Here's how the friction between restaurants and aggregators reached boiling point

It had been brewing for a while. But the final nail in the coffin was the introduction of an infinity dining programme by Zomato, which allowed customers to order unlimited meals for a fixed amount through the app at multiple restaurants.

A bunch of restaurant owners met in Gurgaon on August 14 to take the tough call and much to everyone's surprise, they all were on the same page. They did not want to support the obnoxious discounts promoted by the likes of Zomato and Swiggy.

Soon, their stance was passed on to other restaurant owners across Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore and by 11:30 pm, over 2,500 restaurants decided to pull themselves out of Zomato Gold and other deal apps.

After all of this became public, companies such as EazyDiner, Dineout and Nearbuy reached out to the respective restaurant partners asking them for their suggestions to solve the issue.

Even Zomato wanted to control the matter from escalating further. However instead of doing damage control, they went ahead and shot a mail which the restaurant partners saw as threatening in nature. Zomato said that the restaurants will be required to pay up a sign up fee per restaurant if they decided to join back and asked them to serve a 45-days notice before logging out.

"With a view to make sure we protect the user experience, we would request you to let us know proactively in case you are thinking of going off the program for a brief period, as we will not like your users to have a poor experience when they visit your restaurant,"  it said in its mail to restaurant partners.

"As per contract, you are required to give us 45 days notice for this change to ensure a smooth transition for users," it added.

According to many restaurant partners, it behaved in an arrogant manner instead of being  conciliatory.

However, according to Zomato, they were taking the interest of both the parties involved - customers as well as restaurants - into consideration.

"The communication was sent out to initiate a conversation with our restaurant partners. It was important to bring to their notice the contractual requirements for de-listing. While we have every intention of doing what is right by our restaurant partners, we have to do right by our users as well," a Zomato spokesperson told Moneycontrol when asked about the mail in question.

According to restaurant partners, Zomato Gold has not turned out the way they had envisaged.

"When it was launched, it was supposed to be only for top-end restaurants. It was for people who are aspirational. The idea was to make it a sweet deal for them. It made sense that 4,000-5,000 people across the country and around hundred restaurants engaged there. They wouldn't matter to us but then they made it like available for all," said Anurag Katriar, executive director and chief executive officer of deGustibus Hospitality.

"Soon they were also trying to push for Zomato Gold's one plus one, on delivery also. Then they came up with the idea called Infinity Dining. Somehow it looked like they were saying, you are bleeding but I don't care. I will tell you what you have to do. And that is something we are not going to take. End of the day Zomato is an aggregator and and the entire expense of discounting is born by the restaurants," he added.

Currently, Zomato claims it has around 6,000 restaurant partners and 1 million subscribers of Gold.

Soon after this episode, Deepinder Goyal took to Twitter to do some damage control.

"Zomato Gold has been a major hit, but we understand that bargain hunters have also joined Zomato Gold and they are hurting some segments of the restaurant industry very badly. Somewhere, we have made mistakes and things haven’t gone as planned. This is a wake up call that we need to do 100x more for our restaurant partners than we have done before," he tweeted.

He also requested the restaurant partners to stop their log out campaign, adding that, "What's good for restaurants is good for Zomato. What's good for consumers is good for Zomato. Finding the right balance and product market fit is the restaurant industry's problem (and that includes us)."

However, the partners are adamant that they want Zomato Gold to be shut.

"We are not ready to settle for anything less than no Zomato Gold," said Katriar.