◆ New Orleans online ordering · Now onboarding

New Orleans restaurants are losing $48k+/year per location to delivery apps. Zay-OS is how the city keeps its own table.

Commission-free direct ordering on your own New Orleans restaurant's branded site. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub keep running, ingested into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. $499/month flat, no commission on orders or tips. Built for the po-boy counters, Creole institutions, Mid-City kitchens, and East New Orleans bakeries carrying one of the great American food cities.

Zay-OS gives New Orleans restaurants commission-free online ordering on their own branded website. Third-party apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats charge 15-30% base commission per order (25-35% blended real cost), costing a typical independent $48,000 or more per location every year — and the bill spikes in festival season, exactly when volume peaks. Zay-OS charges a flat $499 to $699 per location per month with a small flat service fee paid by the diner ($0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery; 10% on catering), and routes marketplace orders into the same kitchen tablet through Otter. It is live at Naya Grill in Florida and now onboarding New Orleans operators.

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Every New Orleans food district

French Quarter. Magazine Street. Mid-City. East NOLA.

From Quarter and CBD tourist rushes to Magazine Street locals, Frenchmen Street late nights, Mid-City neighborhood kitchens, and the Vietnamese bakeries of New Orleans East — Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the district diners actually search.

French Quarter
CBD
Warehouse District
Marigny
Bywater
Magazine Street
Garden District
Uptown
Mid-City
Treme
Gentilly
New Orleans East
Algiers
Lakeview
Metairie
Kenner

Plus every Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Tammany parish community in the greater New Orleans service area.

Why New Orleans

One of the great American food cities — taxed on every plate by the apps.

Few cities in America carry food culture the way New Orleans does, and few restaurant scenes are more independent — which is exactly why the marketplaces hit it so hard. The French Quarter and CBD run on tourist and convention volume: visitors ordering to hotel rooms from whatever listing ranks first, thousands of tickets where a 25-35% blended commission compounds fast. The po-boy counters and neighborhood Creole kitchens — the gumbo, red beans, and fried-shrimp institutions that define the city — live on high order counts at modest tickets, the precise math the apps punish worst. And the festival calendar makes it crueler: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest are the biggest weeks of the year, and on a percentage take, they are also the biggest commission bills of the year.

Beyond the Quarter, the city eats in corridors. Magazine Street runs six miles of independents through the Garden District and Uptown, with a local, repeat-driven customer base that will reorder from a branded site in one tap if you give them one. Frenchmen Street and the Marigny pull late-night crowds that order again and again. Mid-City is neighborhood dining at its densest, from Creole lunch counters to family seafood houses. And across the Industrial Canal, New Orleans East holds one of the most distinctive Vietnamese food communities in the country — the phở kitchens and Dong Phuong-class bánh mì bakeries whose margins are far too thin to hand 28% of a $12 order to a marketplace.

What every one of these operators has in common is that the marketplaces own their customer relationship and tax every order. A typical independent loses $48,000 or more per location per year to third-party commission — for a high-volume Quarter or festival-season kitchen it is far more. Zay-OS flips it: your regulars order direct on your own branded site at zero commission, while DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub keep bringing first-time diners and route straight into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. You keep the reach and stop paying rent on the customers you already earned.

The proof restaurant — the exact playbook New Orleans gets

Naya Grill — live in Florida, proving it works.

Zay-OS is not live in New Orleans yet — the city is onboarding now. But the system is already running in production. Naya Grill is a Lebanese fast-casual brand on Zay-OS across two Florida locations. Direct orders flow through their branded site with zero commission. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub orders ingest into the same kitchen tablet via Otter. One ticket flow, one menu source of truth, four channels covered. That is the identical setup a French Quarter, Magazine Street, or Mid-City operator runs on day one — and in a city where the regulars are this loyal, direct ordering ramps fast once they have a site to reorder from.

2
live locations
0%
on direct orders
1
kitchen tablet
4
channels routed
Every New Orleans cuisine

Po-boys. Gumbo. Creole. Bánh mì.

The New Orleans table runs from po-boy counters and oyster houses to Creole and Cajun institutions, East NOLA phở and bánh mì, Honduran kitchens in Kenner, and beignet cafés in the Quarter. Zay-OS schema ranks across all of them, and the branded site bends to your menu whether you are a century-old institution or a new Bywater concept.

Po-boys
Gumbo + red beans
Creole institutions
Cajun
Seafood + oyster houses
Vietnamese
Bánh mì bakeries
Soul food
Muffuletta + Italian
Caribbean + Honduran
Coffee + beignets
BBQ + smokehouse
New Orleans flat pricing

$499/month per location. No commission. Ever.

