300 Gurgaon Restaurants Rebel Against Zomato, EazyDiner, Nearby; Refuse To Offer Any Discount To App Users

You might as well be prepared for this next move been taken soon into action. It has been reported that over 300 restaurants, registered under the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) in the millennium city of Gurgram have decided to break their ties with aggregators and table reservation services, like Zomato, EazyDiner, Nearbuy, MagicPin and Gourmet Passport, among others. 

According to these restaurants, heavy discounting offers like such are creating heavy erosion in their revenues. So, in an attempt to silently mark their protest against membership programmes that allow diners to indulge in bargains, these 300+ restaurants in Gurgaon have started a #Logout campaign.

#Logout Campaign

In order to attract customers, these aggregators have been giving heavy discount on meal bills. These “deep discounting” strategies by aggregators have deeply hurt the revenues of restaurants, from August 15.

NRAI president Rahul Singh said that restaurants have already suffered due to increasing rentals and denial of input tax credit. To top this, the situation has now been aggravated by anytime, anywhere, any-day discounting behavior by aggregators. To put a stop to this, restaurants in Gurgaon have decided to anytime, anywhere, any-day discounting behavior by aggregators.

Following this, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru will take a step to establish the same NRAI has a representation of around 500,000 restaurants across India. For instance, under Infinity Dining programme launched by Zomato in July for its Gold members, a user a can order unlimited meals at restaurants for a fixed price. 

Restaurants believe that such programs have deeply hurt their profitability but to stiff competition in market they are forced to participate.

The Follow Up on This

Even after planning to cut off their ties with restaurants, these restaurants will let delivery and search platforms such as Uber Eats, Swiggy and Zomato to continue their discounts.

The restaurant owners have reportedly said that they are “feeling pressure on dine-in sales as higher rentals, a general slowdown in consumer sentiment, and removal of the input tax credit under the revised goods and services tax (GST) is already hurting sales.”

These restaurants have reported that they’ve had multiple meetings with aggregators like Zomato on their Gold offering on the discounting issue but they proved out to be unsuccessful.

What Do Restaurants have To Say About It?

An EazyDiner spokesperson reportedly said it works with restaurant partners and encourages people to eat out. According to them, they allow restaurants to choose time slots and offers on those slots. A discount like other portals is not compulsory or needed on EazyDiner. Reservation services are operating as normal.

According to Nearbuy, some of its partner brands offer deals and discounts to attract customers to their premises, and all such deals and discounts on the platform are determined by the brands themselves.

A Zomato spokesperson reportedly said that the company does not see any impact on its Gold subscribers due to the #Logout campaign. It says that most of the restaurant owners are in touch with them and are not planning to join this campaign. The discount structure, terms and conditions relayed by the food tech companies are unjust and unsustainable. 

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