40% Of Restaurants In India Will Close Down As Per Zomato; Kolkata Leads In Food Business

The virus spread and lockdown have a drastic impact on the restaurant industry, despite the tough macroeconomic environment, now restaurants are starting to regain their business operation quickly while following the social distancing norms, as per the report by Zomato.

Food Delivery Performing Better

So far, the food delivery industry has recovered to some extent, but it would take at least two-three months to reach the pre-COVID standards.

There are two main categories of the restaurant industry, delivery and dining out, out of that food delivery is mostly recovered.

As far as the dining out is concerned, it has been impacted the most and till now forced many restaurants to shut down.

Over 40 percent of the dining out restaurants may not reopen at all due to the losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the food ordering platform Zomato.

Further, the survey mentions that only 17 percent of the dining out restaurants are open for business currently and another when the situation gets better, another 43 percent are expected to open.

According to the Zomato, they have delivered seven crore food orders since the start of lockdown on March 25.

What Does Zomato Say?

“We estimate that between other food aggregators and direct restaurant channels, Indians have ordered 20 crore times since the lockdown. There have bee zero reported cases of COVID-19 transmission due to food delivery,” said food delivery and restaurant discovery firm Zomato.

As per the Zomatos data, places where restaurants have been allowed to open for dining out, Kolkata is leading in these areas with 29 percent of its total restaurants open, after that  Hyderabad is at 21 percent. 

Almost 60 percent restaurateurs expect that they can retain less than half of their original business volumes for a few months even in the post-COVID phase.

On the other hand, the situation is much better for the food delivery segment, as it has “largely recovered” with the overall sector clocking around 75-80 percent of the pre-COVID gross merchandise value (GMV). 

The report which is titled ‘Indian Restaurant Industry – Mid Covid-19 report’, said, “Some areas in some cities are clocking higher GMV than before as affluent neighborhoods no longer fear contagion from food delivery, and are combining home entertainment with outside food,”.

Zomato has conducted this survey n the past few days when it reached out to thousands of restaurants and customers across various cities in India to understand the current state and future outlook of the industry.