Restaurant SMS marketing Zayos, how to text diners without burning the list
Published July 2026 · Updated October 4, 2026
Zayos includes SMS marketing on every plan, and we set it up with you when you want it. You send a text campaign to diners who opted in at checkout, to everyone or to a segment such as lapsed customers, now or on a schedule. Customers can reply STOP at any time.
No setup fee. Month to month. We get you live in under a week.
When is a text the right tool, and when is it the wrong one?
A text interrupts someone. That is the entire product, and it is why the channel works and why it is easy to ruin. The test is simple: does this message have a clock on it? If it can wait until next week, it is an email.
| The situation | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A slow Tuesday, and you want people in tonight | Text | It gets read within minutes. Nothing else you own moves that fast. |
| A first-time diner you want to turn into a regular | The message can be longer, it costs almost nothing to send, and there is no urgency to trade on. | |
| A weather day, a power cut, a menu that ran out | Text | Operational news with a clock on it. This is the highest-tolerance use of the channel and nobody unsubscribes over it. |
| A monthly note about what is new | Texting a newsletter is how a list dies. If it can wait a week, it is not a text. | |
| A catering buyer whose event is in three days | Text, from a person | One to one, not a campaign. Bulk tools are the wrong shape for a relationship worth thousands. |
| A holiday preorder deadline in 48 hours | Both, email first | Email carries the detail, the text carries the deadline. Send the text last, closest to the cutoff. |
What has to be in place before the first text?
Six things, and the first two are the ones that carry real risk. Text marketing is a regulated channel in the United States, which is exactly why it still works: the barrier keeps the inbox clean. Treat this section as operator guidance rather than legal advice, and have your own counsel look at your opt-in wording before you send.
Consent you can prove, captured at the order
You need express written permission to send marketing texts, and you need to be able to show when and how you got it. The workable version is a checkbox at checkout with plain wording next to the phone field, stored with a timestamp. A list of numbers you collected from tickets is not a marketing list.
Separate transactional from promotional
"Your order is ready" is a different category from "half price wings tonight". Keep them apart in your own system, because the permission that covers the first does not cover the second, and mixing them is how a restaurant ends up with a complaint it cannot answer.
Carrier registration before the first send
US carriers require business texting on a standard 10-digit number to be registered, brand and campaign, before traffic flows. Unregistered messages get filtered or dropped, usually silently. Your provider handles the paperwork but it needs your legal business name, EIN and a sample message, so start it two weeks before you plan to send anything.
STOP and HELP that actually work
Every marketing text needs a way out, and a reply of STOP has to remove the number immediately and permanently, without a person in the loop. Test it yourself on your own phone before you send to a thousand people.
Send-time limits
Federal telemarketing rules generally restrict calls and texts to between 8am and 9pm in the recipient’s local time, and some states are stricter. Practically, a restaurant should never send before 10am or after 8pm anyway. A text at 9:40pm does not read as an offer, it reads as an intrusion.
Never buy or rent a list
Purchased numbers have no consent attached to them, they generate complaints, and complaints get your number blocked by carriers. There is no version of this that works.
What does a text campaign cost with a texting provider?
Price it per message, then decide whether the campaign can clear that number. Rates differ by provider and carrier, so look up your own instead of trusting a figure on a marketing page, including this one. The structure of the calculation is what matters:
- Cost per send equals list size, times your provider rate per segment, times the number of segments in your message, plus carrier fees.
- A plain message stays inside one 160 character segment. A long link, a special character or a stray emoji can push it to two, which doubles the bill for the same idea.
- Break-even is cost per send divided by your contribution per order. At a $35 ticket with a 30% food cost, one order contributes about $24.50 over food, so a campaign costing $25 needs a single order to pay for itself.
- Which is why the real currency is not dollars, it is permission. The money almost always works. The list is what you can run out of.
Put that next to what a marketplace order costs. Commission runs 15% to 30% base and 25% to 35% blended once delivery, marketing and processing stack, so a single $35 app order gives up roughly $9 to $12 and leaves you no way to contact that diner again. Detail on our commission statistics page.
What should the message say?
Four parts, in this order: who it is from, why this message exists today, one link, one way out. Everything else is decoration you are paying for by the segment.
