May 25, 2021
The hotel and restaurant industry in India is now going for direct online order platforms, putting aside the food delivery apps. They striking upon new business models to survive the downturn caused by Covid-19, and this is bad news for the likes of Swiggy and Zomato. The new solutions include direct order platforms, ordering through WhatsApp, dedicated apps, and even a good old dose of the famed dabbawalas.
In perhaps a continuation of their confrontation some time ago with the two giants in the third-party food aggregator space, Bengaluru’s Swiggy and Gurugram’s Zomato, the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI), has started a campaign called #orderdirect. It held a series of online boot camps to restaurateurs recently, explaining how digital tools and platforms can enhance their marketing and offer better service to their customers.
Quite a few restaurants, particularly in major cities, have partnered with companies like DotPe, Thrive, and other options as an alternative to Swiggy and Zomato, while some leading hotels launched their own apps.
DotPe’s O2O tech platform eliminates the need for downloading an app, offering options to customers to order quickly by just scanning a QR code or via WhatsApp. Over 1,000 restaurants are now using it, including big chains like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Haldiram’s.
Thrive is another digital alternative that has popped up. Its all-in-one suite helps restaurants reduce dependency on aggregators by helping them set up their own infrastructure. This ranges from digital menus to payment and fleet mobilization, and customer data analytics.
The calculation for India’s $50 billion restaurant industry has altered due to the pandemic. It’s time restaurants took control of their own destiny.
Even the well-known dabbawalas of Mumbai have been attached. Riyaaz Amlani, who runs 57 restaurants across 16 Indian cities, has tied up with the Mumbai Dabbawala Association to deliver food ordered directly from his restaurants in the megalopolis, like Social, Smoke House Deli, and Salt Water Cafe.
Pandemic has literally hit the Restaurant industry badly and they are struggling to survive in the pandemic. One of their big concerns was the fact that aggregators who are meant to pick up and deliver the food also control the customer data and decision-making process. Not only do restaurants have to pay huge commissions for these services, but they are also forced to offer debilitating discounts.”
This had led to a confrontation between restaurants and food aggregators in the past, too, particularly in 2019 when NRAI launched a #logout campaign calling on restaurants to disengage from Zomato over its ‘Gold’ scheme. For long, most F&B outlets had no other option, but to acquiesce considering the stranglehold food aggregators had on the food delivery space.