Discounts on food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato have dried up amid a rapid increase in demand for food deliveries across states. The development comes even though many restaurants have had to shut operations due to the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Online food orders have spiked as a result of a surge in COVID-19 cases across big cities, as more individuals order food at home instead of going out to eat. Restaurants and cloud kitchens have witnessed an increase in demand for home deliveries.
Since the outbreak and the first lockdown in March 2020, attractive discounts offered by the two leading food ordering platforms have been a point of contention between them and the Rs 4.2 lakh crore restaurant industry, which has been reeling under pressure due to the pandemic.
According to AD Singh, Managing Director of Olive Group that owns chains like SodaBottleOpenerWala, The Grammar Room and the Olive Bar and Kitchen, aggregators are reworking their business models to increase profits as restaurants are shutting or operating under stringent restrictions.
The restaurant industry, which ranks among the hardest hit by the pandemic, has no other option but to depend on online orders. Once the restrictions on movement are relaxed, industry experts anticipate the surge in online orders to decline.
The news comes as restaurants and pubs across the country, including Delhi, where the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) directed restaurants and bars to stop serving dine-in customers, are allowed only deliveries and takeaways.
As per Sagar Daryani, president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), the latest guidelines, which altogether ban dining and only allow deliveries, are completely unsustainable.
According to NRAI, the Delhi-NCR region holds India's second-largest organised food service industry. In Delhi, there are over 95,000 organised and unorganised eateries.
The new round of restrictions followed months of closure during the first and second waves of COVID, after which restaurants were allowed to operate at half the capacity.
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(Edited by : Thomas Abraham)
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