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Restaurant operations, AI automation, catering, and the future of food delivery.

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Building AskZO: How Runzo's AI Food Concierge Gets Smarter Every Conversation

How Runzo built AskZO — the AI that handles food discovery, catering, and ordering through conversation. Three-layer memory, learning flywheel, grounding, and artifacts.

Runzo Team

Jun 27, 2026

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WHY WE BUILT RUNZO: A Better Online Ordering System for Restaurants

This is our founding story. This is why Runzo exists. We ran restaurants for years. Then we built our own online ordering system for restaurants, one that takes zero commission.How Much Commission Actually Costs Over a MonthPENNSYLVANIA - END OF MONTH, 11PMWe were tired. It had been a genuinely good month. Tables were full most nights. The catering calendar was packed across two weekends, and delivery orders were steady all week. It was the kind of month that should feel like momentum.Then we sat down with the settlement.The payout was short. Not dramatically, but enough to make us check the line-by-line breakdown. There was commission on every order. A refund had been issued to a customer without asking us. A catering order for 42 people had required four hours of prep and two extra staff members, and it had generated $176 in platform commission before we paid for a single ingredient.We had agreed to the commission rate when we signed up. What we had not done, and what most restaurant owners do not do, is calculate what that rate actually costs over a full month. When we finally did, the number stopped us cold.That night was the beginning of Runzo, an online ordering system for restaurants, and not as a product idea, but as a way to fix something that clearly wasn’t working.Three things that were quietly breaking usBefore we built anything, we spent months talking to other restaurant owners across Pennsylvania. Not as researchers as people having the same conversations every month about the same three frustrations.

High delivery commissions cutting into every order
Catering handled manually with missed opportunities
Multiple disconnected tools increasing cost and complexity

Each one alone is workable. You find workarounds, absorb the friction, tell yourself it's just the reality of the industry. But all three together, every shift, every month, year after year, stop feeling like friction and start feeling like the fundamental condition of running a restaurant.We weren't asking for a revolution. We were asking for a system that didn't quietly work against us every time we had a good month.The night we decided to build something different. No agenda. No whiteboard. Just honest conversation from people who were all carrying the same weight.The topic moved through margins, delivery fees, then to that specific frustration of watching a $600 catering order generate $168 in platform commission for a service that did nothing except display the listing. That $600 catering order wasn’t just revenue. It meant hours of preparation, additional staff, and coordination. And before any of that was accounted for, $168 was already gone. Someone put it plainly: We are spending every week building someone else’s business while ours stays flat.Nobody disagreed. Then someone asked the question that changed everything: why are we waiting for them to fix it?The platforms weren't going to lower their rates. Their model worked perfectly for them. It just did not work for us. So, if true commission free online ordering for restaurants did not exist and was not built by people who had actually run a kitchen, the only answer was to build it ourselves.We started building Runzo the following week.

What Runzo Is and What It Is Not

Restaurant owners have heard a lot of promises from platforms. So, let's be direct about exactly what Runzo is and isn't because the distinction matters.What Runzo is: a complete online ordering system for restaurants that replaces delivery apps, multiple tools, and manual workflow with one unified setup. It replaces the fragmented, commission-heavy setup most restaurantsSee your exact savingThe Runzo calculator shows what your restaurant keeps when you switch to commission-free ordering.

Calculate my saving at runzo.ai

are currently running on.

What changes when you switch

The clearest way to show what Runzo does is to show what a restaurant's monthly costs look like before and after.BEFORE RUNZODelivery app commission (28%): $2,000+Payroll service: $200Scheduling tool: $80Review management: $300Email marketing: $80Reservations platform: $250Loyalty program: $150Social ad management: $500+$3,660+ per monthAFTER RUNZOCommission free online ordering for restaurants ✓Payroll: includedScheduling: includedRepZO review AI: includedMailZO email campaigns: includedReservations: includedLoyalZO loyalty: includedAdZO social ads: included$499 per month flat
"We moved our catering orders to Runzo's direct ordering system in month one. That single change recovered more margin than anything else we'd done in two years of trying to optimise."- Restaurant owner, Pennsylvania · switched to Runzo 2025.

