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.
