roughly 2 a day.
The apps take $11.25 per order at a 25% blended rate. Zayos costs less once you move about 45 direct orders a month, roughly 1 a day.
Arithmetic on a 25% blended rate and a flat $499 Operator plan, not a claim about any specific restaurant. Run your own numbers in the commission calculator.
Carolina BBQ. Soul food. Pho. Pupusas.
The Charlotte table runs from smokehouses and Southern institutions to the Central Avenue pho houses, taquerias, Salvadoran kitchens and Ethiopian cafes, plus the brunch and burger rows of South End and NoDa. The ordering site bends to your menu, modifiers and all.
We have no Charlotte customers yet. Here is who we do have.
Zay Revenue Group is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast-casual brand with locations in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, is live and taking orders on Zayos today and keeps $48k+ a year that used to go to marketplace commissions. Direct orders run through their own branded site at zero commission, and their DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub tickets land on the same kitchen tablet through Otter. One queue, one menu, four channels. That is the exact build a South End or Central Avenue kitchen gets on day one. We would rather tell you that plainly than invent a Charlotte case study.
What Charlotte owners ask us first.
Is anybody in Charlotte actually running on Zayos right now?
What do the delivery apps actually cost me per order?
Charlotte is full of transplants. Does that change anything?
Does this work for the Central Avenue international kitchens?
Uptown lunch is my whole business. Is direct ordering worth it there?
What does Zayos cost, all in?
Do I have to drop DoorDash and Uber Eats?
How fast can a Charlotte restaurant be taking direct orders?
Charlotte, we are onboarding now.
The free report reads your restaurant and shows what last month cost you in marketplace commission. It takes about 60 seconds and does not ask for a card.