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How much does Lunchbox cost, and how is Zayos priced?

Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

Quick answer

There are two Lunchbox products. Lunchbox for small operators is free with no sign up fee and no commission; the guest pays a convenience fee and card processing is capped at 3.5% plus $0.30. Lunchbox 2.0, the enterprise platform, is quote only.

First fork in the road

Which Lunchbox are you actually being quoted?

One brand, two very different commercial products. Almost every confused Lunchbox pricing conversation starts here.

Product one
The small business tier

Self serve. You sign up, build an ordering site in about half an hour, and start taking orders. Lunchbox presents it as free, with no sign up fee and no commission. Positioned on the ordering page for 1 to 2 locations.

Product two
Lunchbox 2.0, enterprise

Demo, scope, implementation. Annual recurring fees per location, an implementation fee, a two week lead time before work is even scheduled, and a design process with two rounds of revisions. Priced by quote.

The free one

What does the free Lunchbox tier cost?

Monthly software fee
None published. Lunchbox presents the small business tier as free.
Sign up fee
None. Lunchbox states "No sign-up fee or commission fee in sight."
Commission
None. Lunchbox states you keep 100% of the profits from each order.
Who pays instead
The guest. Lunchbox’s own launch announcement says customers pay a convenience fee per order, described as negligible but never quantified.
Card processing
Lunchbox’s service fees page states card processing fees will not exceed 3.5% and $0.30 per card transaction.
Size limit
The ordering page groups the small business tier under 1 to 2 locations. The 2022 launch announcement described it as being for restaurants with 1 to 3 locations. Ask which applies to you.
Setup time
Lunchbox says an operator can build the ordering site themselves in under 30 minutes.
The honest part

If it is free, who is paying for it?

Your guest is, at checkout. Lunchbox says so itself: its launch announcement for the free product states that customers pay a convenience fee per order, while the restaurant keeps 100% of the profits and pays no sign up fee and no commission. That is a real pricing model, not a trick, and it is worth understanding rather than dismissing.

We use the same model, so this is not a criticism, it is a checklist item. The question to ask any vendor who charges the diner is simply: what is the number, and is it printed anywhere a customer can see before they order? Lunchbox describes its guest fee as negligible without quantifying it. Zayos prints its own: $0.99 on pickup, $2.99 on delivery, $0 on dine in, 10% on catering. A guest fee you can state out loud is a guest fee you can defend at the counter when a regular asks about it.

The second number to pin down is card processing. Lunchbox’s service fees page states that card processing will not exceed 3.5% and $0.30 per card transaction. That is a ceiling, and a ceiling is not a quote. On $30,000 of monthly card volume, the distance between a 2.6% effective rate and a 3.5% one is about $270 a month, which is more than most of this category charges for software. Ask for your actual rate on your actual mix.

The quoted one

What does Lunchbox enterprise cost?

No published price. What Lunchbox does publish is its service terms, and those describe the bill precisely enough to prepare for the call.

Subscription shape
Lunchbox’s service terms describe annual recurring fees calculated as the number of locations multiplied by the cost per location, plus additional recurring fees. The per location amount is not published.
Implementation fee
The service terms include implementation fees covering configuration and implementation. No amount is stated.
Email marketing overage
$100 per 100,000 sends above 100,000, per the published service terms.
SMS marketing overage
$150 per 10,000 sends above 10,000, per the published service terms.
Lead time
Generally a two week lead time for implementation work to be scheduled once the agreement is signed.
Design process
Two rounds of revisions, after which documented sign off is required. Customers get five business days of user testing before the work is deemed accepted.
Contract length
Not stated in the published service terms. Fees are described as annual recurring, which implies a year, but get the term, the renewal and the notice period in writing.

The two marketing overage rates are the most useful published numbers Lunchbox gives an enterprise buyer, because they tell you the shape of the relationship. A brand sending 250,000 emails a month is $150 over the included allowance, and a brand sending 40,000 texts a month is $450 over. Those lines grow with your list, not with your sales, so model them against the list you actually intend to build.

Open questions

What is genuinely unclear about Lunchbox pricing?

  • The size of the guest convenience fee on the free tier. "Negligible" is a judgement, not a number, and your regulars will form their own opinion of it.
  • Whether the 3.5% plus $0.30 card processing figure is what you will actually pay or the ceiling you cannot be charged above. The wording is a maximum.
  • Whether the free tier covers 1 to 2 locations or 1 to 3. Lunchbox’s current site and its own launch announcement disagree.
  • The enterprise per location price, the implementation fee and the contract term. All three are quote only.
  • What happens to your ordering site if you outgrow the free tier. Ask what the migration to the enterprise product costs before you build a customer base on the free one.
Fit, both ways

Who should buy Lunchbox, and where does Zayos fit?

Buy Lunchbox if this is you

One or two locations, you want a direct ordering page live today, and you have no budget to test the idea with. A free tier that takes half an hour to set up is a legitimate way to find out whether your guests will order direct at all. Learn that for nothing, then decide what to spend.

