Hell with these agreegators -- Perspective of the Restaurant Owner

 

Current Issues with the Aggregators

1.       Very high unsustainable Commission.

2.       Data Masking.  

3.       Deep Discounting.

4.       Paid Trending.

5.       Review System.

6.       Il-logical Policies to favour them

a.       Imposing the time limit on the restaurant.

b.      Penalties for not delivering the food in time for the time limit imposed by Zomato.

c.       Penalties for not accepting incoming order in time.

d.      The cost of food cancels by the customer borned by the Restaurant.

e.      Any customer complaints about the food quality borne by the Restaurant.

f.        Restaurant to purchase their Illogical high priced Hygiene check, from Zomato Hyper pure which they display on their site.

g.        Non uniform policy , relaxed for big names and arm twisted for small ones.

How it’s harming the industry.

Indian Food Industries (Organised or un-organised) is estimated to be INR 5,52,000 crore by 2022 and the local organised and un-organised restaurant provides the bulk of employment across any industries.

The current scenario, where the aggregators funded by the Venture funds and with deep pockets is creating the deep mess in the business fraternity. When the whole intention of these Aggregators is valuation then they don’t see the business and it’s partners as long term sustainability, the promises are kept broken, there are no sense for any business ethics.

I will point out each and every points how they are harming the whole ecosystem forever.

To end Customer

1.       Continuous discounts --

Customer are lured into the belief with continuous discounting like <<50 % off>>  or<< buy 1 and get 1 free>>

This continuous discounts undermine the quality and effort goes into making the food, it builds the perception that discounts and value for money is the only criteria to retain customer.

Good Food and great service is now secondary for these aggregators, the whole narrative is Discounts, As long as customer get the discounts, they won’t consider quality as it’s prime criteria.

At the end it’s the customer who get suffers from    sub quality food and service if the restaurant are forced to adapt to these discount from peer pressure.

 

2.       Customer loyalty – Now it’s purchased and not earned

With Gold and similar offering end customer get the sense of entitlement of always demanding  extra from the food provider without any consideration that every small things cost the provider.

 

3.       Customer Pay’s more.

After this initial honeymoon period, end customer are forced to pay significantly more than they should have paid.

 

4.       Sub Par Food on the platform. – Every Tom, dick and Harry are on the platform with far below standard food but customer are lured into buying from these joints with good photos and cheap food.

The same joints comes on the food platform with different names every six months.

 

Damages to the Riders

Showing off the caring by asking to offering the glass of water and actually the financial well being of the rider is different thing.

Riders are squeezed to work to at Rs 30 Rs per trip for 6 KM, it’s just not one way, they have to return as well. This is on top when the riders are exposed to continuous exposure to accidents, pollution and the vehicle wear and tear and working hours of upto 12 hrs.

This is modern day slavery and this needs cleanup.

 

Damages to the Restaurant

1.       Very High Commission – Commission in the range  22-25% and overall upto 30%, this is unimaginable and just kills the whole economics of the restaurant’s earning capacity and to survive.

This high commission has burnt every restaurant to the core and is just the matter time when they starts closing the shop one by one.

This is on top when these aggregators are charging the delivery fees and surge fees from the customer as well.

 

2.       Cancelled order are never compensated and restaurant are made to paid.

3.       Penalties

These aggregators has now playing the role of god damn almighty, god knows out of blues they suddenly woke up and change the policy and put new penalties. Few examples

3.1   If the order is not accepted within 2 minutes, a penalties of Rs 10 and then Rs 20 for each order.

3.2   Preparation time is imposed by the Aggregators and is not the choice of the Restaurant. Now there are new Rules if we delay the times set by these Tomato, they will be imposing the recurring penalties every minutes or so.

Here are some scenario

1.       What makes these Idiots of the Tomato’s think that the Tandoor items can be made in 15 minutes.

2.       Does the restaurant exist to serve only these Tomatos.

 

Greed should have some limit and even it is ashamed of it.

 

3.3   Any customer complaint or liability going forward will be borne by the Restaurant, until the restaurant has taken the Tomato Authorised High Priced Hygine Rating from them.

 

The devils plays the role of the Owner to make one sided policy and then suddenly changes itself to brokerage, when the liability comes into plays.

