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NRAI excludes Dineout, Eazydiner, Magicpin and Nearbuy from its logout campaign

On Zomato, the apex restaurant industry body says #ZoGoisNoGo

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While Zomato continues its high handedness, other food service aggregators (FSAs) viz. Dineout, Eazydiner, Magicpin and Nearbuy have come in support of the National Restaurant Association of India's (NRAI) initiative to remove the prevalent deep discounting practices in the market. Accordingly, the four FSAs have made necessary changes in their approach and are now working with the NRAI and its members in a manner that ensures a win-win situation for all stakeholders.

Rahul Singh, president, NRAI, said that the restaurant sector has embraced the adoption of technology to connect with guests in the form of reservation, reviews, feedback and personalisation.

"We understand the importance of loyalty as it has to be earned, not purchased through discounts. We thank Dineout, Eazydiner, Magicpin and Nearbuy for rejigging their features to eradicate the deep discounting epidemic. However, Zomato has decided to cut all ties through a statement of their assertion of logging out of the logout campaign. From our end, that simply implies #ZoGoisNoGo," Singh said in a statement issued on Friday evening.

EMBRACING NEW ADOPTION TECHNOLOGY

  • The four FSAs have made necessary changes in their approach and are now working with the NRAI and its members in a manner that ensures a win-win situation for all stakeholders. 
     
  • Zomato decides to cut all ties through a statement of their assertion of logging out.
     
  • And while use of technology is imperative it has to be seen as an enabler of privileges, not a privilege itself

According to NRAI the restaurant sector has been serving patrons for generations without the distraction of technology. And while use of technology is imperative with the evolution of time it has to be seen as an enabler of privileges, not a privilege itself. "The strength of technology and it's adoption is therefore paramount to avoid detrimental circumstances like we have witnessed where discovery platforms have pivoted into discounting ones," said Singh.

NRAI has been in a week-long protest mode against FSAs through its #logout movement. While it appeared that a truce like scenario was unfolding between the apex restaurant industry body and the FSAs, particulalry Zomato till Tuesday. The situation took a nasty turn on Thursday when Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal took to the social networking site Twitter and made personal allegations on Singh's The Beer Cafe operations. This uncalled for naive behaviour has now further widened the rift between restaurant owners and Zomato.

Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta told a business news channel that only 350 restaurants, of the 6,500 restaurant partners, have pulled out of its Zomato Gold / Infinity programmes as against 1,200 being quoted in various media reports. While Gupta is of the view that most of these restaurants will return to Zomato in a week or so, restaurant owners feel otherwise.

“Zomato is trying to playdown the number of restaurants that have logged out. In fact, there is a lot of anger within the restaurateur fraternity post Goyal’s irresponsible behaviour on Thursday. I think the Zomato business is losing hundreds of crores of rupees and the pressure has started to show on the way company promoters are conducting themselves. Our protest against Zomato will only get stronger from here,” said a top restaurant industry executive.

Other FSAs have breathed a sigh of relief on being excluded from NRAI's #logout campaign against deep discounting.

Ravi Shankar, co-founder, Nearbuy.com said that changes have been made to the platform to further empower restaurants to 100% control what they sell and at what price. While this feature has existed for quite sometime, we have set up a special team that will act as a concierge for all restaurants so that the restaurants can take advantage of these features. We also strongly believe that our products like payments and loyalty will further help our partners in growing their business.

As per EazyDiner co-founder and chief innovation officer, Sachin Pabreja, their platform does not have a deep discount product or a walk in product which gives discounts. “EazyDiner as an aggregator has never launched a 1+1 deep discount product. NRAI appreciated our stand on this matter and the fact that we always opposed products where the promise was a 1+1 deal except for a special time-bound promotion,” he said.

Magicpin said it is committed to providing sustainable growth and marketing opportunities to NRAI and the restaurant ecosystem. “As a token of support, we are offering Rs 3,000 of marketing credits to all members of NRAI and restaurant ecosystem for the next 30 days, All interested merchants can use the code LOGINTOMAGICPIN on our website to avail this benefit,” said Anshoo Sharma, co-founder and chief executive officer, Magicpin.

On its part, Dineout is offering its loyalty management tool (part of its in Resto suite) at a zero cost to restaurant owners effective immediately. Dineout’s chief executive officer and co-founder Ankit Mehrotra said the company has come to a positive consensus with the NRAI and support its restaurant partners.

“While Dineout has never been a platform encouraging “deep discounting’, we have always had a ‘restaurant first approach’ and hence encourage restaurants to #LogIn with Technology. Our zero cost loyalty management tool offering to restaurant partners will further our mission of making them be tech-enabled. Together we can bring in a new era and take the restaurant industry forward with the help of technology, discovery, reservations and payments,” he said.

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