Food platforms to tweak menu to ‘detox’ customers from discount addiction

The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on Tuesday said food aggregators have agreed to redesign their schemes to rein in deep discounts offered to customers and asserted that discount is a privilege not a right.

The NRAI stressed on the need to “detox” the restaurant-customer ecosystem from the addiction of deep discounts that has crippled the industry.

The association, which represents leading restaurant chains, independent eateries, bars and diners, was in talks with online food delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy for the past two days to resolve the confrontation over discounting schemes, dine-in programmes and table reservation schemes.

Launching a logging out campaign in protest against dine-in schemes, around 1,200 restaurants in major cities had reportedly delisted from the dine-in programmes of food aggregators, saying that deep discounting offered by the platforms was unsustainable and was hurting their business.