◆ Houston Vietnamese kitchens

Noodles do not wait forty minutes. Zayos stops selling a bowl you cannot deliver.

Quick answer

Zayos gives a Houston Vietnamese restaurant commission free ordering on its own domain for a flat $499, $599 or $699 a month per location. Broth and noodles pack as separate components, pickup is the default, and the diner pays $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery at checkout.

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What actually has to happen for a bowl of phở to survive the trip?

Phở is not one item in a container. It is five things that have to stay apart until the diner puts them together, and the platform that sold the order has no idea any of that is true. This is the mismatch at the center of Vietnamese food and third party delivery, and it costs Houston operators ratings they did not earn.

The broth

Its own sealed container, hot, filled to a line that leaves room. It is the whole dish, and it is the part that turns a spill into a refund.

The noodles

Separate, always. Bánh phở sitting in hot broth for twenty five minutes arrives as a solid mass. This is the single most common delivery complaint on this food, and the operator is the one who eats it.

The plate on the side

Bean sprouts, Thai basil, lime, jalapeño, culantro. It is not a garnish, it is half the dish, and it has to travel cold and dry.

Sauces and add ons

Hoisin and sriracha portioned by the bowl count, not one packet for a family of five. Extra noodles, extra broth, extra protein all priced as their own modifiers.

The clock on the box

Assembled at home in two minutes if it arrives in fifteen. Ruined if it arrives in forty five with everything in one bag, which is what a platform ETA and a stacked driver route produce on a Friday.

On Zayos every one of those parts is a real component with its own price and its own packing note, and the item carries its own prep time, so the site quotes the truth instead of a platform average.

Why does a percentage hurt a small ticket more than a big one?

Vietnamese menus in Houston are built on volume at a fair price. A bánh mì is eight dollars. A bowl is fourteen. A cà phê sữa đá is five. Those prices are a promise to the community, and they are the reason the counter is busy. A percentage of the ticket is the worst possible cost structure to lay on top of them, because it scales with the number of orders you take and shrinks nothing when the ticket is small.

A 28 percent blended marketplace rate on an $8 sandwich is about $2.24 gone before you slice a baguette. That is the midpoint of the 25 to 35 percent blended range operators pay once delivery, in app marketing and card processing stack on top of the 15 to 30 percent base commission.

A flat plan runs the other way. At 1,500 direct orders a month, $599 works out to roughly 40 cents an order, and every order after that makes the number smaller.

Modeled at 1,200 online orders a month and an $18 average ticket, $21,600 of monthly online volume, a 28 percent blended rate costs about $6,050 a month, roughly $72,600 a year. Operator plus Marketplace on Zayos is $7,188 a year at any order count, and the diner, not the restaurant, pays the $0.99 pickup or $2.99 delivery fee at checkout.

How far will a Houston customer drive for the right bowl?

Further than any delivery radius allows. Houston holds one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States, anchored on Bellaire Boulevard in the southwest and in the older Midtown blocks, with families spread out through Alief, Sugar Land, Katy, Pearland and well past the Beltway. People here choose a specific kitchen and drive to it, and they have been doing that for decades.

Marketplace visibility does not reward that. It is built around driver time and distance, which quietly favors dense inner blocks and buries a Bellaire kitchen in a search coming from eight miles away, then charges you a percentage on the orders it does send. Your own storefront has no radius and no ranking. It has your name, an honest ready time, and pickup slots the customer picks before they get in the car.

Pickup first is the correct default for this food anyway. The bowl leaves the counter and gets eaten fifteen minutes later, exactly as the kitchen intended. Keep delivery on for the nights people want it, with a zone you draw yourself and a minimum you set, instead of a zone drawn by a platform that has never tasted the noodles.

Can the site keep the numbers, the accents and the two menus?

Item numbers stay

Half your regulars order by number and always have. P1, number 17, C4. The number stays as part of the item name, with the Vietnamese written properly, diacritics intact, and a plain English description underneath for the diner who is trying this food for the first time. Phở tái, bún bò Huế and cơm tấm are spelled the way you spell them, and the page schema carries Vietnamese language name variants so a search in Vietnamese can reach your restaurant instead of a marketplace category page.

Two curves, one storefront

A coffee and sandwich counter runs a morning and mid afternoon curve. A full kitchen runs lunch and dinner, and some houses run late. Separate menus on separate schedules mean the drinks open at 7am and the kitchen menu at 11am without anyone editing the site twice a day, and items close themselves when their window ends.

