The National Restaurant Association of India’s (NRAI) campaign to log out of food platforms such as Zomato, Dineout and others, with the biggest grouse being Zomato Gold and deep discounting, has forced Zomato to relent. In an email the company sent to its Gold partners, the company offered to make a number of changes to the scheme.
After Zomato’s meeting with NRAI, the company outlined multiple changes it would make to the program. These include limiting Gold unlocks to one per day per customer, only two Gold unlocks per table, only one login device at any point, pro-rata refunds for customers who don’t agree to the renewed terms, Not selling Gold memberships for less than Rs 1,800, discontinuation of trial packs and removal of users who show bad behaviour at a restaurant from Gold.
Furthermore, in order to give benefits to restaurants, Zomato also offered benefits for restaurants that see a high number of Gold unlocks.
“Gold restaurants that have a minimum of 1,000 Gold unlocks per quarter per outlet, and get an average cumulative rating of 4.5+ for Gold visits during that quarter, will get ads credit worth Rs 25,000 per outlet per quarter from Zomato,” the company said. Similarly, for restaurants that see 600 unlocks per quarter, Zomato said that it would shoot videos for free and distribute the videos on Zomato. The company has also offered to actively promote Gold on non-peak days through personalised push notifications.
While initially, the company had said that restaurants would have to serve their 45 day notice period, and according to NRAI, even had a penalty clause for rejoining, Zomato now wants the companies to return. It has even waived off the fee. “We want all those who logged out to come back to Gold. All restaurants that dropped out of Gold during the logout campaign and sign back up on Gold before 26th August – they will not need to pay the sign-up fee to return back to the program,” the company said.
These changes would be put in place before September 15, Zomato said.
However, in its response, the NRAI called it a “knee jerk reaction” and said that this was a validation that Zomato was acknowledging the problems regarding deep discounting.
The restaurants, however, are choosing to stay logged out of the platform and said that the terms have constantly been changing.
“Since the launch in Nov 2017, this program has been shifting goalposts. What started as an exclusive invite-only privilege to a marketplace for "bargain hunters", a word admitted by the founder of Zomato in recent tweets, this Gold has lost its sheen forever. We stand united in the cause to obliviate the deep discounting phenomenon, and will therefore #stayloggedout,” the NRAI said.