◆ Los Angeles Mexican restaurants

You already found the customer. Zayos stops you paying an app to introduce you again.

Quick answer

Zayos gives a Los Angeles taqueria its own ordering site, so the customer who found you on Instagram checks out with you instead of inside a marketplace that charges 25 to 35 percent blended for an introduction you already made. Flat $499 to $699 a month per location.

Free. About 60 seconds. No card.

Who actually found the customer who just ordered?

Los Angeles is the most name driven Mexican food market in the country. The quesabirria wave that went national in the late 2010s ran out of LA on Instagram, not out of a marketplace ranking, and it set the pattern: people arrive already knowing what they want and who makes it. There are three ways an order reaches you, and only one of them is worth a commission.

A reel, a line on the sidewalk, a cousin

Somebody saw the birria pull apart on a phone screen, or drove past forty people waiting on a Sunday. They already know the name. They open an app and type it in. The app did no finding, and still takes 25 to 35 percent blended.

You found this customer

A search for your name that lands on a listing

They google the restaurant and the first orderable result is a marketplace page, because there is no site of your own to land on. Same customer, same intent, routed through a toll booth that exists only because the road was missing.

You found this customer

A cold browse inside the app

Somebody new to Highland Park opens DoorDash, taps tacos, and picks from whatever the ranking shows. This is real discovery and it is worth paying a commission for. It is also the smallest of the three after your first year on a block.

The app found this customer

A commission is a finder fee. In Los Angeles you are usually paying it on customers your own kitchen, your own line and your own phone camera found.

What is that finder fee worth over a year?

Model one LA taqueria at 500 online orders a month and a $26 average ticket, which is a family taco order with aguas frescas. That is $13,000 of online volume a month. At 28 percent blended, the apps take about $3,640 a month, roughly $43,680 a year, or about $7.28 of every single order.

Zayos Operator plus Marketplace is $599 a month flat, $7,188 a year, which works out to about $1.20 an order at that volume and less at higher volume, because a flat fee divides and a percentage never does.

Modeled from the order count and ticket above, not a customer result. Run it on your own numbers with the free AI report, or read how to stop paying DoorDash commission and Zayos versus Uber Eats.

Why does a marketplace menu flatten what makes your kitchen worth driving to?

Los Angeles does not have a Mexican food scene, it has a dozen regional ones side by side. Oaxacan mole and tlayudas around Koreatown and Pico, Sinaloan mariscos and aguachile, Jalisco style birria, Yucatecan cochinita pibil, Michoacan carnitas, Sonoran flour tortillas, Poblano cemitas. Boyle Heights, East LA, Highland Park, Huntington Park, South Gate and the east Valley each cook differently, and the families doing it have been doing it for generations.

A delivery app files all of that under one word and sorts it by estimated arrival time. Nobody chooses a taqueria that way.

Your own storefront is the only place the specifics can live. Which region the recipe comes from, corn or flour, salsa heat levels as real modifiers, meat by the pound, tortillas by the dozen, and a menu that reads in Spanish and English because a large share of both your customers and your staff prefer one over the other.

In this traffic, is delivery even the right channel?

Usually not, and pretending otherwise is how a good taqueria gets bad reviews for somebody else's driving.

Scheduled pickup beats an optimistic quote

A four mile run from Boyle Heights to Downtown at 5:30pm is not fifteen minutes, whatever the app says when it takes the order. Tacos do not survive that trip and neither does your reputation. Scheduled pickup lets the customer commit to a time from wherever they are stuck, collect without standing in the line, and eat the food the way it left the griddle.

A delivery zone you draw yourself

When you do deliver, you decide how far. Your own site refuses an address outside the zone before checkout, so no driver leaves on a run that loses money. In a city where three miles can mean nine minutes or forty, that control is worth more than a bigger radius.