Trays, and the weeks that matter

Chả giò by the dozen, cơm tấm platters, grilled meats with all the sides, bún for a crowd. Party trays get their own lead time window, a headcount, a pickup slot and a deposit, and you cap how many a day you will accept so a Tết week does not sell you into an order you cannot cook. Catering carries a 10 percent fee that the customer pays at checkout.

For counter service mechanics, drink menus and morning ordering, see online ordering for cafes and coffee shops. For tray and large order structure, see catering and large order tools. The full metro view is on Houston 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 Houston restaurant on the platform yet and we will not invent one. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida company, and Houston is a market we serve from South Florida. Most operators are live in under 2 weeks, with a first direct order inside a week. Plans and the full fee table are on pricing.

Questions Houston Vietnamese restaurant owners ask.

How do I sell phở for delivery without the noodles turning to mush?
Pack it as components and control the clock. On your own Zayos storefront the broth, the noodles and the herb plate are separate containers, extras are modifiers with their own price, and the item carries its own prep time so the site quotes a real number instead of a platform average. Then default the storefront to pickup, where a bowl leaves the counter and is eaten fifteen minutes later, and set your own delivery radius so nothing goes into a car for a forty minute run. Almost every one star review on a delivered bowl of phở is a packing and timing failure, not a cooking failure.
Why does a bánh mì lose money on a delivery app?
Because a percentage does not care that the ticket is small. A blended 28 percent rate, the midpoint of the 25 to 35 percent operators pay once delivery, in app marketing and processing stack on the 15 to 30 percent base commission, takes about $2.24 out of an $8 sandwich. For most counters that is a large share of what the sandwich earns after ingredients and labor. A flat monthly fee does the opposite: at 1,500 direct orders a month, the $599 Operator plus Marketplace plan works out to roughly 40 cents an order, and it keeps falling as you grow.
My customers drive to Bellaire from all over Houston. Does an ordering site help me?
It helps you more than it helps a downtown counter. A Houston Vietnamese restaurant serves a community spread from Alief and Sugar Land to Katy, Pearland and Midtown, and those diners will happily drive twenty minutes for a specific kitchen. What they will not do is guess whether the order is ready. A branded site with an honest ready time and scheduled pickup slots turns that drive into a routine, and it works entirely outside the delivery radius logic that decides whether an app shows you to somebody eight miles away.
Can the menu keep our item numbers and the Vietnamese names?
Yes, and it should keep both. Half your regulars order by number and have for years, so P1 or number 17 stays the item name, with the Vietnamese written properly and an English description underneath. Diacritics render correctly, so phở tái, bún bò Huế and cơm tấm are spelled the way you spell them. The page schema also carries Vietnamese language name variants so a search in Vietnamese can reach your restaurant instead of a marketplace category page.
How do party trays and Tết orders work?
As their own order type with a lead time you set. Chả giò by the dozen, cơm tấm platters, bún for a crowd, a tray of grilled meats with all the sides, ordered days ahead with a headcount, a pickup window and a deposit. You cap how many trays you will take for a given day and the site stops selling when you reach it. Catering carries a 10 percent fee paid by the customer at checkout, and you keep 100 percent of the food revenue.
What about the coffee counter and the late night crowd?
They are two different curves on one storefront. Cà phê sữa đá, cà phê trứng, boba and a bánh mì move in the morning and the mid afternoon, while a late kitchen picks up after ten. Zayos lets separate menus run on separate schedules, so the drinks menu can open at 7am and the full kitchen menu at 11am, with items appearing and closing on their own without anybody editing the site twice a day.
Should I stay on DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub?
Yes, for discovery. Houston is enormous and the apps are still how somebody in a part of town that has never eaten your food finds it. Keep them for the first order and move the repeat orders to your own site. On Operator plus Marketplace at $599 a month, Otter pulls every DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub ticket onto the same kitchen tablet as your direct and phone orders, so one station works one queue instead of watching four screens.
Is there a Houston restaurant live on Zayos today?
No, and we will not invent one. Zayos is built by Zay Revenue Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The restaurant live and taking orders today is Naya Grill, in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach, which keeps $48k+/yr that used to leave as commission at roughly 3,000 orders a month. Houston is a market we serve from South Florida. Onboarding is open, most operators are live in under 2 weeks, and plans are month to month with no setup fee.

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