Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association opposes Zomato gold online delivery offers

The Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHAR) held a meet with Zomato officials at their office where they raised several issues with food aggregators from licensing to the listing of unethical run illegal kitchens, deep discounting for Zomato gold on delivery, to high commission rates. The restaurant association body with over 8000 restaurants in their meeting with Zomato officials raised major issues on compliance that is not followed by the food aggregator. The association has asked them to service the restaurant which has legally obtained mandatory licences and fire compliance u/s 394 of MCGM act. [caption id=“attachment_7112701” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. News18[/caption] As per the law, any eating house/kitchen/cafe has to mandatorily have licences from the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika. AHAR informed them that, on the platform there are many outlets listed with just FSSAI payment receipt/licence. AHAR has asked Zomato to request all the partner restaurants to provide with their licence number and the same needs to be uploaded against the restaurant name on the Zomato site. AHAR also raised an issue on the delivery commission rates. The association said that the delivery commissions charged by Zomato are arbitrary. The commission goes to even 22 to 25 percent in cases and hence is difficult for the restaurants to do the business. The brunt has to be taken by the customer, as they have to then increase the prices. They have asked the platform that it should not go beyond 15 percent including GST. While there was an issue with the other association on Zomato gold dining, AHAR has raised serious concerns on the Zomato gold delivery discounts. The association has asked them to completely abolished the offers as it is a loss-making proposition for the restaurants. Other issues discussed was on the unavailability of delivery riders by Zomato. There have been cases while ordering, Zomato says that the restaurant can’t deliver, whereas in reality Zomato does not have the delivery persons during that time. AHAR has asked them to share the customers’ data so as to allow the restaurants to take orders and deliver on the platform, so that the customer is not inconvenienced when Zomato can’t deliver or do not have delivery boys. AHAR has also raised issue on cases where the food aggregators are delivering till 4 in the morning. AHAR has stated that these are illegal or places running without proper norms and licenses. Duplication of names of restaurants and brands on the platform has been a hurdle for the food industry and the customers. There have been case of new restaurants coming up with same names or with slight alteration in the same area of the known one. These leads to confusion and the non-branded ones are trying to take advantage of the known ones. AHAR has requested them to put pictures of the restaurant so that the customer gets food from the restaurants he wants and not a namesake one. There were several other points from deep discounting that leads to losses for the restaurants, rating methods where a restaurant not advertising with the platform is rated badly etc. Another point was that there unscrupulous food bloggers who misuse the platform for their personal gains by holding legitimately run restaurant to ransom by threat of negative ratings, all this for a meagre free meal or two. The meeting was held by AHAR president Santosh Shetty and his office-bearer team with the representatives of Zomato, where the points were discussed broadly. The officials have promised AHAR to come up with their inputs in the first week of November and also work on issues jointly.