In July your delivery volume doubles and so does the commission. Zayos stays at the same number.
Zayos costs a Phoenix Mexican restaurant the same $499 to $699 a month in July as in January, while marketplace commission climbs with the summer delivery surge. No percentage of any ticket, and the restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and tips.
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Why does a Phoenix Mexican restaurant run two different years inside one year?
Because the Valley has an inverted season. Most of the country slows down in winter and fills its patios in summer. Phoenix does the opposite. From October through April the winter residents are back, the patios in Old Town, Roosevelt Row, Mesa and Chandler run all day, and delivery is the quieter channel. Then it hits 110 and the dining room empties while the delivery queue fills.
A Phoenix restaurant does its heaviest delivery volume in the months a percentage costs it the most, and there is no lever inside a marketplace to change that.
The food itself is not a seasonal trend. Sonoran cooking came north with families from a state whose border sits a couple of hours down I 19, and it has been home cooking in South Phoenix, Maryvale, Glendale, Avondale, Mesa and the town of Guadalupe for generations. What changes across the year is not the menu, it is how the food reaches people.
What does the commission bill look like in July against January?
One modeled Valley taqueria at a $27 average ticket, with online orders roughly doubling once the heat arrives. Marketplace cost at 28 percent, the midpoint of the 25 to 35 percent blended range once delivery, in app marketing and card processing stack together.
| Season | Online orders | Marketplace, a month | Zayos, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| October to April Patios full, winter residents back, Cactus League and event weekends. Delivery is the quieter channel. | 260 a month $7,020 volume | $1,966 | $599 |
| May to September Over 100 degrees for weeks at a time. Dining rooms empty out and the delivery queue fills up. | 480 a month $12,960 volume | $3,629 | $599 |
The summer commission bill runs about 85 percent above the winter one. The Zayos bill changes by zero. Across a full year that is roughly $31,907 in blended marketplace cost against $7,188 flat, a gap of about $24,719.
Modeled from the order counts and ticket above, not a customer result. Run it on your own numbers with the free AI report, or read what DoorDash charges restaurants and the commission statistics.
What does 110 degrees do to an order you cannot see?
This is the part no ordering platform built in a temperate city thinks about, and in the Valley it decides your reviews from May to September.
The car is hotter than the sidewalk
A marketplace driver stacking three orders in a parked car on a Phoenix afternoon is running an oven with your food in it, and yours is often the one riding longest. Cheese breaks, tortillas sweat through the paper, crema splits. You never see the food again after it leaves the pass, and the one star review lands on your listing rather than on the platform.
Some of the menu simply cannot travel in July
Aguas frescas, paletas, anything with ice, anything with a delicate crisp on it. On your own site you take those items off delivery for the summer while keeping them for pickup and dine in, instead of hoping the customer understands. You can also offer insulated packaging as a real paid option rather than a note in a comment box.
A radius you shrink yourself
The Valley is a flat, fast grid, so drive times are more predictable than in most big metros and the distances are long. That is an advantage in February and a liability in August. On your own site you set a summer delivery zone, tighter than the winter one, and the site refuses addresses outside it before checkout. Nobody sends carne asada on a twenty minute drive in 112 degrees because an algorithm thought it was in range.
Does the winter season make up for it?
It pays differently. From October the winter residents come back, the patios fill, and the calendar loads up: the Cactus League brings fifteen major league clubs to Valley ballparks through February and March, the big Scottsdale and Glendale event weekends land in the same stretch, and family celebrations run all season. That season earns in covers and in catering, not in delivery volume.
Which means an ordering platform has to do two jobs well rather than one. Party trays, taco orders by the pound, tortillas by the dozen and a guest count with a collection time, booked with a lead time you set and a 10 percent fee paid by the guest, not by you. Then five months later the same site is running a tight summer delivery zone with half the menu hidden. Same $599 a month either way.
What does a Sonoran menu need that a generic one does not?
Room to be exact. Sonora is flour tortilla country, so tortillas by the dozen with sizes and a lard or no lard choice is a real product line, not an afterthought. Carne asada sells by the pound. The Sonoran hot dog has a build to it, bacon wrapped, pinto beans, onion, tomato, mayo, mustard, jalapeno salsa, and every one of those is a modifier a customer will change. Machaca, green corn tamales in their short season, cheese crisps, salsa heat the customer picks.
A menu that cannot express the order turns into a phone call, and a phone call at 7pm on a Friday is a ticket somebody had to stop cooking to take.
It also needs to read in both languages. A large share of Valley customers and kitchen staff prefer Spanish, and a storefront you own can carry both without asking anyone for permission.
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 every modifier, seasonal menus and hours you control, pickup and 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 tickets 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, with the first direct order usually inside a week of signing up.
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 that knows a bit about running restaurants through a brutal summer.
There is no Phoenix restaurant on the platform yet. We serve Arizona from South Florida, and we would rather say so than invent a reference.
Questions Valley taqueria owners ask.
Why does a Phoenix summer make the commission worse rather than better?
What does the heat actually do to the food once it leaves the kitchen?
Is the winter season enough to make up for the summer?
What does a Sonoran menu need that a generic ordering platform does not give it?
How much does it cost and what does the diner pay?
Do I have to leave DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub?
Do you have a Phoenix restaurant on the platform I can call?
Pull up last July, then read the number again.
The free report runs your own order count and average ticket against a flat monthly fee, and shows the gap over a year.