Zomato to offer free takeaway to its restaurants

Online food delivery major Zomato has started free takeaway service for its restaurant partners to encourage more consumers to order food from outside, the company said in a blog post today.

Zomato said it has seen its gross merchandise value (GMV) going up to almost 110 percent of its pre-Covid numbers. Overall Zomato has made 13 crore deliveries since March, the company said.

The food delivery industry has interestingly seen average order value shoot up in the months after Covid-19 onset. While the total number of orders might still be lower than pre-Covid numbers, with each order value having shot up, platforms are making more money per order and the delivery business is becoming more viable.

While there has been some bit of recovery, the industry is still far away from its pre-Covid status and also many geographies have been extremely slow to get back to normal. Prompted by this situation, Zomato is encouraging consumers to order online and pick up their orders directly from the restaurant in order to reduce the threat of contamination.

While there have been zero reported cases of Covid transmission, Zomato wants to add one more ordering option for consumers to help the industry to get back to its normal self.

“There are still millions of customers who haven’t yet ordered since the beginning of the lockdown. We believe a lot of them who are bored with home-cooked food will start consuming restaurant food with a safe and convenient takeaway option,” said Zomato in the blog post.

This will also open additional revenue opportunities for restaurants.

Zomato has already gone live with 55,000 restaurants for this service and has reported 200 percent growth in this vertical already. To encourage more restaurants to join this programme, Zomato is also offering to discount any payment gateway charges that are incurred during the online ordering and payment.