What is a virtual brand? A Zayos definition for restaurant owners

Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

A virtual brand is a restaurant concept that exists only online. It has a name, a menu, and delivery app listings, but no dining room and no sign on a building. It is cooked inside an existing kitchen that already runs another restaurant.

The short way operators say it: a virtual brand is a menu with a name, not a place. The oven, the staff and the address belong to a restaurant that already exists.

Why would an owner run a second brand out of one kitchen?

Because the expensive things are already bought. Rent, the hood, the walk in, the POS, the closing shift and the manager on salary are fixed for the month whether the kitchen sends 600 tickets or 900. A virtual brand adds tickets against costs that are already committed, which is why the arithmetic looks so different from opening a second location.

Run it on your own numbers rather than ours. Take a kitchen sending 900 delivery orders a month at a $32 average, so $28,800 in delivery sales. A wings brand built from chicken already in the walk in adds 120 orders at $26, so $3,120 in new sales. Nothing in that $3,120 pays for new rent. It pays for food, packaging, a few labor minutes and, if the order came through a marketplace, the commission stack.

A virtual brand does not add rent, a hood, a walk in, or a second closing shift. It adds tickets to a line that is already staffed and already paid for.

That is also where the trap is. If the extra tickets only ever arrive through DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub, the commission takes 15 to 30 percent as a headline rate and 25 to 35 percent blended once delivery, marketing and processing fees stack on top. On $3,120 of marketplace sales at a 30 percent blended rate, $936 never reaches the kitchen. The brands that work are the ones that push repeat buyers onto a channel the restaurant owns. You can see what the stack costs on your own volume with the commission calculator.

How does a virtual brand actually work on the line?

Six steps, in the order a working kitchen does them. None of them require new equipment.

  1. 01 Pick a concept your prep already supports

    The cheapest virtual brand uses proteins, sauces and sides already in your walk in. A concept that needs a new protein, a new fryer schedule and a new supplier is a second restaurant, not a virtual brand.

  2. 02 Keep the menu to eight or fourteen items

    Small menus cook faster and photograph better. Every item you add is one more thing the line has to remember at 8pm on a Friday. One hero item, three variations of it, two sides and a drink is a complete brand.

  3. 03 Set up the listings and one site you own

    Marketplace listings bring strangers. A direct ordering site is where the regulars should end up, because that is the only channel where you keep the whole ticket.

  4. 04 Tag every ticket by brand at the pass

    The line needs to see the brand name at the top of the ticket in a color it recognizes, not buried in the item names. If the expo has to read three lines to work out which brand a bowl belongs to, the brand is costing you seconds on every order.

  5. 05 Package it as its own restaurant

    A sticker with the brand name on the bag, a receipt that matches, and a card with the brand URL. If the bag says your main restaurant and the app said something else, the diner reads it as a bait and switch and says so in the review.

  6. 06 Read the reviews as a separate business

    A virtual brand has its own rating, its own complaint pattern and its own repeat rate. Treat it like a location. If the brand is sitting at three stars because the fries travel badly, that is a menu problem you can fix in an afternoon.

What do owners get wrong about virtual brands?

It is not free money

The rent is already paid, but the tickets are not free. Every order still costs food, packaging, labor minutes and, on a marketplace, the full blended stack of 25 to 35 percent. A brand that only ever sells on a marketplace is renting you volume at a rate that can exceed your margin.

More brands is not better

Each brand adds a menu the line has to hold in its head and a rating you have to defend. A brand you cannot execute cleanly during your own dinner rush produces one star reviews that sit on the internet permanently. Two brands run well beat five run badly, every time.

The diner does find out

The delivery address, the packaging and the driver all point at the same building. Operators who plan for that, by keeping quality identical across brands, do fine. Operators who assume the concept is a secret get caught by a customer who ordered from both.

It is not a ghost kitchen

A virtual brand is a name and a menu. A ghost kitchen is a building with no dining room. A virtual brand can live inside a normal restaurant with a full dining room, and most of them do.

The marketplaces have rules

Platforms police duplicate menus and near identical brands from one address. Cloning your own menu under a new name with the same photos is the fastest way to get a listing suppressed.

Is a virtual brand the same thing as a ghost kitchen?

No, and mixing the two costs people money in planning meetings. A virtual brand is a concept: a name, a menu and a set of listings. A ghost kitchen is a physical space with no dining room. A virtual brand can run inside a busy dining room restaurant, inside a ghost kitchen, or inside a shared commissary. The brand is what the diner buys. The kitchen is where it gets cooked. If you are working out whether a delivery only building makes sense for you, the operator view is on ordering for ghost kitchens and virtual brands, and the shorter industry definitions live in the restaurant glossary.

Where Zayos fits

Zayos is commission free direct ordering, and the Concierge plan is the one built for this. It is $699 per location per month, month to month, with no setup fee, and it covers up to 5 virtual brands per kitchen. Each brand gets its own branded ordering site and its own customer list, and every ticket from every brand lands on the one kitchen tablet the restaurant already runs. The restaurant keeps 100 percent of food revenue and 100 percent of tips. The only per order charge is a service fee the diner pays at checkout: $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in, 10 percent on catering.

Plan detail is on pricing, the onboarding timeline is on how it works, and the product itself is explained on what is Zayos.

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Questions owners ask about virtual brands

Do I need a separate license to run a virtual brand?
Rules vary by state and county, so confirm with your local health department before you launch. In most places a second brand cooked in an already licensed kitchen operates under that same food service license at that same address, and the paperwork you actually add is a fictitious name or DBA registration so the brand can be invoiced and paid. Delivery platforms will ask for the license and proof of the address during onboarding.
How many virtual brands can one kitchen realistically run?
The limit is not software, it is the line. Most independent kitchens can hold one or two additional menus without slowing tickets, because the prep overlaps and the cooks already know the motions. Past that, you are asking an expo to sort four ticket formats during a rush. The honest test is whether you can run the extra brand at your busiest hour, not your slowest.
Will a virtual brand hurt my main restaurant reviews?
Not directly. Ratings are held per listing, so a virtual brand carries its own star average and its own review history. The risk is indirect: if the extra tickets slow your kitchen, the main restaurant gets the late order complaints. Watch ticket times for two weeks after launch, and pull the brand back if the main line drifts.
Can I sell the same food under a different brand name?
You can reuse ingredients, and you should, because shared prep is the entire economic argument for a virtual brand. What you should not do is publish the same menu with the same photos under a new name, because platforms treat that as a duplicate listing and suppress it. Change the format, the portioning and the photography so the brand is a genuinely different offer.
How long does it take to launch a virtual brand?
The build is rarely the slow part. Menu decisions, photography and packaging usually take longer than the storefront, and marketplace listing approval is the long pole because it runs on the platform timeline, not yours. On Zayos, a new brand storefront is set up as part of the Concierge plan, and most operators are live on the platform in under 2 weeks.

Still pricing it out? Run the free report at grader.zay-os.com.