◆ South Tampa

South Tampa restaurant online ordering, on a list you own. Zayos.

Quick answer

Zayos is commission free online ordering for South Tampa restaurants. Your regulars order on your own branded site, you keep 100% of food revenue and tips, and you own the customer list instead of renting it from DoorDash. Flat $499 per month, per location.

Get my free AI report → Start now

Free, no card, about 60 seconds.

Why South Tampa is different

Who owns the guest who eats at your South Tampa restaurant every week?

Right now, if that guest orders through an app, the answer is DoorDash. The marketplace holds the name, the phone, the email and the order history, and it decides whether your restaurant appears when the guest opens the app next Friday. You get a ticket and a payout. That trade makes some sense in a tourist corridor where every customer is a stranger. It makes almost no sense in South Tampa, where the person ordering lives four blocks away, has eaten with you sixty times, and would happily save your site to their home screen if you ever asked.

This is the densest cluster of independent operators in the city, and the guest base is unusually local. Hyde Park Village, the Howard Avenue and SoHo corridor, Palma Ceia, Bayshore and Beach Park hold high household income inside a small radius, which produces exactly the pattern that direct ordering was designed for: high frequency, high average ticket, low churn. Those guests are not going to switch to your website to save two dollars. They will switch because a saved card and a one tap reorder of last week is faster than scrolling a marketplace grid past four national chains.

A $41 ticket makes the percentage bite harder

Commission scales with your check average, and South Tampa has the highest check averages in Hillsborough County. A 25% effective blended rate takes $3.50 from a $14 counter order and $10.25 from a $41 dinner. On a $120 family order it takes $30 before the kitchen has plated anything. That is why operators in this part of town are usually the most shocked when they run the annual number, and why the payback on a flat $499 a month is fastest here.

The peninsula is a courier problem, not a demand problem

South Tampa is a peninsula, and the lower half behaves like a cul de sac to a delivery algorithm. Davis Islands is one bridge in and out. Ballast Point, Port Tampa and the Interbay stretch toward MacDill Air Force Base all dead end. A driver who accepts a run down there does not get a fast next order, so acceptance rates sag at exactly the dinner peak. Your guests, meanwhile, drive past your door anyway. Pickup and curbside are the right products for this geography, and on Zayos pickup costs the diner $0.99 instead of a stacked app total.

Catering is real money here and the apps ignore it

Neighborhood clubs, Bayshore households, the professional offices along Kennedy Boulevard and the MacDill community on Interbay all place large scheduled orders that marketplaces were never engineered to handle. Zayos runs scheduled orders, group ordering and a catering builder on the same site as your regular menu. The catering service fee is 10%, paid by the customer at checkout, not by the restaurant. The full playbook is at catering, and the higher end dining room version is at fine dining.

Run the numbers

What does app commission cost a South Tampa restaurant in a year?

Modeled, not a customer result. 900 app orders a month at a $41 average ticket, at a 25% effective blended rate.

900
app orders a month
$41
average ticket
$9,225
commission a month
$110,700
commission a year

Marketplace commission runs 15% to 30% as a base rate, and 25% to 35% as a blended real cost once delivery, marketing and processing fees stack. Zayos is a flat $499 a month per location. Run your own check average through the commission calculator.

Coverage

Which South Tampa neighborhoods does Zayos cover?

Everything south of Kennedy, bridge to bridge, plus the Interbay stretch toward MacDill. Your site runs on your own domain and ranks for the neighborhood your guests actually type.

Hyde Park Village
SoHo / Howard Avenue
Palma Ceia
Bayshore Boulevard
Davis Islands
Ballast Point
Beach Park
Sunset Park
Virginia Park
Bayshore Beautiful
Port Tampa
Interbay / MacDill

Plus Downtown Tampa, Westshore, Harbour Island and the rest of Hillsborough County.

South Tampa kitchens

What kind of restaurant does this fit?

Chef driven rooms, wine bars, neighborhood Italian, sushi counters and brunch cafes. A Zayos storefront takes your brand, your photography and your domain, not a marketplace template.

New American
Italian + Pasta
Steak + Chophouse
Sushi + Omakase
Coastal Seafood
Mediterranean
Wine Bar Small Plates
Farm to Table
Modern Mexican
Brunch Cafes
Neapolitan Pizza
Patisserie + Coffee
Straight answer

Is Zayos live in Tampa yet?

