We all know how hygienic the restaurants in India are, specially the pop-up cafes and roadside cafes, but none of the food-delivery companies inculcate the necessity of hygiene information for its customers. Foodpanda had tied-up with IRCTC for food delivery which requires good standards of quality.
After getting profitable in Europe and the Middle East, Foodpanda is going to launch ratings on the basis of hygiene of the restaurant, under the Food Doctor Program. While some restaurant follow the standards and procedures, a lot give it a miss and this creates a bad name for both the restaurant as well as Foodpanda.
At the moment, all you can do is browse through comments on Foodpanda and Zomato and decide whether the restaurant is worth giving a try or not, but this new feature will give you a high-quality assessment of the conditions in the restaurant.
Foodpanda India CEO Saurabh Kochhar said, “We want to help bringing in better processes, audits, and so on for restaurants and have created a portal that explains all these things, that is free of course. We offer a checklist, that goes from simple things like you have to wash your hands before handling the food, you have to wear a hairnet; to more complex things like storage and transportation systems, like if you’ve got a cut chicken that’s been out of the fridge for more than an hour then it’s not fit to eat anymore.”
Kocchar also added that in a poll, 65% of the responders were particular about hygiene and this is one of the major reasons Foodpanda will be introducing this. Restaurants can expect surprise and regular audits, full list of standards and quality check-ups from officials.
Will the program be able to achieve its goal?
A lot of startups want to implement ideas that can solve our daily problems, and Foodpanda’s solution to hygiene seems quite apt. However, implementation of an idea in India usually faces obstacles that the company might not have predicted.
In case of restaurants, regular audits and check-ups might shoo them away from Foodpanda itself, which will cause a drop is business for both the ventures. On the other hand, the restaurants might start charging higher for improved service and quality which can hurt sales.
However, if all of this comes at a cost of hygiene, it is better to close down business than offer stale unhygienic food. Foodpanda’s major rivals, Zomato and Swiggy, do not have such standards in place, but they offer quality service on their part that has made them so famous amongst the consumers.
Setting up audits and regular visits to restaurants won’t be an easy job for Foodpanda in India, where roadside cafes and street food is so famous. However, it will give consumers a sense of safety and quality while they wait for their meal, which is a bonus point.
Source: NDTV