Zayos, and what it is priced for

$499 Operator, $599 Operator plus Marketplace, $699 Concierge, per location per month, month to month, no setup fee. It is priced for an operator who already knows the direct channel works and now wants it run properly: menu and modifiers built for them, marketplace tickets pulled onto the same kitchen tablet at $599, and up to five virtual brands per kitchen at $699.

The fee, printed

Zayos charges the diner $0.99 on pickup, $2.99 on delivery, $0 on dine in and 10% on catering. The restaurant never pays it, keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips, and can quote the exact number to a guest who asks.

Where Lunchbox genuinely wins

Zero downside on entry, and real enterprise depth at the other end for large brands with catering and multi channel needs. If your choice is between free ordering today and no ordering at all, take free ordering today. We would rather you own a direct channel on somebody else’s software than not own one.

To hold ourselves to the same standard this page holds Lunchbox: one restaurant is live and taking orders on Zayos today, Naya Grill in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, which keeps $48k or more a year that used to leave as marketplace commission. Storefronts are built and open ordering at their own launch for Shishka Lebanese Grill, La Vie Mediterranean, Yummy Grill, aura, Courtyard Cafe, Mr. Smoke across 13 locations, Yalla Market and Tap That Ash. Zayos is made in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by Zay Revenue Group.

Sources
  • Lunchbox small business product page, accessed 26 July 2026. "No sign-up fee or commission fee in sight", "Zero Fees. Zero Commissions", zero commission ordering with the operator keeping all profits, and the under 30 minute setup claim.
  • Lunchbox ordering page, accessed 26 July 2026, for the two tier split and the 1 to 2 location positioning of the small business product.
  • Lunchbox service fees page: card processing fees "will not exceed 3.5% and $0.30 per card transaction". Disclosure: this page returned a server error to our fetcher on 26 July 2026, so the wording was confirmed through live search results on the same date rather than by loading the page directly. Verify it yourself before relying on it.
  • Lunchbox service terms, accessed 26 July 2026. Annual recurring fees as locations multiplied by cost per location plus additional recurring fees, implementation fees, the $100 per 100,000 email overage, the $150 per 10,000 SMS overage, the two week implementation lead time, two rounds of design revisions and the five business day acceptance window.
  • Lunchbox launch announcement, dated 28 June 2022 and accessed 26 July 2026: "No fixed monthly costs, no sign up or hidden commission fees in sight", "Customers pay a negligible convenience fee per order", and the 1 to 3 location description.
  • Zayos pricing, the source for the $499, $599 and $699 per location tiers, the no setup fee and month to month terms, and the diner paid service fee.

Nothing on this page estimates a Lunchbox figure. Where an amount is not published, this page says it is not published.

Straight answers

Lunchbox cost questions, answered.

Is Lunchbox really free?
The small business tier is free to the restaurant in the sense that matters most: Lunchbox publishes no monthly software fee, no sign up fee and no commission, and states that 100% of the profits from each order go to the restaurant. Somebody still pays for the software, and Lunchbox says who: its own launch announcement states that customers pay a convenience fee per order. Free to you, not free to your guest.
What does Lunchbox charge for card processing?
Lunchbox’s service fees page states that card processing fees will not exceed 3.5% and $0.30 per card transaction, checked on 26 July 2026. Read that as a ceiling rather than a quote. Ask what your actual effective rate will be on your own card mix, because the difference between 2.6% and 3.5% on $30,000 of monthly card volume is $270 a month.
How much does Lunchbox enterprise cost?
Lunchbox does not publish enterprise pricing. Its service terms describe annual recurring fees calculated as the number of locations multiplied by a per location cost, plus additional recurring fees and implementation fees, none of which carry published amounts. The terms do publish two hard numbers, both marketing overages: $100 per 100,000 email sends above 100,000, and $150 per 10,000 SMS sends above 10,000.
Which Lunchbox product am I being sold?
Lunchbox sells a self serve small business product and an enterprise platform called Lunchbox 2.0 under the same brand. The small business tier is a sign up flow you complete yourself in about half an hour. The enterprise tier is a demo, a scoped implementation with a two week lead time, two rounds of design revisions and a per location annual fee. Establish which one a quote refers to before you compare it with anything else.
How does Lunchbox compare to Zayos on price?
On sticker price nothing beats free, so if you run one or two locations, want a simple ordering page and are comfortable with your guests paying a convenience fee, the Lunchbox small business tier is a sensible thing to try. Zayos is priced as a full platform: $499, $599 or $699 per location per month, month to month, no setup fee. Zayos also charges the guest rather than the restaurant, but publishes the exact amounts, which are $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in and 10% on catering, and the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips. At $599 Zayos also pulls Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub tickets onto the same kitchen tablet through Otter.

Find out what free is costing you.

The free AI report reads your real order volume and average ticket and shows where the money is going right now. About 60 seconds, no card.