The oxtail finished at 1:40. The app sold four more. Zayos closes the item the moment you do.
Zayos gives a Fort Lauderdale Jamaican kitchen daily item counts, one tap sold out control and scheduled pre orders on its own site, for a flat $499 to $699 a month per location with no commission. The diner pays $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery.
Free. About 60 seconds. No card.
What actually goes wrong on a Tuesday?
Not the cooking. The gap between when the pan runs out and when the internet finds out.
- 6:30am
Pots on
You cook what you cook. Oxtail is a batch, not a menu item you can produce on demand at 2pm because a screen said somebody wanted one.
- 11:30am
Counter opens, the oxtail line starts
On your own site the day’s items go live with a count you set. Twenty two oxtail. The number goes down as orders come in, and the guest sees it.
- 1:40pm
Oxtail is gone
One tap on the tablet and it is off every channel you control, immediately. The item shows as sold out instead of quietly disappointing four more people.
- 1:41pm to 2:20pm
The app is still selling oxtail
This is the expensive part. Marketplace stock updates lag, so the platform keeps taking money for a pan that is empty, and every one of those becomes a refund, a bad rating and a customer who now believes you are unreliable.
- 2:30pm
The phone will not stop
Half those calls are asking whether the oxtail is finished. A site that answers that question stops the phone from taking a cook off the line during service.
- 7:30pm
Sold out, closing early
Tomorrow’s pre orders are already in, with names attached, because the people who missed out today put their order in for tomorrow rather than driving to the next counter.
Why is selling out the feature and not the bug?
A Jamaican takeout counter is a batch kitchen. Oxtail is browned and braised for hours, curry goat the same, stew peas and soup the same. You decide in the morning how much of each you are cooking, and when it is gone it is gone, because nobody starts a four hour braise at 2pm. That is not poor planning. That is the food.
Every ordering system you use has to understand that, and marketplace menus mostly do not. Their stock model was built for a kitchen that can make another one, so an item you 86 in the restaurant can keep selling on the app while the update works its way through. You find out when a refund request arrives.
For a batch kitchen, live inventory is worth more than another discovery channel, because a sold out item you cannot close is a refund, a bad rating and a customer who now thinks you are unreliable.
Broward is exactly where this compounds. From Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes through Plantation, North Lauderdale, Sunrise and down into Miramar, there are enough good Jamaican counters within a ten minute drive that a customer disappointed twice simply goes to the next one. In a market that dense, reliability is the whole brand.
What is the phone costing you, and what is the percentage costing you?
Two different bills. The phone bill is paid in labor: during a lunch rush most calls are asking what is left and how long it will be, and every one of them pulls somebody off the line. A storefront that shows live counts and a ready time answers both questions without a person, and the orders arrive typed instead of shouted across a hot kitchen.
The percentage bill is paid in margin. Modeled at 320 online orders a month and a $22 average ticket, that is $7,040 of online volume, and a 28 percent blended marketplace cost, the midpoint of the 25 to 35 percent blended range, runs about $1,971 in a month. Zayos Operator + Marketplace is $599 flat at any order count. Those are modeled numbers from the inputs above, not a customer result, and they do not include the refunds a lagging stock list creates. Run your own with the free AI report, the commission calculator, or check the ranges on commission statistics.
Small tickets ordered often are the worst possible shape for a percentage fee, and that is precisely this business: a box of curry goat with rice and peas, three times a week, from someone who has been coming since the counter opened.
Where does the big money actually come from?
Trays and patties, mostly, and neither is an impulse order. Offices, schools and churches buy patties by the dozen with a day of notice. Parties, repasts, christenings and Sunday gatherings buy pans of jerk chicken, curry goat, rice and peas, festival and plantain. Those orders are planned, they are large, and they come from people who already know your food.
On your own site each tray is an item with a serving count, a lead time and a scheduled pickup window, and the storefront stops taking orders once you hit the number of pans you can cook that day. The 10 percent catering fee is paid by the guest at checkout, so a $300 tray order still puts $300 of food revenue in your register. The full setup is on the catering page.
Then there is the calendar. Emancipation on August 1 and Jamaican Independence on August 6 fall in the same week. Carnival season fills the fall. Christmas brings sorrel and cake. Those are the weeks worth taking pre orders for, because they are planned by the customer long before they are cooked by you.
What does it cost, and who is running it today?
Operator is $499 a month per location, Operator + Marketplace is $599 and adds Otter ingestion so app tickets land on the same tablet, and Concierge is $699 with up to five virtual brands out of one kitchen. Per location, month to month, no setup fee, no commission at any volume. The diner pays $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in and 10 percent on catering, and the restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and 100 percent of tips. See pricing, what the diner pays and how it works.
One restaurant is live and taking orders on Zayos today: Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, which keeps $48k+/yr that used to leave as marketplace commission at roughly 3,000 orders a month. Seven more storefronts are built and open ordering at their own launches. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group, based here in Fort Lauderdale.
There is no Jamaican restaurant on the platform yet, in Broward or anywhere else. We would rather tell you that than hand you a reference that does not exist.
Questions Broward counter owners ask.
Can the menu handle selling out mid service?
Can I take pre orders for tomorrow, or for Sunday breakfast?
What does a delivery app really cost a takeout counter at these ticket sizes?
How do patties and party trays work online?
A lot of my customers still call or pay cash. Does online ordering fit that?
What about Independence weekend and carnival season?
Do I have to leave DoorDash and Uber Eats?
Is there a Jamaican restaurant on Zayos today?
See what a week of commission is worth to you.
The free report runs your own order count and average ticket against a flat monthly fee, and shows the gap over a year. No card.