Zayos is for the Fort Wayne kitchen where a $19 ticket has to carry the whole night.

Why is a percentage fee worse on a small ticket?

A marketplace charges a share of the whole order, but your profit is only a thin slice of that order. In a market priced the way Fort Wayne is priced, that difference decides whether a channel is worth having. Work an example at a 25% blended rate. Blended means commission plus delivery, marketing and processing fees stacked together, which usually lands between 25% and 35%. Base commission alone runs 15% to 30%.

On a $19 order the apps keep $4.75. Put a normal 30% food cost against that same order and you have spent $5.70 on ingredients, which means the marketplace took nearly as much as your walk in cooler did, without buying anything, cooking anything, or answering the phone. Then labor, rent, packaging and card fees come out of what is left. It is entirely possible for a busy night of app orders to add revenue and subtract profit at the same time.

Second largest city in Indiana, roughly 270,000 people, a cost of living well under the national average, and diners who know exactly what a plate should cost. That is a market where volume is real but margin per ticket is small, which is the precise condition under which a flat monthly fee beats a percentage. At $499 a month on the Operator plan, the hundredth direct order of the month costs you nothing extra. The hundredth marketplace order never stops costing.

Who is ordering in Fort Wayne, and where from?

Downtown has spent a decade rebuilding around Parkview Field, Promenade Park and the Electric Works campus, and the restaurants that came with it feed an office and events crowd on weekday hours. Broadway, Wells Street and the near north neighborhoods carry the independent dinner trade. Out along Coliseum, Jefferson Pointe and the north side corridors, the pattern is suburban pickup and family sized orders on the way home.

The southeast side is a different story again. Fort Wayne is home to one of the largest Burmese communities in the United States, and the grocers, bakeries and family kitchens that serve it run on exactly the customer a marketplace serves worst: loyal, frequent, ordering for a household, and often shopping in a language the app never bothered to support. A branded ordering site with your own menu language, your own photos and a saved reorder is worth more to that customer than a listing sorted by drive time.

Whatever corner of the city you are in, the ownership question is the same. On a marketplace the diner belongs to the app. On Zayos every direct order leaves you a name, a phone number, an email and an order history that you can use again next month without paying anyone for permission.

Fort Wayne owner questions.