Operator is $499/month. Operator + Marketplace (Otter-ingested DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) is $599. Concierge is $699/month per location (up to 5 virtual brands per kitchen included). The diner pays a small flat service fee at checkout ($0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery; 10% on catering) — the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue, with zero commission on orders or tips.

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New Orleans operator questions

Asked by the New Orleans restaurants we are talking to.

Is Zay-OS live in New Orleans yet?
Not yet — Zay-OS is now onboarding New Orleans operators, not live in the city today. The only live restaurant on Zay-OS is Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast-casual brand running two locations in South Florida (Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach). New Orleans is the exact kind of market the system was built for: a branded direct-ordering site with zero commission, plus DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub ingested into one kitchen tablet via Otter — the same playbook a French Quarter, Magazine Street, or Mid-City operator gets on day one. Most operators are live in under 2 weeks once onboarding starts.
How much are New Orleans restaurants losing to DoorDash and Uber Eats?
Third-party apps take 15-30% base commission per order — a 25-35% blended real cost once ads and fees stack. A French Quarter kitchen doing 2,400 marketplace orders a month at a $30 average ticket pays roughly $18,000 a month in commission at a 25% effective rate — $216,000 a year off the top. Even a modest po-boy shop or neighborhood Creole spot pushing 650 orders a month through the apps loses $48,000+/year per location. And in a city where the busiest months are festival months, the commission bill spikes exactly when the kitchen is working hardest. Direct ordering on Zay-OS puts every one of those dollars back in the operator account.
Does Zay-OS serve the French Quarter, CBD, and Magazine Street?
Yes — the whole New Orleans core is a priority area. The French Quarter and CBD run on relentless tourist and convention volume, where diners order from whatever ranks first — which should be your own branded site, not a marketplace listing sandwiched between competitors. Magazine Street and Uptown skew local and repeat-driven, where a one-tap branded reorder and CRM messaging move the needle fastest. Frenchmen Street and the Marigny pull late-night crowds that reorder constantly. Zay-OS is set up to rank your restaurant in the specific district diners search.
What about the Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries in New Orleans East?
Yes. East New Orleans is home to one of the most distinctive Vietnamese food communities in the country — the phở kitchens and Dong Phuong-class bánh mì bakeries that the rest of the city drives across town for. These are high-frequency, tight-margin operators: a $12 bánh mì order paying a 28% marketplace take is a broken model. Direct ordering with a branded site and a CRM-driven repeat base is how these kitchens keep their margin, and the schema is built for the exact searches their customers make.
How does Zay-OS handle Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest order spikes?
Festival season is where the marketplace math hurts most: your biggest weeks of the year are also your biggest commission bills, because the apps take their percentage off every single ticket at peak volume. On Zay-OS the economics invert — the software is a flat monthly rate, so a record Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest week costs you the same $499 to $699 as a slow August. The diner pays a small flat service fee at checkout and the restaurant keeps 100% of food revenue and tips, no matter how hard the line is running.
Do po-boy shops and Creole institutions do enough volume for direct ordering to matter?
That is precisely where it matters most. Po-boy counters and neighborhood Creole kitchens run high order counts at modest tickets — the exact volume where a 25-35% blended marketplace take compounds into six figures a year. Gumbo, red beans, and fried seafood travel well and reorder constantly, which is ideal for a branded site plus reorder CRM. High order count is the argument for direct ordering, not against it: the more orders you push, the more commission you are handing to the apps every single month.
What if I run multiple New Orleans locations or virtual brands?
Concierge ($699/month per location, up to 5 virtual brands per kitchen) is built for multi-location and multi-brand operators. A common New Orleans setup: one Concierge plan covering a Magazine Street flagship, a CBD lunch location, and a ghost-kitchen wing (say a wing brand and a late-night po-boy concept) run out of the same physical kitchen. One menu source of truth, one tablet per location, one dashboard.
Do I have to drop DoorDash and Uber Eats to switch?
No. Every operator we onboard keeps the marketplaces running for first-time-diner discovery — the tourists, the conventioneers, the visitors ordering to a hotel room for the first time. On Operator + Marketplace ($599/mo), Otter pulls every DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub order into the same kitchen tablet as your Zay-OS direct orders. Your regulars move to direct ordering and stay there; you keep marketplace reach without paying commission on the customers you already own.
Keep reading
Catering operators →
Flat 10% on catering — built for festival-city volume.
Houston restaurant ordering →
The Gulf Coast neighbor, same commission math.
Cafés + bakeries →
Beignet counters and bánh mì bakeries.
Also: how it works · integrations · pricing

Built for New Orleans. Onboarding now.

Run the free grader to see what your French Quarter, CBD, Magazine Street, Mid-City, or New Orleans East restaurant lost to the marketplaces last month — or jump straight to getting started.

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