Restaurant online ordering software in Florida, explained by Zayos.
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
Restaurant online ordering software in Florida is the stack that takes an order on your own site and gets it to your kitchen: an ordering front end, one menu source of truth, an order router, payments, a customer database, and sales tax handling. Zayos bundles all six.
60 seconds. No card. It reads your real order volume back to you.
What is restaurant online ordering software, actually?
Online ordering software is not a website. It is the machinery that turns a tap on a phone into a ticket a cook can read, and then keeps the money, the customer and the tax straight afterward. Most owners shop for it as though they were buying a menu page. What they are buying is a chain of six links, and a break in any one of them shows up in the dining room as a wrong order, a missed ticket, or a tax bill nobody set money aside for.
Online ordering software is the chain that runs from a diner’s tap to a printed ticket to a settled deposit, and the real decision is who owns each link in that chain.
The category confuses people because four very different kinds of company all sell into it using the same three words. A marketplace app sells you demand and keeps the customer. A point of sale company sells you ordering as a module bolted to the register you already lease. An ordering only vendor sells you the software and leaves the traffic to you. A website builder sells you a page and hangs a cart off it. All four say online ordering. None of them mean the same thing, and the difference is where your margin goes.
Which six parts are you really choosing between?
Every ordering system on the market is some arrangement of the same six parts. The only question that matters is who owns each one when the deal is signed. Read down the left column, then across.
| Part of the stack | Marketplace app | POS bundled | Ordering only SaaS | Zayos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ordering front end | Their app. Your name is a listing inside it. | A page hung off the POS brand, often on their subdomain. | Your domain, their template. Usually good. | Your domain, your brand, built for your menu. |
| Menu source of truth | A separate menu per app. Three portals, three prices. | The POS is the master. Good, if you run that POS. | Their dashboard. Your POS may need a second entry. | One menu. Direct and marketplace read the same source. |
| Order routing to the kitchen | One tablet per app on the pass. | Prints to the POS. Marketplace orders stay separate. | Their tablet, plus whatever the apps already sent you. | One Otter tablet. Direct plus the three apps in one feed. |
| Payments and payouts | They collect, net the commission, pay you later. | Their processing rate, often 3% and change online. | A processor you connect. Ask for the rate in writing. | You are paid on your own merchant account. |
| The customer record | Theirs. You get an order, never a diner. | Yours, if the diner also pays in the dining room. | Usually yours. Confirm you can export it. | Yours. Name, phone, email, order history, exportable. |
| Florida sales tax | Marketplace rules apply. Reconciliation is on you. | Reported in the POS. Setting the cash aside is on you. | Rarely handled at all. | DAVO sets the tax aside daily and files it for you. |
Vendor behaviour varies inside each category. Treat the middle three columns as the common case and confirm every row with your own vendor in writing before you sign.
The menu source of truth is the one people underrate
A restaurant with four channels and four menus has four different prices, four different 86 lists and four chances to sell a dish the walk in ran out of at 6:15. One menu that pushes to every channel is worth more day to day than any feature on a sales deck. If a vendor cannot tell you how an item goes dark everywhere in one tap, the rest of the demo does not matter. Our POS integration guide walks through how the sync actually works.
The order router decides how crowded your pass gets
Three marketplace tablets and a fourth for direct orders is not four systems, it is four places to miss a ticket during a rush. Zayos routes direct orders into the same Otter tablet that already receives DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, so the kitchen learns nothing new on day one. That is the whole reason the Otter integration exists.
The customer record is the only asset that compounds
A marketplace order gives you a ticket. A direct order gives you a diner: name, phone, email and order history you can text in August when the room is quiet. Ask any vendor whether you can export that list today, and treat any hesitation as the answer.
What does online ordering software cost a Florida restaurant?
There are only three pricing shapes, and confusing them is how owners end up surprised. The first is a percentage of sales. Marketplace rate cards published by DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub put base commission in the 15% to 30% band depending on the partnership tier. That is the headline number. The blended real cost, once funded promotions, sponsored placement and payment processing are added, commonly lands between 25% and 35% of gross order value. Always ask which of those two numbers a vendor or a rival is quoting you, because they are ten points apart.
The second shape is a flat monthly subscription. Verified against vendor pricing pages in July 2026, that band runs from $0 to $149 per month at Square Online, $229 to $449 per month at ChowNow before a setup fee of $119 to $499 and processing of 2.95% plus 29 cents, and roughly $75 per month for the Toast online ordering module on top of a Toast point of sale plan. Zayos sits at $499, $599 or $699 per location per month, month to month, with no setup fee.
The third shape is a hybrid: a smaller subscription plus a percentage. Owner.com publishes $249 per month plus a 5% restaurant fee, or $499 per month flat with no restaurant fee, with guests paying a 5% order support fee on both.
The number that decides which shape is cheaper is your monthly online order count. Below roughly 200 online orders a month a percentage plan usually wins, and above roughly 400 a flat monthly plan usually wins, at a $32 average ticket.
On Zayos the restaurant pays no commission and keeps 100% of food revenue and 100% of tips. The only per order charge is a flat service fee paid by the diner at checkout: $0.99 on pickup, $2.99 on delivery, nothing on dine in, and 10% on catering. The restaurant never pays it. Run your own numbers in the savings calculator or read the full Zayos pricing page.