Naya: kitchen is quiet tonight, so pickup orders are out in 10 min until 8. Order: [your link]. Reply STOP to opt out.
Names the sender in the first word, gives a reason the offer exists, puts a clock on it, one link, one action.
Naya: the lamb shawarma platter you ordered in March is back on Friday. Preorder by Thu 5pm: [your link]. STOP to opt out.
It uses one fact from the customer book. A message that proves you remember someone outperforms any discount.
Hi! We hope you are having a great week! We have lots of exciting things happening at the restaurant, check out our new menu, our catering options and our loyalty program at [link]
No sender name, no clock, three actions, and it costs two message segments to say nothing. This is the text that earns you an opt-out.
How often can you send before people leave?
Once or twice a month is a safe starting cadence for an independent restaurant, and the honest answer is that your own opt-out rate decides the rest. Watch it per send. If it climbs, you are sending too often or saying too little, and there is no undo, because a number that replies STOP is gone permanently.
Measure results in attributable orders, not clicks. Give each campaign its own link or code, count the orders that came through it within 48 hours, and compare that against the cost of the send. A campaign that produced clicks and no tickets told you the offer was wrong, which is useful, but it did not make money.
How does SMS marketing work on Zayos?
Zayos is commission-free direct ordering, and SMS marketing is part of it, on every plan. In the campaign composer you choose the channel, email or text message, write the message, pick who gets it and send it now or schedule it.
SMS marketing is included. We set it up with you when you want it, because US carriers require each restaurant's texts to be registered before marketing messages can go out. Until then, order-update texts work from day one.
- Who gets it. All customers who opted in to texts, or one segment: VIP, loyal, new, at risk or lapsed. You can narrow it to first-time buyers.
- Opt-in. A diner opts in with a separate, unticked box at checkout, on a phone number they have verified. It is optional and is not a condition of buying.
- Opt-out. "Reply STOP to opt out" is added to a message that does not already say it, and a customer can reply STOP at any time.
- Quiet hours. A marketing text goes out only between 8am and 8pm in the recipient's own time zone. Outside those hours it is skipped, not held for later.
- Not too often. A customer gets at most one promotional text from your restaurant every four days.
- Now or later. Send at once, or schedule a date and time.
- Your name in it. Start the message with your restaurant's name, so the customer knows who is texting.
Order updates are a separate thing. Diners who tick the order-updates box at checkout get their order status by text: accepted, ready, out for delivery, delivered. That permission does not put them on the marketing list.
What we will not do is pretend you can text your DoorDash customers. Marketplace orders can flow into the same kitchen tablet through our Otter integration, but they arrive without a reachable phone number or any permission attached. Every number you can text will have come from a channel you own.
Pricing: Operator $399 a month, Operator + Tablet $499, Concierge $599, per location, month to month, no setup fee. See pricing and email marketing.
We are a Fort Lauderdale company serving South Florida operators. Farooj Abo Alabed, also live on Zayos, is on pace for $40k+ a year in commission not paid to a marketplace: its direct food sales after discounts from 10 Aug to 3 Oct 2026 (55 days), annualized at a 35% blended marketplace cost. More restaurants are live and taking direct orders: Aker Sweets, Arwa Coffee, Courtyard Cafe, Farooj Abo Alabed, Juice Time, Kunafa King Cafe, Madent Al-Taybat Roastery, Melt N Dip, Rosto Grill & Café, Shishka Lebanese Grill, Socotra Yemeni Coffee & Co., Syrian Shawarma, Tacos Arabes, The Fryer House, Vinny’s and Yummy Grill. Start with what is Zayos if you want the whole picture.
Texting diners, answered straight.
Does Zayos include SMS marketing?
Do I need permission to text my restaurant customers?
How much does restaurant SMS marketing cost?
How often should a restaurant text its customers?
What should a restaurant text actually say?
Why do my texts get blocked or filtered?
Is SMS better than email for restaurants?
A list you can text starts with an order you own.
The free AI report reads your public ordering channels and shows how much of your volume goes through a channel that leaves you a phone number. About 60 seconds, no card, no call.
More on the channels you own in online ordering best practices.
Talk to a person, or just start.
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