The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has urged its 500,000 members to start logging out of Swiggy’s app, Inc42 reported.
During a townhall meeting held on October 7, the top executives of the NRAI said that as starts offering huge discounts to customers making bookings via the Dineout app, it will disrupt the dine-in business of the restaurants.
The owners of popular restaurants on food delivery apps like , , and Smoke House Deli were among the speakers during the NRAI townhall.
Bengaluru-based Swiggy announced the acquisition of Dineout, a dining out and restaurant tech platform in May this year.
In September 2019, NRAI and its restaurant partners started a #Logout campaign against Zomato Gold due to the high commissions charged from the restaurants for customer bookings and huge discounts offered on food and beverages to Zomato Gold subscribers.
“We were successful with our campaign against Zomato Gold, which forced the food aggregator to stop its Gold programme. A similar strategy is in the works by both Swiggy and through the Dineout app and Zomato Pay gateway, which will crush our dine-in business,” Anurag Katriar, Founder of Indigo Hospitality and trustee of NRAI, said during the townhall, the Inc42 report added.
According to the NRAI, deliveries account for 15-20% of a restaurant’s business. However, since aggregators control the funnel of delivery from consumer data, commissions, and discounts on delivery charges, among others, there is no margin left for the restaurants, the industry body claimed.
Riyaz Amlani, CEO and MD of Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which has a chain of 61 restaurants across India, called Zomato and Swiggy “new digital landlords”. He said that the restaurants run by him have been able to show aggressive growth in sales despite logging out of Swiggy’s Dineout app, the report added.
