Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal.
Credit: X/@deepigoyal
In an attempt to attain the elusive goal of zero food wastage, Zomato has come up with a new policy—Food Rescue—and CEO Deepinder Goyal on Sunday made an announcement on X about the same.
Owing to this new feature, orders that get cancelled can now be grabbed by other customers at a discounted price.
Goel on X wrote, “We don't encourage order cancellation at Zomato, because it leads to a tremendous amount of food wastage. Inspite of stringent policies, and and a no-refund policy for cancellations, more than 4 lakh perfectly good orders get canceled on Zomato, for various reasons by customers.”
He further added, “The top concern for us, the restaurant industry, and even the customers who cancel these orders, is to somehow save the food from going to waste. Today, we are introducing a new feature (being scaled as we speak) – Food Rescue! Canceled orders will now pop up for nearby customers, who can grab them at an unbeatable price, in their original untampered packaging, and receive them in just minutes. (sic)”
Goyal also shared a step-by-step detailed explanation on how this new feature will function.
To begin with, in case of an order cancellation, a pop up message will appear for customers who are within the 3 km radius of the delivery partner carrying the order.
The window to claim the order will be available only for a couple of minutes, in order to ensure the freshness of the food being delivered.
Goyal wrote, “Zomato will not keep any proceeds (except the required government taxes). The amount paid by the new customer will be shared with the original customer (if they made payment online), and with the restaurant partner.”
Perishable food items such as ice creams, shakes, smoothies, will not be under Zomato’s Food Rescue feature as they are sensitive to distances or temperature.
The restaurant partners will be compensated for their original cancelled order and additionally will receive a portion of the amount paid by the new customer claiming the canceled order.
The delivery partner too will be fully compensated for the entire trip starting from the initial pickup point to the new customer’s location.
“Food Rescue will show up on your home page automatically if there's a canceled order available for you to grab. Refresh the home page to check for any newly available orders which need to be rescued (sic),” Goyal added.