Aiming to create and nurture a healthy ecosystem: Kabir Suri, National restaurant Association of India

Customers have seen the same restaurants showing up in the same location while ordering from Zomato, which is permitted by FSSAI however the issue emerges when restaurants operating at night accounting for less than 0.2% out of the kitchens that are registered have been taking advantage of the liberty given by law by creating many other kitchens under the same brand name, with no variety in their products and that they have been cheating consumers by offering them something they do not even offer.

“While there is no exact science to the right number of brands, we believe that even the most organized outlets in the industry do not see the operational purpose of it and customer trust in operating too many brands from a single kitchen,” said Zomato.

The issue came to light through a thread on Twitter, on multiple brands which were operated by the same brand name. On Friday Zomato said in order to put a stop to malpractices, they will be carrying out a physical inspection of cloud kitchens that are operating over 10 brands from a single location. Zomato took the ratings and reviews into consideration which were very low further tarnishing Zomato’s reputation and creating an unsatisfactory customer experience, hence there is a need for checks and balances. The chain of restaurants follows SOPs and consistency of food, especially which also leads up to damaging the image of the authentic restaurant.

Kabir Suri, President of NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India) said, “We will further work with Zomato in asserting whether these kitchens comply with acceptable industry norms and suggest solutions thereon. The aim is to create and nurture a healthy ecosystem”.

Zomato will be whitelisting restaurant partners which will be providing a satisfactory customer experience, restaurants who won’t make it to the whitelist with more than differentiated brands will have to get in touch with Zomato for further information after which Zomato’s team will review the proposal from kitchen space and analyze if it can accommodate to be a multi-cuisine restaurant.