Restaurant online ordering in Tampa Bay, on Zayos.
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
Tampa Bay restaurants can take online orders on their own branded site instead of paying a marketplace a cut. Zayos runs direct ordering for $499 to $699 a month per location, keeps 100% of food revenue with the restaurant, and routes marketplace orders into the same kitchen tablet.
Straight answer first: we are a Fort Lauderdale company. We have no restaurants live in Tampa Bay yet. Onboarding for the region is open.
Which Tampa Bay am I actually in?
Tampa Bay is not one restaurant market. It is four economies that share a bridge system, and the right online ordering setup is different in each one. Find your row.
Hillsborough County
The densest mix in the region. Historic Cuban and Italian counter service on one side of the river, higher-ticket fine casual on the other.
Pinellas County
Highest independent-operator density in Tampa Bay. Small teams, no IT staff, heavy tourist mix on the Gulf side.
Pasco and Hernando
The fastest-growing residential edge. New rooftops arrive before the marketplaces saturate the area, which is the cheapest time to launch direct ordering.
Manatee and Sarasota
Locals treat this as the south end of Tampa Bay. Strong seasonal-resident economy and a long snowbird tail.
When does a Tampa Bay restaurant actually make its money?
This is the question that separates Tampa Bay from every other Florida metro we write about. The revenue year is front loaded and the trough is deep, so a fee that is merely annoying in March is genuinely dangerous in August. Read the calendar the way you read a prep list.
| Month | What moves covers | What it does to your channel mix |
|---|---|---|
| January | Gasparilla Pirate Festival, snowbird season at full strength | Dine in and pickup peak. Best month of the year to own the customer list. |
| February | Grapefruit League camps open in Tampa, Clearwater, Dunedin and Bradenton | Weekday lunch volume climbs near the ballparks. Group and catering asks start. |
| March | Full spring training schedule, the St. Petersburg street race, spring break | The highest-volume month. Road closures push more orders to pickup and delivery. |
| April | Seasonal residents leave through the month | Covers step down week over week. Marketplace share rises as locals stay home. |
| May | Locals only, school still in session | First soft month. Fee load starts to hurt because the base is smaller. |
| June | Hurricane season opens June 1, heat sets in | Delivery share climbs. Nobody wants to stand outside at 4pm. |
| July | Peak heat, daily afternoon storms | Delivery is the dominant channel. The commission bill is at its worst per dollar earned. |
| August | Slowest month, storm risk climbing | Lowest covers of the year against the same fixed rent and payroll. |
| September | Statistical peak of hurricane season | Closure and outage risk is highest. You need one switch that stops every channel. |
| October | Season ends November 30, patio weather returns late in the month | Dine in recovers. Good month to start pulling repeat diners back to direct. |
| November | Seasonal residents return, holiday catering inquiries start | Catering and large-party orders begin. Marketplaces are the wrong tool for both. |
| December | Holiday parties, bowl games at Raymond James Stadium | Highest average ticket of the year, so every commission point costs the most. |
Sources are public and local: the Grapefruit League spring training schedule, the National Hurricane Center season dates of June 1 to November 30, and the published Tampa and St. Petersburg event calendars. Nothing here is a claim about a Zayos customer.
What does that seasonal swing cost in commission?
Here is the arithmetic on one modeled Tampa Bay restaurant. These are assumptions, not a customer result, and every input is stated so you can swap in your own.
- 3,000 total orders a month, averaged across the year
- $34 average ticket
- 40% of orders arriving through DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub
- 28% blended marketplace cost, the midpoint of the 25% to 35% range once commission, delivery, promoted listings and processing stack up
1,200 marketplace orders a month is $40,800 of food sales through the apps, and at 28% blended that is $11,424 a month, or $137,088 a year, in fees.
Now apply the calendar. March at 1,440 marketplace orders costs about $13,708 for the month. August at 880 costs about $8,377. The August bill is smaller in dollars and worse in practice, because it lands on the month with the fewest covers and the same rent.
The direct side of the same model: move half of those marketplace orders onto your own site and 600 orders a month at $34 becomes $20,400 of food sales with no commission taken out. The platform cost is $499 to $699 a month per location, flat, whether that is a February slow week or a Gasparilla Saturday. The diner pays $0.99 on pickup and $2.99 on delivery. You pay neither.
Run your own numbers on the commission calculator, or read the full teardown of what DoorDash costs a Tampa restaurant line by line.
What happens to online ordering when a storm is in the Gulf?
Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, and Tampa Bay sits on a shallow shelf that makes it one of the most storm-surge exposed metros in the country. Every operator here already has a closing plan. Very few have an ordering plan, and that is where money and goodwill get lost.
Three things go wrong in the same 48 hours. Orders keep landing after you have sent staff home, because a listing left open on a marketplace does not know your evacuation zone. Refunds and cancellations get charged back to the store. And the reopening announcement goes out to nobody, because the customer list lives inside the apps rather than in your account.
The fix is boring and it works. Keep the number of channels you have to shut down small. Make sure at least one of them is a storefront you control from a phone. And own the email and phone list so that when the power comes back you can tell your regulars you are open before the apps do.
A restaurant that owns its customer list can tell 4,000 regulars it is open again the hour the lights come on. A restaurant that rents its customers from a marketplace waits for the marketplace to decide.
Tampa Bay operator questions
Do you have restaurants running on Zayos in Tampa Bay right now?
What actually counts as Tampa Bay?
How much does Zayos cost for a Tampa Bay location?
What happens to my ordering site when a storm closes the store?
Do I have to leave DoorDash and Uber Eats to run direct ordering?
How fast can a Tampa Bay restaurant be live?
Is a Tampa Bay page like this just a version of your Miami page?
See what the apps took last month.
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