Why does the same software behave differently in Florida?
Florida runs two opposite seasons, not one
A vendor comparison written in Ohio assumes one busy season. Florida has at least three, and they do not line up. In South Florida, from Palm Beach down through Broward and Miami-Dade, the season runs roughly November through April on snowbird and visitor traffic, and August is the trough. Central Florida runs the opposite shape, because theme park families arrive in summer and at the winter holidays. The Gulf coast and the Panhandle load into Memorial Day through Labor Day. A percentage plan bills you hardest in exactly the months that are paying for your whole year, while a flat monthly plan costs the same in August as it does in February. Which of those you prefer is a real question with a real answer for your specific room.
A commission plan takes the most money in your best month. A flat monthly plan takes the same money in your worst one. Pick the shape that matches your season, not the shape that looks cheapest in a demo.
Hurricane season is six months long
Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30. Every Florida operator will at some point need to stop taking orders inside of a few minutes, keep the phone from ringing about orders they cannot cook, and then reopen cleanly when the power comes back. Ask a vendor to show you that flow on a phone during the demo, not in a help article. A system where pausing ordering requires a laptop and a support ticket is a system that will take money for food you cannot make.
Florida funds itself on sales tax, so get that link right
Florida has no state personal income tax, which makes sales and use tax the state’s main revenue line and the Department of Revenue an attentive reader. Prepared food carries the 6% state rate plus the discretionary sales surtax of the county where the sale happens, and that surtax varies by county and changes by referendum. Returns are due the first day of the month after the collection period and are late after the 20th. The failure mode is not the filing, it is the cash: a restaurant that spent the tax it collected in March is short in April. Zayos runs DAVO, which moves the tax out daily and files it, so the money is never in the operating account to spend. Confirm the treatment of your delivery and service charges with your own accountant, because it depends on how those lines are stated on the receipt.
Half your traffic may never come back
In a tourist corridor, a large share of covers are people who will not search your name again. Paying 25% to 35% blended to reach them can be rational, because you were never going to earn that order any other way. Paying the same rate on the regular who orders every Thursday is not rational, and that is the order a direct channel is for. The Florida playbook is not to leave the apps. It is to keep them for strangers and stop renting your regulars. That is why Operator plus Marketplace exists at $599 per location per month: the apps keep running, and their orders land on the same tablet.
What should you ask any vendor before you sign?
Ten questions, in the order we would ask them. Send them by email so the answers are in writing. Ask us the same ten.
- 01
What is the total cost on 400 orders a month at my average ticket?
Forces subscription, per order fees and card processing into one number. Vendors quote whichever line looks smallest.
- 02
What is my online card processing rate, in writing?
This is the single most commonly omitted line. At 3.3% plus 30 cents, a $32 ticket costs $1.36 before software.
- 03
Who owns the customer list, and can I export it today?
If the answer needs a meeting, the answer is no.
- 04
What is the contract term and the cancellation clause?
Free equipment usually means a two or three year term.
- 05
Does the price change when I add a second location?
Some vendors charge full freight per location, some charge less, some charge more.
- 06
How do marketplace orders reach my kitchen?
If the answer is another tablet, you have not solved the pass, you have crowded it.
- 07
Can I close ordering for a storm from my phone in under a minute?
In Florida this is an operating requirement, not a feature request.
- 08
How is Florida sales tax handled on delivery and service charges?
Get the vendor to say it out loud, then confirm it with your accountant.
- 09
What happens to my ordering page if I leave?
Ask whether the domain, the content and the SEO history are yours.
- 10
Who answers the phone at 7:40pm on a Friday?
Support hours in the eastern time zone matter more than any feature comparison.
When would a competitor serve you better than Zayos?
Often enough that we would rather say it here than waste your afternoon. If you are doing under roughly 150 online orders a month, a $499 flat plan is the wrong buy and Square Online at $0 to $149 a month is the honest answer. Start there, prove your regulars will order direct, and move when the arithmetic flips.
If you are replacing your register at the same time and you want one company responsible for hardware, payments and ordering, Toast is a reasonable choice and the tight coupling between register and ordering is genuinely useful. If you are a 40 unit brand with a development team and an existing loyalty platform, Olo is built for that and Zayos is not. If your main problem is that nobody knows you exist, a marketing led platform like Owner.com may move the needle faster than better ordering software would.
Zayos is the right buy for an independent Florida restaurant doing real online volume that wants a flat bill, one kitchen tablet for every channel, and its own customer list. It is the wrong buy for a low volume kitchen that has not proven direct demand yet.
The full side by side, with verified pricing on every vendor, is in our ranked roundup of online ordering systems and the Florida specific shortlist.
Questions Florida owners actually ask.
What is restaurant online ordering software?
How much does online ordering software cost in Florida?
Does Florida sales tax apply to online restaurant orders?
Do I have to leave DoorDash and Uber Eats to run my own ordering?
Is Zayos live in Florida today?
How long does it take to go live?
See your number before you shop.
The free AI report reads your restaurant’s real volume and tells you what the apps took last month. 60 seconds, no card, no call.
Built in Fort Lauderdale by Zay Revenue Group. Live in under 2 weeks.