◆ Columbus online ordering · Now onboarding

Columbus restaurants are losing $48k+/year per location to delivery apps. Zay-OS is how the city keeps it.

Commission-free direct ordering on your own Columbus restaurant's branded site. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub keep running, ingested into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. $499/month flat, no commission on orders or tips. Built for the Somali halal kitchens, square-cut pizza shops, Bethel Road corridors, and German Village institutions feeding the fastest-growing city in the Midwest.

Zay-OS gives Columbus restaurants commission-free online ordering on their own branded website. Third-party apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats charge 15-30% base commission per order (25-35% blended real cost), costing a typical independent $48,000 or more per location every year. Zay-OS charges a flat $499 to $699 per location per month with a small flat service fee paid by the diner ($0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery; 10% on catering), and routes marketplace orders into the same kitchen tablet through Otter. It is live at Naya Grill in Florida and now onboarding Columbus operators.

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Every Columbus food district

Short North. German Village. Bethel Road. Campus.

From gallery-hop Saturdays on High Street to the brick streets of German Village, the OSU late-night rush, and the international strip plazas along Bethel Road — Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the district diners actually search.

Downtown
Short North
German Village
Italian Village
Victorian Village
University District
Clintonville
Grandview Heights
Franklinton
Olde Towne East
Bexley
Upper Arlington
Bethel Road
Dublin
Westerville
Hilliard

Plus every Franklin, Delaware, and Fairfield county community in the full central Ohio service area.

Why Columbus

A boomtown food scene where the apps arrived before the ownership did.

Columbus is the growth story of the Midwest — a city that added people every year for decades while its peers shrank, with a food scene that grew up alongside the delivery apps and got locked into them early. The High Street spine tells the story: the Short North's gallery-hop crowds and patio brunches, Italian Village and Victorian Village filling with young professionals who order dinner three nights a week, and the University District pushing tens of thousands of Ohio State students' worth of late-night volume. Those campus tickets are small, fast, and constant — the exact math a 25-35% blended marketplace take punishes worst. Columbus even has its own pizza to defend: thin crust, toppings to the edge, party-cut into squares, a reorder machine built for a branded site.

What makes Columbus genuinely different is who is cooking. The city holds one of the largest Somali communities in the United States — second only to the Twin Cities — and the halal kitchens along Cleveland Avenue and Morse Road run on high-frequency family orders where every point of commission comes straight out of thin margins. The Bethel Road and Sawmill corridor in the northwest is a Midwest-caliber international strip: Korean fried chicken, hand-pulled noodles, Japanese izakaya plates, and the momo shops of one of the country's largest Bhutanese-Nepali communities, all packed into a few miles of plazas. German Village, with its brick streets and old-world kitchens, runs the opposite model — destination dining with a fiercely loyal repeat base. Every one of these operators is sitting on regulars the marketplaces charge them to reach.

That is the flip Zay-OS makes. A typical independent loses $48,000 or more per location per year to third-party commission — a busy campus or Short North operator far more. On Zay-OS, your regulars order direct on your own branded site at zero commission, while DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub keep bringing first-time diners and route straight into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. You keep the reach, keep 100% of food revenue and tips, and stop paying rent on the customers you already earned.

The proof restaurant — the exact playbook Columbus gets

Naya Grill — live in Florida, proving it works.

Zay-OS is not live in Columbus yet — the city is onboarding now. But the system is already running in production. Naya Grill is a Lebanese fast-casual brand on Zay-OS across two Florida locations. Direct orders flow through their branded site with zero commission. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub orders ingest into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. One ticket flow, one menu source of truth, four channels covered. That is the identical setup a Short North, German Village, or Bethel Road operator runs on day one — and a halal fast-casual brand proving the model matters in a city with Columbus's Somali food scene.

2
live locations
0%
on direct orders
1
kitchen tablet
4
channels routed
Every Columbus cuisine

Somali halal. Square-cut pizza. Korean. Nepali.

Columbus's table runs from Cleveland Avenue sambusa and Bethel Road bibimbap to German Village schnitzel, campus square-cut pies, and Ethiopian injera platters. Zay-OS schema ranks across all of them, and the branded site bends to your menu whether you are a decades-old institution or a new Short North concept.

Somali + halal
Columbus-style pizza
German Village classics
Korean
Ethiopian + Eritrean
Nepali + Himalayan
Mexican taquerias
Japanese + sushi
Middle Eastern
Vietnamese
American diner
BBQ
Columbus flat pricing

$499/month per location. No commission. Ever.

