Zomato tweaks its Gold programme, but restaurants still refuse to bite

Restaurants will continue to stay off Zomato, a representative of the association representing them said, despite the Gurugram-based food delivery company’s decision to change the terms of its dine-in membership programme ‘Gold’. The National Restaurants Association of India(NRAI) said in a statement that the restaurants would not come back until the “deep-discounting phenomenon” is off the table. Sources said the meeting between the restaurant association and the aggregators on Tuesday witnessed a stormy exchange between the restaurant owners and Zomato.

The NRAI is believed to have rejected the proposal forwarded by Zomato and is said to be upset that despite its opposition, the Deepinder Goyal-led company went ahead and communicated its new terms to its partners.

The restaurant owners wanted the number of ‘unlocks’ available to a Zomato Goldmember to be restricted and want a dilution in the ‘Buy 1 Get 1’ offer. But Zomato has not incorporated these changes in its new scheme.

Earlier, Zomato sent an email to partner restaurants and the association amending its terms for Zomato Gold, which gives customers varied offers on food and drinks across restaurants.

“We are in receipt of the mass email sent out by Zomato to all member restaurants. This is a knee-jerk reaction to the #logout movement and the meeting held yesterday between the founding team of Zomato and management committee members of NRAI. It’s a validation of the fact that Zomato acknowledges the deep discounting epidemic,” said Rahul Singh, president, NRAI.

In the email, which ET has reviewed, Zomato said it would, “reconstruct Gold to help drive better profit margins”. Zomato offered ten steps to improve the programme, which includes restricting Gold usage to once a day and allowing only two Zomato Gold opens on a table, increasing the price to Rs 1,800 and discontinuing trial packs. Zomato even offered restaurants, who had logged out in protest, a free entry back into the system. Earlier, restaurants had to pay a fee to sign up to Gold. Zomato also restricted the number of offer redeems per user to one per day but restaurants want a hard cap on the redeems per restaurant per year.

The restaurants have rebuffed all these steps. The “reconstruct of gold” is another attempt to stuff old wine in a new bottle, Singh said.

Source:- https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/food-entertainment/food-services/zomato-tweaks-its-gold-programme-but-restaurants-still-refuse-to-bite/70780692