 

3.4   Going forward all liability is on Restaurant, here they talk as the brokers.

What if the food is altered on the way by the riders who are totally frustrated by their own policy of low pay than the minimum wages.

 

4.       Data Masking –

The broker should not have the same privilege of the owners , sooner these Tomato understand, good for every one.

 

The customer profile is totally masked from us, the customer belongs to the restaurant and never of the Tomato’s and ordering through the app is just a means to reach us.

 

Restaurant never knew to whom are they making, what’s the customer preference and what he has been ordering in the past, food is always a personalised and made to own’s choice.

 

Here the whole attitude is not at all about the service, just serve any bull shit and walk away. Here the customers are treated as the means to increase the valuation games.

 

5.       Continuous discounts

Now the Tomato’s has build the perception of the continuous discounting and which is totally

Unethical and fraud

 

You must have heard of

1.       50% off on all items and max upto Rs 50.

What level of stupidity is this, you have made the whole generation looks idiots who uses your platform.

 

The bulk of the discount is to be borne by the Restaurant and not by the aggregators, this is on top of the commission, penalties, cancellation and customer complaints.

 

Tomatos App never ever pushes for the finest or for the quality, it’s only discounts and more and more restaurant and the valuations.

 

Here the food quality is of absolutely no concern and the perceptions around the discounts has undermine the quality of the food.

 

6.       Customer loyalty – Now there is no such thing of customer loyality which is normally it is earned by the association of the customer and restaurant now it is purchased on these platform, now the whole loyality programs can be brought and is a tool extract money from The restaurant and customer.

 

Here the customer pay to Aggregators ( Rs 1000)  and the aggregators collect it from the restaurant ( Rs 50000) to provide a free meals,

 

Restaurant pays to provide the free meals... never heard in any time of the history.

 

They even tried to put this who sale thorough their platform and calls the owners to pays 15,000 upfront to provide free food.

 

How come the restaurant industries with so many years of experience gets into this fraud, not 1 or 2, they are in Lakhs.

 

7.       Ads and the Ranking

Google has survived for so long with their paid ranking and natural ranking, no one has question them, as mostly they have been honest I believe.

 

Here these aggregators continuously manipulates the listing, and  put only those in the front who paid them for the ads.

 

Tomorrow they will drive the user base to their own brand or the ones with whome they have exclusive tie up and again be a part of the valuation game. 

 

8.       Restaurant will be limited to tune into their own way

I can see the future when they start dictating that where the raw material should be brought, and what to be sold at the what price.

If you buy from the Hyperpure they will put on the restaurant site. So the future will be buy from what they want and sell what they want.

 

 

At the end they have their own kitchen in place, sell it cheap as they don’t have to pay the hefty 30 % cuts and drive the traffic to the food sold from their kitchen only.

 

Swiggy’s Homely prices are in the range of 60 or 70 and that can never be sold at that price if both the company doesn’t belong to the same group.

 

9.       The quality Restaurant has to compete with Road side eateries with absolutely no regards for quality.

 

Tomato’s call it democratised listing.

 

10.   They have different policies for big chains and arm twisted to the small restaurant.

11.   Restaurant Review System – they encourage the review to be review by the paid bloggers who charges a fortune along with the free food. Any individual review’s doens’t have much weigtage.

 

What’s the way forward.

1.       Cap on the Commision, variable commission

2.       Delivery fees to be brone by the customer. 

3.       Refund of the fake fees

4.       No discount imposition by the aggregators, it is driven by restaurant only if required.

5.       The Ads should be limited top horizontali tile and clearly marked paid promotions

6.       The ads should be limted to 4 on the top slot for the paid listing and should be clearly marked as paid listing.

7.       Rest of the listing algorithms should be made public for general public audit and the algorithms can be put on Github for public scrutiny.

8.       Review system to be made same as of Google and it should be average out and not something from the total hidden algorithm.

9.       The aggregators should not be selling the food from their own brand, kitchen and compete with infinite advantage to them compared to others.  

10.   Customers are not of the agreegators and they should never holds any record of the customer purchase and their profile, this data belongs to the restaurant. Customer Data and his purchase habits should be completly masked to the aggregators and this data should completely belong to the food provider. Customer should be asked if they wants their profile to be shared to the Restauant, but it should never be available to the Aggregators.

 

I hope Restaurant will come together and works for the better India for a sustained benefits to all parties.

Let the common sense prevails.