The app took 28 percent of a check it did nothing to raise. Zayos takes none of it.

Hyde Park is one of the few genuinely walkable districts in Tampa. Hyde Park Village, South Howard, Swann and the Bayshore blocks are dense with owner operated restaurants surrounded by people who live within a ten minute walk. The marketplace pitch is discovery: they introduce you to someone new. That argument is real in a strip plaza off a six lane road. It is very weak on a street where your guest already walks past your patio twice a week.

What the apps actually do here is intercept a relationship you already have. The order comes from a phone four blocks away, the app takes its percentage, and the guest never lands on your site, never joins your list and never sees the thing you are running next weekend. You paid an acquisition price for a customer you had already acquired.

Walkability also changes the fulfillment mix. In a district like this, pickup and curbside are a large share of online orders, and pickup is where marketplace pricing looks worst to your guest too, because they are paying app service fees for a trip they are making on foot. On your own Zayos site the diner pays a flat $0.99 for pickup, $2.99 for delivery, nothing for dine-in, and 10 percent on catering. The restaurant never pays it and keeps 100 percent of food revenue and 100 percent of tips.

Hyde Park runs on occasions. Birthdays, anniversaries, an office drop for the Westshore or downtown crowd, a Sunday four top on Bayshore. A marketplace has no real product for any of it. Zayos does: scheduled ordering with a date and time, large party and group ordering, and a catering flow that carries a flat 10 percent diner-paid service fee instead of a marketplace commission on the food.

You also keep the guest book. Every direct order builds a customer list you own, with order history attached, so the four top from last October can be invited back for the same week this year. That is a normal thing for a restaurant to do and an impossible thing when the relationship sits inside somebody else's app. If catering is a real line for you, the catering ordering page covers the flow in detail, and fine dining covers the higher check service pattern.

Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida company. We do not have an office on Howard and we are not going to imply otherwise. We serve the Tampa market from South Florida, onboarding is remote, and most operators are live in under two weeks with a first direct order inside the first week.

One restaurant is live and taking orders on Zayos today: Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. On the commission model run at about 3,000 orders a month it keeps more than $48,000 a year that used to leave as marketplace commission. Storefronts are built and ordering opens at launch for Shishka Lebanese Grill, La Vie Mediterranean, Yummy Grill, aura, Courtyard Cafe, Mr. Smoke across 13 locations, Yalla Market and Tap That Ash. There is no Hyde Park customer on that list yet, and we will not invent one.