Order direct.
Pay the counter price.
Zolo connects you straight to the restaurants, meat & fish counters, weekly offers and meal-plan kitchens around you. No commission means no marked-up menus and no service fees. The shop delivers, the shop collects.
Delivery apps take a cut. Then they charge you for it.
Commission comes out of the shop’s side, so shops raise app menu prices to survive. Then the app adds its own fees on top. You pay twice for the same shawarma.
The shop needs AED 100 to make a living, so the app menu quietly becomes AED 120. Everyone loses except the app.
Shops pay Zolo a flat AED 100 a month after a free period, not a slice of your order. So the price on Zolo is the price on the counter.
* Illustrative. Assumes the 15–25% menu markup and AED 2–5 service fee common on commission-based delivery apps in the UAE. Actual prices are set by each shop; Zolo never sets or marks up a price.
How much does ordering direct give back to you?
Move the sliders. The maths is simple because there is nothing hidden in it.
Adjust the assumptions
Defaults reflect the 15–25% menu markups and AED 2–5 service fees common on commission-based delivery apps. Delivery fees are left out: on Zolo the shop sets its own, often free above a minimum order.
Everything around the corner, in one place.
Not just restaurants. Zolo brings the whole neighbourhood food economy into one honest app.
Restaurants
Cafeterias, family restaurants, bakeries and cloud kitchens. Full menus with variants and add-ons, per-item notes, and live status from “sent” to “delivered”.
Fresh Market
Meat, fish and poultry from the counters you already trust. Pick the cut, order by weight, and the shop confirms the final total after weighing, before it leaves.
Weekly Offers
Hypermarket leaflets, finally searchable. Compare the same item across stores, build a deals list and watch the savings meter climb before you leave the house.
Monthly Meal Plans
Subscribe to a mess for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Skip meals before the cut-off and skipped days extend your plan automatically, on a ledger you and the kitchen both see.
Three steps. No surprises.
Find what actually delivers to you
Discovery is delivery-aware: you only see shops whose own riders cover your building. Filter by cuisine, open now, free delivery or rating. Search dishes across every menu nearby.
Order at the counter price
Build your basket, choose an address (with Onwani fields riders understand) and pay cash or card to the rider, whichever the shop supports. Zolo never touches your money.
Track it honestly
Your order is “sent to the shop”, then accepted with a real prep time, then out for delivery. Delivery times are observed medians, never promises we cannot keep.
Same neighbourhood. Very different deal.
Delivery apps are built to sit between you and the shop. Zolo is built to get out of the way.
| What matters | ZZolo | Commission-based delivery apps |
|---|---|---|
| For customers | ||
| Menu pricesWhat you pay for the food itself | The counter price | Often marked up 15–30% to cover commission |
| Service or platform fee | AED 0 | AED 2–5 per order |
| Delivery fee | Set by the shop, often free above a minimum | Platform fee, distance and surge pricing |
| Who brings it | The shop’s own rider, who knows your street | A pooled fleet, whoever is nearest |
| Your phone number | Never shown as text. Riders get a call button only | Shared with rider and platform |
| Delivery time | Observed medians, honestly labelled | Promised ETAs that slip |
| Meat & fish by weightChoose the cut, total confirmed after weighing | Built in | Rare, with fixed guessed prices |
| Monthly meal-plan subscriptions | Skips, extensions and a shared ledger | Not offered |
| Weekly hypermarket offers | Searchable across stores | Not offered |
| Ratings | Behaviour-weighted, shown only after 10 real reviews | Stars that can be bought with promotions |
| For shops | ||
| Commission per order | 0% | 20–35% |
| What it costs | Free until 100 delivered orders or 6 months, then AED 100/month flat | A slice of every order, plus paid placement to be seen |
| Who owns the customer | You. Your storefront, your QR, your repeat orders | The platform |
| Your rider’s tools | One-tap handoff link: map, navigate, call, mark delivered. No rider app | Only their fleet gets tools |
| Payments | You collect cash or card at the door, same day | Platform holds it and settles later, minus deductions |
| Ranking | Consistent service earns visibility. No sponsored slots, ever | Ads and promotions decide who is seen |
Ranges reflect commonly published terms of commission-based food delivery platforms operating in the UAE. Zolo does not name or benchmark any single competitor.
Keep 100% of every order. Keep your customers, too.
Zolo gives you what a delivery app gives you, without taking the money: discovery, a real order inbox, a handoff sheet for your own rider, and a storefront with your name on it. You deliver, you collect, you keep the relationship.
Illustrative. Your numbers depend on your volume and the terms you are on today.
An inbox you cannot miss
Loud alerts, accept with a prep time or reject with a reason, one-tap busy mode, and it keeps working offline. Every transition is stamped with who did it and when.
