New Tampa restaurant online ordering you actually control. Zayos.
Zayos is commission free online ordering for New Tampa and Tampa Palms restaurants. When a courier cannot find the gate, you pay the commission and the bad review. On your own branded site you control the handoff, keep 100% of food revenue, flat $499 per month.
Free, no card, about 60 seconds.
Where does a New Tampa delivery actually go wrong?
Not on I-75, and not on Bruce B Downs. It goes wrong in the last 400 yards. New Tampa is master planned suburbia, built village by village since the 1980s, and a large share of it sits behind a gate, a guardhouse or a call box. Hunter's Green, Cory Lake Isles, Heritage Isles, Live Oak Preserve and parts of Tampa Palms all put a control point between a stranger with your food and the person who ordered it. Here is the sequence, in the order it breaks.
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The gate
A courier reaches a guardhouse or a call box with no resident code and no name on the visitor list. Some communities wave food through. Several do not, especially after dark.
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The call box
The guest is called, has to answer an unknown number, and has to walk out or phone the gate. If they are on a work call or putting a kid to bed, the food waits in a car in the sun.
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The street
Master planned neighborhoods repeat street names across phases and villages. Pin drops land at the wrong loop, the wrong building, or the clubhouse parking lot.
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The handoff
Left at the wrong door, left at the mail kiosk, marked delivered from the gate. The courier moves on to the next dispatch. Your food is still outside.
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The blame
The guest does not think about routing. They think the food was cold and your restaurant sent it. The rating goes on your listing and the refund conversation starts.
Who pays for a handoff you were never part of?
You do, in the way that matters most. The marketplace decides fault using rules you do not run and cannot audit, so the refund outcome moves around. The rest of it never moves. The one star review lands on your listing, under your name, next to your photos. The guest does not picture a routing algorithm or a courier who took three orders at once. They picture your kitchen sending out cold food. And you already paid 25% to 35% blended on the exact ticket that just went wrong.
That is the real cost of renting fulfillment. You bought the delivery, you did not get to run it, and you kept all of the reputation risk. In a neighborhood where families talk in the same school pickup line and post in the same community group, a reputation is not a metric, it is your Tuesday night volume six weeks from now.
What changes when the order comes to you directly?
The gate does not open by itself. What changes is that the information stops disappearing. On your own site the customer record holds the gate code, the guard name, the building and the cross street, and it holds them next time too, instead of being retyped into a stranger app that never shares it with you. And because everybody here already drives the Bruce B Downs corridor, pickup and curbside stop being a consolation prize. Your real menu price plus a $0.99 pickup fee against a stacked app total is not a close comparison.
Can an independent win a corridor full of chains?
Inside the app, you are one tile ranked partly by ad spend against national brands. That is not a fight an independent New Tampa kitchen wins on budget. On your own domain there is no auction. There is your brand, your photography, your menu written the way you say it, and a Google listing whose order button points at you instead of at a marketplace checkout. That is the version of this fight you can win.
Which order types work best behind a gate?
Six ways an order can reach a New Tampa household without a stranger guessing at a call box.
Order ahead pickup
The guest already drives Bruce B Downs. $0.99 to the diner, nothing to you, and no third party in the handoff.
Curbside
They pull into the plaza, tap arrived, and a runner walks it out. No gate, no call box, no pin drop.
Delivery notes that persist
Gate code, guard name, building, cross street. Saved on the customer record, not retyped into a stranger app every time.
Scheduled orders
Set for 6:45pm so it is not racing a courier queue at the worst hour of the day.
Group ordering
One link for an office at Tampa Palms or a team at a school, one ticket to the kitchen.
Catering builder
HOA events, clubhouse parties, medical offices along Bruce B Downs. 10% fee paid by the customer, never by you.
Related: catering · QR ordering · ordering app
What does app commission cost a New Tampa restaurant in a year?
Modeled, not a customer result. 850 app orders a month at a $34 average ticket, at a 28% effective blended rate.
Marketplace commission runs 15% to 30% as a base rate, and 25% to 35% as a blended real cost once delivery, marketing and processing fees stack. Zayos is a flat $499 a month per location. Run your own numbers in the commission calculator, or compare directly against DoorDash and Uber Eats.
How do I move my regulars off the apps without losing the new ones?
Four steps, run in this order. Most operators are live in under two weeks and take a first direct order within a week of signing up.
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Point the order button at yourself
Your Google Business Profile, your Instagram link and your printed menu all get changed to your own ordering page. Most New Tampa restaurants find that a large share of app orders came from people who already knew the name.
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Put a code on the bag
Every marketplace bag that leaves the kitchen carries a card with your ordering URL and a first order offer. You are paying commission on that order anyway, so use it to buy the next one direct.
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Make pickup the better deal
Show the real menu price and a $0.99 pickup fee against a stacked app total. In a neighborhood where everybody drives past the plaza, that comparison wins on its own.
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Keep the apps for strangers
On Operator plus Marketplace at $599, Otter ingests DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub into the same kitchen tablet. Discovery stays. The repeat order moves.
Which New Tampa communities does Zayos cover?
Everything from Tampa Palms north to the Pasco line, gated or not, plus the plazas along Bruce B Downs that hold most of the kitchens.
Plus Temple Terrace, the USF area, Lutz, Wesley Chapel and the rest of Hillsborough County.
Is Zayos live in New Tampa yet?
No. We have no restaurant live anywhere in Tampa Bay today. Zayos is built in Fort Lauderdale by Zay Revenue Group, and the one restaurant taking direct orders on it right now is Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast casual brand in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, keeping $48k+ a year that used to go to commissions on a run of 3,000 orders a month. Eight more storefronts are built and open ordering at their own launches. We are a South Florida company serving the Tampa market, and we would rather say that plainly than invent a New Tampa customer. Operators here are onboarding now.
What does Zayos cost a New Tampa restaurant?
Operator is $499 a month. Operator plus Marketplace, which adds DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub ingestion through Otter, is $599. Concierge is $699 and includes up to five virtual brands per kitchen. All three are per location, per month, month to month, no setup fee. The diner pays a small service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, nothing on dine in, 10% on catering. The restaurant never pays it and keeps 100% of food revenue and tips.
Full pricing breakdown →What do New Tampa owners ask before they switch?
Why do so many of my New Tampa deliveries go wrong at the very end?
Who eats the cost when a courier cannot get through the gate?
How does ordering on my own site fix a gate I do not control?
What is commission actually costing a New Tampa restaurant?
Most of my neighbors are chains on Bruce B Downs. Does an independent stand a chance?
Can I do my own delivery to the communities I already serve well?
We are close to USF and the Wesley Chapel line. Does that change anything?
Is Zayos live in New Tampa or anywhere in Tampa Bay?
Find out what the apps took last month.
The free AI report runs your restaurant through the same commission math on this page. No card, about 60 seconds.