◆ Detroit online ordering · Now onboarding

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

Commission-free direct ordering on your own Detroit 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 coney islands, Detroit-style pizzerias, Mexicantown taquerias, and Greektown kitchens carrying the city.

Zay-OS gives Detroit 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 Detroit operators.

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Every Detroit food district

Corktown. Midtown. Greektown. Mexicantown.

From Downtown game-day rushes to Corktown walk-ups near Michigan Central, Eastern Market Saturday crowds, and the Bagley Street taquerias in Mexicantown — Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the district diners actually search.

Downtown
Midtown
Corktown
Greektown
Mexicantown
Eastern Market
New Center
West Village
Woodbridge
Rivertown
Hamtramck
Ferndale
Royal Oak
Dearborn
Grosse Pointe
Livonia

Plus every Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county community in the full metro Detroit service area.

Why Detroit

A food city with thin margins and heavy app dependence — the worst combination.

Detroit's restaurant scene is dense, distinctive, and mostly independent — which is exactly why the marketplaces hit it so hard. Downtown and Greektown run on stadium, casino, and event-night volume: thousands of fast tickets where a 25-35% blended commission compounds into six figures a year. The coney islands — the American and Lafayette rivalry downtown and the hundreds of coney counters across the metro — live on high order count and low ticket size, the precise math the apps punish worst. Detroit-style pizza, the square brick-cheese institutions with the crispy caramelized edge, travels well and reorders constantly, which is money left on the table every time it goes out through DoorDash instead of a branded site.

Corktown and Midtown are the growth story. With Michigan Central reopened and Ford anchoring Corktown, and Wayne State and the hospital corridor filling Midtown, the diner base skews younger, denser, and more repeat-driven — people who will reorder from a branded site in one tap if you give them one. Eastern Market pulls a citywide crowd every Saturday, and Southwest Detroit's Mexicantown taquerias on Bagley and Vernor run the tightest margins of anyone, where a marketplace take can erase the profit on a whole order. On the Dearborn edge, the metro carries the largest Arab-American community in the country, with the Warren Avenue corridor a short drive from Downtown.

What every one of these operators has in common is that the marketplaces own their customer relationship and tax every order. A typical independent loses $48,000 or more per location per year to third-party commission — for a busy coney or Greektown kitchen it is far more. Zay-OS flips it: 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 and stop paying rent on the customers you already earned.

The proof restaurant — the exact playbook Detroit gets

Naya Grill — live in Florida, proving it works.

Zay-OS is not live in Detroit 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 Corktown, Greektown, or Mexicantown operator runs on day one — and Detroit's dense repeat-customer base means direct ordering ramps fast once the regulars have a site to reorder from.

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

Coneys. Detroit-style pizza. Taquerias. Middle Eastern.

Detroit's table runs from coney counters and square-pan pizza to Mexicantown taquerias, Greektown souvlaki, Hamtramck pierogi, and Warren Avenue shawarma. Zay-OS schema ranks across all of them, and the branded site bends to your menu whether you are a 60-year coney institution or a new Corktown concept.

Coney dogs
Detroit-style pizza
Detroit BBQ
Mexican taquerias
Middle Eastern
Greek
Soul food
Polish + Eastern European
American diner
Caribbean + Jamaican
Vietnamese
Ethiopian
Detroit 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.

Start now → Full pricing breakdown →
Detroit operator questions

Asked by the Detroit restaurants we are talking to.

Is Zay-OS live in Detroit yet?
Not yet — Zay-OS is now onboarding Detroit 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). Detroit is the exact 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 Corktown, Midtown, or Mexicantown operator gets on day one.
How much are Detroit 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 single Detroit location doing 3,000 orders/month at a $28 average ticket pays roughly $21,000/month in marketplace commission at a 25% effective rate — over $250,000 a year off the top. Even a modest coney or taqueria pushing 650 orders a month through the apps loses $48,000+/year per location. High-volume Downtown and Greektown spots doing 6,000+ orders/month bleed $150,000+/year. Direct ordering on Zay-OS puts every one of those dollars back in the operator account.
Does Zay-OS serve Downtown, Midtown, Corktown, and Greektown?
Yes — the whole Detroit core is a priority area. Downtown and Greektown lean high-volume with heavy stadium, casino, and event-night traffic where a fast branded reorder beats reopening a marketplace app. Corktown and Midtown skew younger and more repeat-driven — the Michigan Central and Wayne State crowds reorder on a branded site in one tap, so the CRM and reorder messaging move the needle fastest there. Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the specific district diners search.
What about Mexicantown and Southwest Detroit taquerias?
Yes. The Bagley and Vernor taquerias in Mexicantown are exactly the high-frequency, tight-margin operators the marketplaces hurt most — a $12 taco order paying a 28% take is a broken model. Direct ordering with a Spanish-language discovery layer (schema-level) and a CRM-driven repeat base is how these kitchens keep their margin. We have a dedicated Latin and Mexican operator guide at /for/latin, and Spanish-language search variants are built into the schema so Southwest Detroit diners find your site.
Do coney islands and Detroit-style pizzerias do enough volume for direct ordering to matter?
That is precisely where it matters most. Coney islands run thousands of small, fast tickets — the exact volume where a 25-35% blended marketplace take compounds into six figures a year. Detroit-style pizza (the square, brick-cheese, crispy-edge institutions) travels well and reorders constantly, which is ideal for a branded site plus reorder CRM. High order count is the argument for direct ordering, not against it: the more orders you push, the more commission you are handing to the apps every single month.
I run a Middle Eastern or halal restaurant near Dearborn — is there a better-fit page?
Yes. Detroit is the anchor of the largest Arab-American community in the United States, and the Warren Avenue corridor sits right on the Dearborn edge of the metro. If you run a Lebanese, Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian, or Palestinian kitchen, start with our Dearborn Arab restaurant page at /dearborn-restaurant-online-ordering and our Arabic-language overview at /ar — both are built specifically for halal operators and Arabic-language discovery. Zay-OS serves the full metro either way.
What if I run multiple Detroit locations or virtual brands?
Concierge ($699/month per location, up to 5 virtual brands per kitchen) is built for multi-location and multi-brand operators. A common Detroit setup: one Concierge plan covering a Corktown flagship, a Midtown second location, and a ghost-kitchen wing (say a coney concept and a wing brand) run out of the same physical kitchen. One menu source of truth, one tablet per location, one dashboard.
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 — the game-day visitors, the tourists, the 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
Dearborn Arab ordering →
Warren Ave, the US Arab restaurant capital.
Mexican + Latin operators →
Built for Mexicantown taquerias.
بالعربية →
Arabic overview for Arab restaurant owners.
Also: how it works · integrations · pricing

Built for Detroit. Onboarding now.

Run the free grader to see what your Downtown, Midtown, Corktown, Greektown, Mexicantown, or Eastern Market restaurant lost to the marketplaces last month — or jump straight to getting started.

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