Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
Zomato acquires online enterprise catering startup TonguestunZomato acquires online enterprise catering startup Tonguestun

Online food delivery masters such as Zomato, Swiggy, Food Panda, etc for past few weeks, have been facing quite a criticism from their restaurant partners.

The reason being the unsustainable deep discounts and the table reservation services offered by the aggregators which are damaging the restaurant business models, as per the restaurant owners.

While, in order to make their distress public, the restaurant owners have been running a campaign #LogOut to express to all the restaurant chain pan India to boycott their online delivery partners.

Zomato, on the hand, Saturday, said that it is open to making modifications to rectify mistakes and appealed to restaurant owners to stop the #LogOut campaign.

More than 1,200 restaurants in several major Indian cities have reportedly delisted themselves from the dine-in programmes of services like Zomato to show their support for the campaign.

In a series of tweets, Deepinder Goyal, founder at Zomato stated, “I am sad that young entrepreneurs (much like me) in the restaurant industry are feeling the pressure to such an extent that they had to launch such a campaign. We set out to create a company which can create a massive impact on consumers, as well as business owners,” he said in one of the tweets.

“Somewhere, we have made mistakes and things haven’t gone as planned. This is a wake up call that we need to do 100x more for our restaurant partners than we have done before,” he added.

“What’s good for restaurants is good for Zomato. What’s good for consumers is good for Zomato. Finding the right balance and product market fit is the restaurant industry’s problem (and that includes us),” Goyal said in another tweet.

Restaurants in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Pune, Gurgaon and Vadodara exited platforms, including Zomato, EazyDiner, Nearbuy, MagicPin, and Gourmet Passport, under the #LogOut campaign, claiming that the “unsustainable” deep discounts offered by the aggregators and the table reservation services were hurting their business models.

“We are committed to work with the industry and make modifications to Zomato Gold which will result in a win win situation for restaurants and consumers. Just like last year, when we changed some rules around Gold after hearing about the concerns of the restaurant community,” he further added.

Goyal also appealed to restaurant owners to stop the #LogOut campaign.

“In the interest of consumers, we request restaurant owners to stop the logout campaign and have a collaborative discussion with internet aggregators for finding a sustainable way forward,” he added further.

“Take a look at this data – the average price of a delivery order in India is just about the same as that of China. However, per capita income in China is 4.5x as that of India. It’s important we bring down prices to find sustainable growth in the food sector in our country,” Goyal said.

Furthermore, Rahul Singh, president of National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) had stated that the #LogOut campaign started in Gurugram earlier this week and turned into a nationwide movement, reflecting “how restaurants across the entire spectrum have been suffering from the deep-discount epidemic”.

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