No. We have no restaurant live in Tampa Bay today. Zayos is built in Fort Lauderdale by Zay Revenue Group, and the restaurant taking direct orders on it right now is Naya Grill, a Lebanese fast casual brand with two locations in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. Zero commission on direct orders, and DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub tickets ingested into the same kitchen tablet through Otter. We are a South Florida company that serves the Tampa market, and we would rather say that plainly than dress up a customer we do not have. South Tampa operators are onboarding now. Most go live in under two weeks, and the first direct order usually lands within a week of signing up.

0%
on direct orders
100%
of food and tips
1
kitchen tablet
2 wks
to live, typical
Flat pricing

What does Zayos cost a South Tampa restaurant?

Operator is $499 a month. Operator plus Marketplace, which adds DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub ingestion through Otter, is $599. Concierge is $699 and includes up to five virtual brands per kitchen. All three are per location, per month, no setup fee, month to month. The diner pays a small service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, nothing on dine in, 10% on catering. The restaurant never pays it and keeps 100% of food revenue and tips.

Full pricing breakdown →
Operator questions

What do South Tampa owners ask before they switch?

Who actually owns my customer list if my orders come through DoorDash?
DoorDash does. The marketplace holds the name, the phone number, the email, the order history and the reorder prompt. You get a ticket and a payout, and no way to reach that guest again without paying for the privilege. On Zayos the ordering site is on your own domain, and the customer record, the order history and the marketing list belong to you. In a neighborhood like South Tampa, where your regulars live inside two miles and eat with you weekly, that list is the most valuable asset in the business.
Why does commission hurt more in South Tampa than in the rest of the city?
Because percentage commission scales with your ticket. A 25% effective blended rate on a $14 counter order is $3.50. The same rate on a $41 South Tampa dinner is $10.25, and on a $120 family order with wine it is $30. Higher average ticket neighborhoods pay the most absolute dollars per order, which is why Hyde Park, Bayshore and Palma Ceia operators see the biggest annual number when they finally add it up.
How much is that in a year?
Modeled: 900 app orders a month at a $41 average ticket, at a 25% effective blended rate, is about $9,225 a month or $110,700 a year, per location. Marketplace commission runs 15% to 30% as a base rate and 25% to 35% as a blended real cost once delivery, marketing and processing fees stack. Zayos is a flat $499 a month per location instead.
Does delivery even work well on Davis Islands and the lower peninsula?
Not as well as the map suggests. Davis Islands is reached by one bridge, Ballast Point and Port Tampa sit at the bottom of a peninsula, and courier routing treats all of it as a dead end: drivers who go down do not get a fast next order, so acceptance rates fall at peak. Guests in these pockets already drive past you. Pickup and curbside on your own site, with the diner paying $0.99 instead of a stacked app total, is the fulfillment method that actually matches the geography.
Can I take real catering and private event orders through it?
Yes, and South Tampa produces a lot of them. Neighborhood clubs, Bayshore homes, professional offices near Kennedy Boulevard, and the MacDill Air Force Base community on the Interbay peninsula all generate large scheduled orders that no marketplace was engineered to handle. Zayos supports scheduled orders, group ordering and a catering builder, and the diner side fee on catering is 10%, paid by the customer, not by you. The catering playbook is at /for/catering.
My guests are not price sensitive. Why would they switch to my own site?
They will not switch to save money, they will switch because it is faster and it is you. Your regulars already know what they want. A saved card, a one tap reorder of last week's order, a loyalty balance and their name at the top of the page beats scrolling a marketplace grid past four national chains. Affluent, high frequency, brand loyal guests are the single easiest cohort to move to direct ordering, which is why South Tampa converts faster than a tourist corridor.
Do I keep the apps for the Hyde Park Village and Howard Avenue foot traffic?
Yes. Visitors and first timers still search the apps, and you should stay there for discovery. On Operator plus Marketplace at $599 a month, Otter pulls every DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub order into the same kitchen tablet as your Zayos direct orders, so the expo station reads one queue instead of four tablets. You move the repeat business to direct ordering over time without losing first touch reach.
Is Zayos live in South Tampa or anywhere in Tampa Bay right now?
No. Zayos has no restaurant live in Tampa today. We are a Fort Lauderdale company, and our live customer is Naya Grill, taking direct orders in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach. South Tampa operators are onboarding now, most go live in under two weeks, and the first direct order usually lands within a week of signing up.
Keep reading
Tampa ordering →
The metro page, Ybor to Westshore.
St. Petersburg ordering →
Across the Gandy, the same independent bench.
Fine dining →
The playbook for chef driven rooms.
Also: catering · restaurant website builder · how it works · pricing

Find out what your regulars cost you last month.

The free AI report runs your restaurant through the same commission math on this page. No card, about 60 seconds.

Get my free AI report → Start now