How the online ordering system for restaurants works in three steps

1. Onboard your restaurant in a dayBring your menu, your team, and your current setup. Runzo configures your direct ordering page, ASKZO AI agents, payroll, and scheduling live within 24 hours. No IT team, no long contracts, no restaurant management software migration headaches.2. Your first commission free orders go liveCustomers order directly through your Runzo page direct ordering system, exactly as it should be. No platform in the middle. Every order's full value comes to you, minus only standard 2.5% payment processing.3. ASKZO takes over what you're doing manuallyQuoteZO auto-submits catering quotes. RepZO responds to every Google review. LedgZO monitors margins daily. MailZO and AdZO run campaigns when your calendar goes quiet. Your restaurant runs smarter without managing ten separate tools.

What an Online Ordering System for Restaurants Actually Means

It lets customers place orders directly through a restaurant's own website or app without going through a third-party delivery platform. This means the restaurant gets commission free online ordering instead of paying 20-35% per order to an app. Runzo also includes payroll, scheduling, marketing, and AI-powered operations tools in one $499/month flat-fee platform at runzo.ai.

How Runzo Is Different from Other Systems

Most restaurant management software handles either ordering or operations, but rarely both, and almost never without commission. Runzo combines direct ordering with the core systems restaurants already pay for separately, including payroll, scheduling, marketing, and customer engagement. It also includes ASKZO AI agents that handle catering quotes, review responses, margin monitoring, and campaigns automatically. Everything is included at a flat $499 per month, with no per-order commission at runzo.ai.If you're a restaurant owner reading this, you recognised something in what we described. The settlement that came up short. The catering order that should have been your best margin of the week. The exhaustion of managing tools that still don't work together.We're not asking you to abandon what's working. Delivery platforms bring real customers. Some tools solve real problems. We used all of them too.What we're saying is: the orders you've already earned, the customers who already know you, the catering business you've built through years of showing up. Those should not keep flowing through a system that takes 20-35% of every order.That part of your business deserves proper zero-commission setup, built by people who understand exactly what the current system is costing you. That's Runzo. We built it because we needed it. We're sharing it because you probably do too.

The team at Runzo · Pennsylvania, USA · runzo.ai

Know a restaurant owner who needs to read this? Send it to them.You've done the reading. Here's the next step.Join 500+ restaurants already running on Runzo's Zero Commission Setup. Free trial - no credit card, no contract, cancel any time.

Start your free trial at runzo.ai
500+ restaurants are already running smarter on Runzo.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Is Runzo free to use?Runzo offers a free trial with no credit card required. After the trial, it's $499/month flat per location. It offers commission free online ordering for restaurants on every order, no hidden fees and no long-term contract. Cancel any time at runzo.ai.2. How does Runzo make money without taking commission?Runzo charges a flat $499/month per restaurant location. That's the full revenue model no commission, no per-order fees, and no upsells. Unlike traditional restaurant management software that charges per feature, the fee covers the entire platform: the online ordering system for restaurants, ASKZO AI agents, payroll, scheduling, marketing, and more.3. Can I use Runzo alongside existing delivery apps?Yes. Most restaurants start by moving direct and catering orders to Runzo's, while keeping delivery app listings live. Over time many shift more volume as they see the margin difference but there's no requirement to switch everything at once.4. What restaurants is Runzo best suited for?Runzo works best for independent and multi-location restaurants actively losing margin to delivery platform commission especially those with catering volume, repeat customers, or corporate order relationships. If you're doing $10,000+ in monthly orders through a platform, switching to a zero-commission setup through Runzo will almost certainly save you money from month one.5. What is ASKZO?ASKZO is Runzo's built-in AI suite of ten AI agents, each handling a specific part of restaurant operations. QuoteZO auto-submits catering quotes. RepZO responds to Google reviews. LedgZO monitors your margins. MailZO and AdZO run marketing campaigns automatically. Every ASKZO agent is included in the $499/month plan at runzo.ai no extra cost, no separate restaurant management software needed.

Jul 4, 2026Read →

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