Restaurants say that the discounts that they are forced to offer will hurt their profitability and is not sustainable in the long run
Amid grouse over discounts that restaurants are forced to offer on dine-in orders through apps, about 900 eateries have either delisted from Swiggy Dineout or have sent notices to them to do so. They are also refraining from signing up for Zomato Pay, which is yet to be rolled out nationally, according to a CNBC-TV18 report.
Restaurants that have delisted from Swiggy Dineout include Indigo Hospitality (which runs Indigo Deli), Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality (that runs brands like Social and Smoke House Deli), Mamagoto, Wow Momos, and Chaayos, among others, the report said.
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The restaurants say that the discounts that they are forced to offer will hurt their profitability and is not sustainable in the long run. They said that it is especially at a time when restaurants are recovering after two years of COVID-related restrictions and high inflationary environment.
In a statement, Swiggy said only a handful of restaurant partners have expressed their desire to delist from the platform. It also said restaurant partners on Swiggy Dineout have complete liberty to decide on how much discount they wish to offer to customers through their listing on the app.
“Swiggy Dineout works with over 15,000 restaurant partners on the platform in over 20 cities and continuously engages with them to improve our offering and make this partnership viable for everyone. Restaurant partners on Swiggy Dineout have complete liberty to decide on how much discount they wish to offer to customers through their listing on the app,” a Swiggy spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that thousands of partners continue to join Swiggy Dineout each month and list on Swiggy Dineout and only a handful of restaurant partners have expressed their desire to delist from the platform. “We continue to engage with restaurant partners and NRAI representatives to revisit their choices.”
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NRAI Vice-President Sagar Daryani said, “We are very clear that we’re completely against deep discounting. From what we understand currently, Eazydiner is more of a reservation platform that offers cashback that are sponsored by credit card companies and not by restaurants… Our focus is currently on Zomato Pay and Swiggy Dineout as we fear that these platforms are going to make the dine-in business largely discount & deal centric for the fraternity which is anyways struggling with thin margins post-Covid & food inflation on account of the recent war. We haven’t advised our members to log off from EazyDiner yet, but if we see deep discounting happening there too, we will log out from there, too.”
