The oven takes 45 minutes. The app promised 30. Zayos gives you the clock back.
Zayos gives a Chicago pizzeria commission free ordering on its own domain for a flat $499, $599 or $699 a month per location. Every pizza carries its own real prep time, scheduling is built in, and the diner pays $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery at checkout.
Free. About 60 seconds. No card.
What does a 45 minute bake do to a 30 minute promise?
Chicago is the one city in America where the signature pizza takes longer to cook than a marketplace assumes any food takes to cook. That single fact produces most of the bad reviews on deep dish orders, and none of them are about the pizza. Here is one order, from both sides of the counter.
- Minute 0
Your kitchenOrder lands. A deep dish goes into a pan, gets built, and goes into the oven.
The platformThe app has already shown the diner an arrival estimate, usually somewhere near 35 to 45 minutes door to door.
- Minute 12
Your kitchenThe pie is a third of the way through a bake you cannot rush without ruining it.
The platformA driver is assigned and heading over, because the platform sized the pickup window for a pie that takes 12 minutes.
- Minute 20
Your kitchenStill baking. Somebody at the counter is explaining this to a driver for the fourth time tonight.
The platformThe driver is waiting, unpaid, and their app is counting the wait against your restaurant.
- Minute 30
Your kitchenOut of the oven, then it has to rest before it can be cut and boxed, or it collapses.
The platformThe driver has cancelled and reassigned. A new one is fifteen minutes away.
- Minute 45
Your kitchenBoxed, correct, exactly what you would serve in the dining room.
The platformThe diner has been watching a map for twenty minutes past the promised time.
- Minute 58
Your kitchenYou did nothing wrong.
The platformThree stars, and the platform charged you 25 to 35 percent blended for the experience.
Illustrative timeline of a common failure pattern, not a measured customer result.
Chicago sells three different pizzas. Which one pays your rent?
Outside the city, Chicago pizza means deep dish. Inside it, the pizza people actually eat on a weeknight is tavern style thin, cut into squares. Most pizzerias here run at least two of these businesses at once, and they have completely different clocks, tickets and repeat rates. A platform that takes one percentage from all three is charging your cheapest, most loyal order the same rate as your rarest one.
Tavern style thin, cut into squares
The everyday Chicago pizza and the one that travels best. Crackery, party cut, built for a crowd standing around a table. High frequency, moderate ticket, and the order most often placed by the same household every Friday. Every one of those repeat orders pays a marketplace commission for a customer who found you years ago.
Deep dish and stuffed
A 30 to 45 minute bake, longer for stuffed, and a pie that has to rest before it is cut. It is an occasion order and a visitor order, and it is the single worst fit for a platform that quotes a delivery time before the dough hits the pan. Scheduled ordering is not a nice extra here, it is the whole fix.
By the slice and lunch counter
Loop and neighborhood lunch trade, small tickets, fast turns, and an office order that comes back every week. At a $9 slice and drink, a percentage plus the platform flat fees eats the margin outright. Flat monthly pricing does not care that the ticket is small.
Did the fee cap fix anything for Chicago restaurants?
Chicago capped third party delivery fees at 15 percent while indoor dining was restricted, and the cap was tied to those conditions rather than becoming the permanent rule of the market. In 2021 the city went further and sued Grubhub and DoorDash, alleging deceptive practices that included listing restaurants which had never agreed to be on the platform. Plenty of operators here found out they were on a marketplace when a customer complained about an order they never received.
The lesson most owners took from that period was not about any single percentage. It was that the number is set by someone else and can move, and that the customer relationship is not yours if the listing was never yours to begin with. A flat $499, $599 or $699 a month per location is a number you can put in a budget for next year.
At 400 online orders a month and a $36 average ticket, a 28 percent blended marketplace rate costs about $48,400 a year. Operator plus Marketplace on Zayos is $7,188 a year at any order count.
What happens the week it snows fourteen inches?
Chicago winter does something to a pizzeria that no other weather does. Order volume climbs exactly when nobody wants to leave the house, and independent driver supply thins out at the same hour. On a marketplace those two curves collide inside your kitchen. Tickets keep printing, drivers do not show, and the cancellations land on your rating rather than on the platform that accepted the orders.
On your own storefront you make the call. Delivery off, pickup on, with an honest ready time. A shortened menu so you are only firing what the walk in can support. Hours changed for the night, or ordering paused entirely, in seconds, visible to every customer immediately. Game nights and playoff runs work the same way in reverse: raise the minimum, extend the quoted time, cap the delivery zone, and take the volume you can genuinely produce.
The mechanics of the build itself, half and half, cut style, bake preference, par bake, sit on the pizzeria ordering guide. The wider city view, including the neighborhoods and the other categories, is on Chicago restaurant online ordering.
Who is running Zayos right now?
One restaurant is live and taking orders today: Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, keeping $48k+/yr that used to leave as commission at roughly 3,000 orders a month. Storefronts are built and ordering opens at launch for Shishka Lebanese Grill, La Vie Mediterranean, Yummy Grill, aura, Courtyard Cafe, Mr. Smoke across 13 locations, Yalla Market and Tap That Ash. There is no Chicago pizzeria on the platform yet and we will not invent one. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida company, and Chicago is a market we serve from South Florida. Most operators are live in under 2 weeks, first direct order inside a week, month to month, no setup fee. See pricing and how it works.
Questions Chicago pizzeria owners ask.
How do I sell a deep dish online without breaking the delivery promise?
Chicago capped delivery fees at 15 percent. Is that still in force?
What actually happens to my orders during a Chicago blizzard?
Can the menu handle a real Chicago pizza build?
How much does a Chicago pizzeria lose to the apps in a year?
Should I drop DoorDash and Uber Eats?
What does the diner pay on Zayos?
Is there a Chicago pizzeria on Zayos I can call?
Find out what Friday is really costing you.
The free report takes your own order count and average ticket and compares a percentage of every pie against one flat monthly fee, over a year.