Late night and Sunday mariscos

After 11pm marketplace driver supply thins out and fees climb, while your own site keeps taking pickup orders from people who are already out. Sunday mariscos is the opposite pattern: a family occasion, big shared orders, its own menu. You schedule each menu to appear only on the days you actually run it, and the change is live immediately.

What is included, and what does the diner pay?

Operator is $499 a month per location: your branded ordering site on your own domain, the full menu with salsa, tortilla and meat modifiers, scheduled pickup, delivery with a zone you draw, the kitchen tablet, and a customer list that belongs to you. Operator plus Marketplace is $599 and adds Otter ingestion so DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub print in the same feed. Concierge is $699 and includes up to five virtual brands out of one kitchen.

All three are per location, month to month, no setup fee, no percentage of any ticket at any volume. The diner pays a flat service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, nothing on dine in and 10 percent on catering, and the restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and 100 percent of tips. See the pricing page, the fee breakdown and how it works. Most operators are live in under 2 weeks.

Who is running Zayos right now?

One restaurant is live and taking orders on it 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 launch dates. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group, a Fort Lauderdale company.

There is no Los Angeles taqueria on the platform yet. We serve California from South Florida, and we would rather say that than hand you a reference that does not exist.

Questions LA taqueria owners ask.

If the apps bring me orders, why does it matter who found the customer?
Because the commission is priced as customer acquisition and most of your app orders are not acquisitions. In Los Angeles, Mexican food demand is name driven. People come off a reel, a line they drove past, or a recommendation, and then they type your name into an app. That order costs you 25 to 35 percent blended and the platform did none of the work. Keep the apps for the genuine cold browse and move everything else onto your own site.
How much does that actually add up to?
Model 500 online orders a month at a $26 average ticket, which is $13,000 of online volume. At 28 percent blended, the midpoint of the 25 to 35 percent range once delivery, in app marketing and card processing stack, that is about $3,640 a month or roughly $43,680 a year. Zayos Operator plus Marketplace is $599 flat a month, $7,188 a year, at any order count. Per order that is about $7.28 against $1.20.
Delivery in LA is a nightmare. Is this really a delivery product?
Mostly it is a pickup product, which is the honest answer for tacos. A four mile run from Boyle Heights to Downtown at 5:30pm is not a fifteen minute drive no matter what an app quotes, and a taco that sits in a bag for thirty five minutes is not the taco you cooked. Scheduled pickup lets the customer commit to a time and collect without waiting in the line, and you draw your own delivery zone so nobody leaves on a run that loses money or ruins the food.
My menu is regionally specific. Can the site actually say that?
Yes, and that is the point of having your own storefront. Oaxacan mole and tlayudas, Sinaloan aguachile, Jalisco style birria, Yucatecan cochinita pibil, Michoacan carnitas, Sonoran flour tortillas and Poblano cemitas are different cuisines, and a marketplace files all of them under one word and sorts them by delivery time. On your own site the regional story, the salsa heat levels, the tortilla choice and the family recipe can all be on the page where they belong.
What about weekend mariscos and the late night trade?
Both are channels you control better than a marketplace does. Sunday mariscos is a family occasion with big shared orders and its own menu, which you can schedule to appear only on the days you run it. Late night after 11pm is when marketplace driver supply thins and fees climb, while your own site keeps taking pickup orders from people who are already out. You decide when each menu is live, and the change takes effect immediately.
Can it handle quinceanera and party catering?
Yes. Large format taco orders, party trays by the pound, and a guest count with a drop off or collection time all go on the site with a lead time you set. Catering carries a 10 percent fee paid by the guest at checkout and you keep the full food price, instead of a marketplace percentage on an order that never should have gone through a delivery app in the first place.
Do you have a Los Angeles taqueria on the platform I can call?
No, and we will not invent one. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The restaurant live and taking orders today is 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. Los Angeles is a market we serve from South Florida.

See what you paid to be introduced to your regulars.

The free report runs your own order count and average ticket against a flat monthly fee, and shows the gap over a year.