Whose Food Is It, Anyway?
Delhi-based Thomas Fenn has been running speciality restaurant Mahabelly and two cloud kitchens for the past five years. A fairly small operator among lakhs of restaurants, Fenn is leading from the front in the fight against online food aggregators such as Zomato and Swiggy. Fenn is clear – aggregators have manipulated the market for long, and it is time restaurants take back control.
Last month, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), the country’s largest restaurant body, tied up with O2O (online-to-offline) commerce platform Dotpe to “empower small and large food and beverages (F&B) entrepreneurs with digital technology”. Dotpe will provide digital solutions (integrated with a payments system) to restaurants.
Take an example. A group of friends go to a restaurant, and in stead of picking up a physical menu, they scan a QR code. It opens a mobile interface containing the digital menu. The items are selected, after which, the interface gets directed to a third-party payments gateway, and the order is placed. A notification of the order goes to the restaurant’s point of sale (PoS) machine. At the table, the friends are directed to a WhatsApp window, where they can do transactional communication (order updates, invoice copy, feedback, etc.) with the restaurant.
Consumers these days are wary of touchpoints inside restaurants (menu cards being most risky), a behavioural pattern that is giving rise to “contactless dining”. Chains, including Haldiram’s, Social, Smoke House Deli, Cafe Delhi Heights and Fab Café, are already using this service.
18-25% Commission charged by Zomato and Swiggy from restaurants on every online delivery order
Anurag Katriar, President, NRAI, says the idea to create an alternate channel