Operator is $499/month. Operator + Marketplace (Otter-ingested DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) is $599. Concierge is $699/month per location (up to 5 virtual brands per kitchen included). The diner pays a small flat service fee at checkout ($0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery; 10% on catering) — the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue, with zero commission on orders or tips.

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Columbus operator questions

Asked by the Columbus restaurants we are talking to.

Is Zay-OS live in Columbus yet?
Not yet — Zay-OS is now onboarding Columbus operators, not live in the city today. The only live restaurant on Zay-OS is Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast-casual brand running two locations in South Florida (Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach). Columbus is exactly the kind of market we are opening next: the playbook Naya runs — a branded direct-ordering site with zero commission, plus DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub ingested into one kitchen tablet via Otter — is what a Short North, German Village, or Bethel Road operator gets on day one.
How much are Columbus restaurants losing to DoorDash and Uber Eats?
Third-party apps take 15-30% base commission per order — a 25-35% blended real cost once ads and fees stack. A busy Columbus location doing 2,500 orders/month at a $24 average ticket pays roughly $15,000/month in marketplace commission at a 25% effective rate — $180,000 a year off the top. Even a modest neighborhood spot pushing 650 marketplace orders a month at a ~$25 ticket loses $48,000+/year per location at that same 25%. High-volume campus and Short North operators bleed far more. Direct ordering on Zay-OS puts every one of those dollars back in the operator account.
Does Zay-OS serve the Short North, German Village, and the OSU campus?
Yes — the whole High Street spine is a priority corridor. The Short North runs on gallery-hop weekends and a dense young professional crowd that reorders from a branded site in one tap. German Village is destination dining with a loyal repeat base — exactly where owning the customer relationship pays. The University District is pure volume: tens of thousands of Ohio State students ordering late-night, high-frequency, low-ticket — the precise math a 25-35% blended marketplace take punishes worst. Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the specific district diners actually search.
I run a Somali or halal restaurant in Columbus — is Zay-OS built for that?
Yes, and deliberately so. Columbus is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States — second only to the Twin Cities — and the halal kitchens along Cleveland Avenue, Morse Road, and the north side corridors are high-frequency, family-order operators the marketplaces hurt most. Zay-OS was proven on a Lebanese halal-friendly fast-casual brand (Naya Grill), and we have a dedicated halal operator guide at /for/halal plus an Arabic-language overview at /ar. If your family also runs a kitchen in the Twin Cities, our Minneapolis page covers the same playbook there.
What about Bethel Road and the northwest international corridor?
The Bethel Road and Sawmill corridor in northwest Columbus is one of the best international food strips in the Midwest — Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Nepali, and Vietnamese kitchens packed into a few miles of strip plazas. These are exactly the operators who get commoditized inside a marketplace app: diners scroll a list and the app owns the relationship. A branded direct-ordering site with schema built for cuisine-level search ("korean fried chicken bethel road") is how these kitchens get found directly and keep the margin. Columbus also carries one of the country's largest Bhutanese-Nepali communities, and those momo and thali kitchens fit the same playbook.
Can a campus pizza shop near OSU actually handle direct-ordering volume?
That is where it matters most. Columbus-style pizza — thin crust, edge-to-edge toppings, party-cut squares — is a high-frequency, reorder-heavy product, and campus shops run thousands of small late-night tickets a month. High order count is the argument for direct ordering, not against it: the more orders you push through the apps, the more commission you hand over every month. Zay-OS handles rush-hour volume through the same kitchen tablet that receives your marketplace orders, so a Friday-night surge is one queue, not three.
How long does it take a Columbus restaurant to go live?
Most operators are live in under 2 weeks. Onboarding covers your branded ordering site, menu build, payment setup, and — on Operator + Marketplace — the Otter connection that routes DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub into the same kitchen tablet. There is no setup fee and plans are month-to-month.
Do I have to drop DoorDash and Uber Eats to switch?
No. Every operator we onboard keeps the marketplaces running for first-time-diner discovery — game-day visitors, convention crowds, suburban customers ordering for the first time. On Operator + Marketplace ($599/mo), Otter pulls every DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub order into the same kitchen tablet as your Zay-OS direct orders. Your regulars move to direct ordering and stay there; you keep marketplace reach without paying commission on the customers you already own.
Keep reading
Halal restaurant operators →
Built for Columbus's Somali halal kitchens.
Minneapolis ordering →
The Twin Cities Somali food capital playbook.
Pizzeria operators →
For the square-cut campus volume shops.
Also: how it works · integrations · pricing

Built for Columbus. Onboarding now.

Run the free grader to see what your Short North, German Village, University District, Clintonville, or Bethel Road restaurant lost to the marketplaces last month — or jump straight to getting started.

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