The online ordering system spec for a St. Petersburg restaurant, from Zayos.

Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

Quick answer

An online ordering system for a St. Petersburg restaurant needs guest checkout, one tablet for every channel, and a customer list you can export. Zayos does that for $499 to $699 a month per location, with no commission, and the diner pays $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery.

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This page is a buying spec, not a brochure. The city case for St. Pete lives on the St. Petersburg page.

What does an ordering system have to do before it earns a spot on your pass?

St. Petersburg has one of the densest concentrations of single-unit, owner-operated restaurants in Florida. Central Avenue runs from the downtown waterfront west through Grand Central to Kenwood almost entirely on independents. Almost none of them have an IT person. That constraint, more than any feature list, is what should drive this decision. Eleven requirements, and the local reason each one exists.

01

Guest checkout, with no forced account

Half of a beach-side or downtown ticket comes from someone who will be in Ohio on Tuesday. Forcing a signup on a first-time diner is the single most expensive checkbox in this category.
02

It still captures the customer record, and you can export it

Guest checkout and customer capture are not opposites. Email and phone on the order, exportable to a file you own. If the vendor cannot export it, you do not own it.
03

One tablet for every channel

A Central Avenue kitchen with four screens on the pass makes mistakes at 7pm. Direct, DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub should arrive in one queue. Otter is how that is usually done.
04

86 an item in under ten seconds, from the line

You run out of grouper on a Friday, not at a desk. If marking an item unavailable requires the office computer and a manager password, it will not happen and you will refund the order instead.
05

Pause the entire store from a phone

Storm days, water main breaks, a walk-in that dies. Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and Pinellas evacuates early. You need one thumb and one tap.
06

Menu scheduling by daypart and by day

Brunch that appears at 10 and vanishes at 2. A Saturday-only market menu. An EDGE District kitchen that only serves food when the taproom is open. Scheduling is not a luxury here.
07

Modifiers deep enough for your real menu

Two-level modifiers, required versus optional, price-bearing options, and quantity rules. Most systems that fail an operator fail on the third modifier level, after the menu is already built.
08

Scheduled and future-dated orders

Catering, office lunches, race weekend pre-orders, and the Saturday market crowd all want to order Thursday for Saturday. A system that only takes orders for right now leaves that revenue on the floor.
09

Reporting your bookkeeper accepts, and sales tax set aside

Order-level detail, exportable, reconcilable against deposits. Automatic sales-tax set-aside through DAVO means the money for the state leaves the account before you can spend it.
10

Your own domain, your own search presence

If your ordering page lives on the vendor domain, every link you build feeds their SEO. A St. Pete restaurant with a strong local name should be ranking on its own domain, not renting a subdirectory.
11

A published price, month to month, with no cut of sales

If you cannot find the price on the website, the price is a negotiation and you will lose it. If the bill rises with your sales, it is a commission no matter what the invoice calls it.

What kinds of online ordering systems am I actually choosing between?

Four categories, not forty products. Pick the category first and the shortlist writes itself.

Four categories of restaurant online ordering system compared
Category	Who sells it	Cost shape	Who owns the diner	Best for
Marketplace storefront	DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub sell a website ordering product	Often zero commission on the storefront itself, plus card processing per order	The marketplace, in practice. Data and diner relationship stay on their side	An operator who wants a second channel and is not trying to build a customer list
POS-bundled ordering	Your point-of-sale vendor, as a module on the hardware you already run	Monthly module fee plus their card processing, usually tied to their terminals	You, mostly, inside their ecosystem	A restaurant already deep in that POS and content to stay there
Website builder plugin	An add-on for the site your cousin built on a page builder	Low monthly, and it shows in modifiers, reporting and kitchen routing	You	A very small menu with almost no modifiers and no marketplace presence
Dedicated direct-ordering platform	A company whose only product is your own ordering channel	Flat monthly subscription per location, no percentage of sales	You, including the exportable customer list	An independent that wants the margin and the list, and wants to keep the apps for discovery

Current pricing for the named vendors moves, so we keep it on its own pages rather than in a table that goes stale: Toast online ordering cost, Square for Restaurants, ChowNow, and DoorDash.

How do I switch without losing a shift?

Five steps, in this order. The order matters more than the speed.

01

Pull one month of statements

Export one full month from every marketplace you run. Add commission, delivery, promoted listing spend, processing and refund adjustments, then divide by food sales. That single number is your real blended rate.
02

Hand over a clean menu

Prices, categories, and every modifier group with required or optional marked. This is the longest step in the whole project and it is entirely on your side.
03

Point your own domain at the storefront

Order on your domain, not a vendor subdirectory, so the links and reviews you already have feed your own search presence.
04

Run one tablet in the kitchen

Put direct orders and marketplace orders into the same queue via Otter before you promote the new channel, so the line never has to learn two workflows at once.
05

Move regulars, not strangers

QR code at the register, receipt inserts, table tents, and one email to your list. Keep the marketplaces for first-time discovery and let the repeat traffic migrate.

The menu is always the long pole, not the software. A restaurant that arrives with a clean menu and complete modifier groups is usually taking direct orders inside a week.

St. Petersburg operator questions

What is the best online ordering system for a St. Petersburg restaurant?

The one that passes the eleven-point spec above for your specific menu. In practice most Central Avenue, Grand Central and EDGE District independents need four things a general-purpose tool does not do well: deep modifiers, daypart menu scheduling, one kitchen tablet for every channel, and an exportable customer list. Zayos was built for that shape of restaurant at $499 to $699 a month per location.

How long does it take to get an ordering system running?

Most operators are live in under two weeks and take a first direct order within a week of signing up. The long pole is almost always the menu, not the software. If you can hand over a current menu with modifiers and prices in a spreadsheet or a clean PDF, the build moves fast.

Do I keep DoorDash and Uber Eats after installing a direct system?

Yes, and in a tourist-heavy market you should. The apps find people who have never heard of you. On the Operator plus Marketplace plan at $599 a month, Otter routes DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub tickets into the same tablet as your direct orders, so the kitchen works one queue while you slowly move repeat diners to the channel that keeps your margin.

What does it cost, all in?

Operator $499, Operator plus Marketplace $599, Concierge $699, each per location per month, month to month, no setup fee. The diner pays a service fee at checkout of $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in, and 10% on catering. The restaurant pays no commission and keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips.

Can it handle race weekend and street closures downtown?

That is exactly what requirements five and six exist for. When downtown streets close for the early-March street race, you want to switch delivery off, leave pickup on, post a store message about where to park, and do it all from a phone in under a minute. A system that needs a support ticket to change your hours is the wrong system for downtown St. Pete.

Is this St. Petersburg, Florida?

Yes. This page is about St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida, in the Tampa Bay metro, not St. Petersburg, Russia. Our service area covers all of Pinellas including downtown, Central Avenue, the Grand Central and EDGE Districts, Old Northeast, Kenwood, Gulfport, and the beaches at St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island and Madeira Beach.

Do you already run this for restaurants in St. Pete?

Not yet. Zay Revenue Group is a Fort Lauderdale, Florida company and our live restaurant is Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. We serve the St. Petersburg market, onboarding is open, and we would rather say that plainly than imply a Pinellas presence we have not earned.

Keep reading

Tampa Bay hub →

The regional calendar and the fee math.

Ordering systems, generally →

The category explained without a city attached.

POS integration guide →

What connects to what, and what does not.

Also: St. Petersburg city page · Otter integration · best ordering systems · pricing · what is Zayos