A handoff sheet for your rider
Accept an order and forward one link over WhatsApp or show a QR. Your rider gets the pin, a Navigate button, a call button, what to collect, and marks it delivered. No rider app, no login.
Your own storefront & QR
zolo.ae/m/your-shop, a printable counter card, and a share link. Orders from your QR skip discovery entirely and are tagged so you can see which channel feeds you.
Menus in minutes
Photograph your menu and receive a draft to approve. Variants, add-ons, sold-out toggles, cut presets for fish, meat and poultry, and Bluetooth thermal printing on accept.
Visibility you earn, not buy
A reliability dashboard shows response time, acceptance and completion, and exactly how they affect where you appear. Consistent service ranks. Ad budgets do not exist here.
Mess management, off paper
Plans, weekly menu cycles, skip cut-offs, a daily roster of who eats what, and payment tracking. Everything your WhatsApp group does today, without the arguments.
Flat, small, and never a percentage.
Customers never pay Zolo anything. Shops pay a fixed subscription, and only once Zolo has proven itself.
No account needed.
- We publish your menu, marked as indicative
- Customers send you a formatted WhatsApp enquiry
- A handoff report showing the demand you are getting
- Submit menu photos to fix or update your listing
Free until your first 100 delivered orders or 6 months, whichever comes first. AED 1,000 a year saves two months.
- Unlimited orders, 0% commission
- Verified badge, confirmed pricing, better ranking
- Order inbox, busy mode, thermal printing, staff logins
- Rider handoff sheet and customer status page
- Storefront page, QR counter card, share link
- Refer a shop, get a month free (up to six a year)
Includes 50 active subscribers, then AED 3 per extra subscriber. Includes everything in Onboarded.
- Plans with breakfast, lunch and dinner slots
- Skip cut-offs, extension days, shared ledger
- Daily fulfilment roster, printable
- Paid, partial and overdue tracking, no processing
What Zolo will never do.
These are not buried in the terms. They are visible in the product, and they are why the prices are what they are.
Not now, not at scale, not as a “small platform fee” later. Shops pay a flat subscription or nothing.
Zolo never processes or holds a payment. You pay the rider; the shop keeps it the same day.
No fleet, no rider accounts, no rider tracking. Your food is brought by the people who made it.
No sponsored slots or promoted listings. Reliability decides who appears first.
You see observed medians for that shop, labelled as such. A promise we cannot keep is a lie.
An order is “sent to the shop” until a human accepts it. Words in the app match what is really happening.
Starting small, on purpose, in the heart of Abu Dhabi.
Zolo launches in Al Danah and Al Zahiyah, the Hamdan, Electra and Tourist Club corridor, where cafeterias are dense, buildings are tall and people already order by phone. Roughly two kilometres, walked street by street.
- Menus photographed and verified in person, with the verification date shown on every listing.
- Mussafah (Shabiya) is next, starting with its mess operators.
- English and Arabic, right to left done properly, before we expand.
- Built under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law: your data, your rights, your deletion request honoured in-app.
Straight answers.
Is Zolo really free for customers?
Yes. There is no service fee, platform fee, small-order fee or subscription. You pay the shop what the shop charges, plus whatever delivery fee the shop itself sets, which is often nothing above a minimum order.
How do I pay?
Cash or card to the rider at your door, depending on what the shop supports. Each shop declares whether it carries a card terminal, so you know before you order. Zolo never collects, holds or processes payment.
Who delivers my order?
The shop’s own rider. Zolo does not employ or dispatch riders. The rider receives a handoff sheet with your pin, address details and a call button. Your phone number is never shown to them as text.
What if the shop does not respond?
Shops get pushed, then escalated. If an order is still unacknowledged you see a clear “shop not responding” state and can cancel. Shops that miss three orders in a row are paused automatically. Every order also has a report-a-problem path that reaches the shop first and Zolo if unanswered.
What is the difference between a listed and a verified shop?
A listed shop has a menu we published but has not joined yet: prices are indicative, and your basket becomes a WhatsApp enquiry to their own number. A verified shop has claimed its listing: confirmed prices, in-app ordering, live status and their own rider link.
How does Zolo make money if there is no commission?
Verified shops pay a flat AED 100 a month after a free period of 100 delivered orders or six months. Mess kitchens pay a flat add-on. That is the entire model. There is no hidden percentage and there never will be one.
Does it work in Arabic?
Yes. The app is fully bilingual, English and Arabic, with proper right-to-left layouts, and you can switch at any time.
Your neighbourhood, at the counter price.
Zolo is in pilot with residents of Al Danah and Al Zahiyah. App Store and Google Play listings arrive with the public launch.
Be first in your building
Tell us your area and we will send the pilot invite as soon as your street is covered.
Request a pilot invite