Who doesn’t love a good bargain? And when you bag an offer where a restaurant agrees to throw in a free dessert or drink along with your meal order, it’s a steal. But dining in city restaurants just got expensive, as you won’t be able to avail the discounts and deals anymore. In a bid to challenge the discounting practices of dine-in apps, many restaurants in Delhi and Mumbai — this is spreading to other cities too — have started a #Logout campaign, reportedly delisting themselves from platforms such as Zomato Gold, EazyDiner, Dineout’s Gourmet Passport, among others.
#Logout is what restaurants are using to silently mark their protest against membership programs that allow diners to indulge in bargains such as ‘one plus one’ on drinks and food on their in-restaurant bills. National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has called for indefinite #Logout against these dine-in apps.
Explaining why they are doing so, Rahul Singh, the president of NRAI says, “Discounting works in the retail space because brands can limit supply, and therefore create a sense of urgency in the eyes of the consumer. Unlike retail, where the end of season sale is to clear leftovers, a restaurant doesn’t serve leftovers at a discounted price. It’s all prepared fresh and made to order. Providing a 50 percent discount or giving it free certainly nudges the eatery to reduce portion size or artificially mark-up price or use sub-standard ingredients.
Discount and freebies create a negative consumer perception. Whenever a service is undervalued through price distortion, it questions the genuinely of the service.”
FEELING THE HEAT
With increasing rentals and additional taxes, the restaurants allege that the burden of discounts is impossible to sustain. The average loss for giving away such deal and discounts is in the range of 10 to 30 percent. “It’s a valid drive, due to so many apps and discounts, the real essence of the restaurants is getting diluted, in the sense that anything and everything is becoming a promotional event. People chose only those restaurants that have offers. Right now, we are part of all the apps. But my revenue is getting affected. Suppose, if we do business of Rs 2 lakh on a particular day, we end up giving 40 pc to these apps. If these apps would have not been around, we would have easily done business of Rs 3 lakh,” says Vickaas Passary, owner of Little Italy.
Chef, Shankar Krishnamurthy, Fusion 9, says, “When we started venturing with food delivery app it was only limited to providing a delivery service, things were good for us. We are done with venturing with these apps that provides the discount.”
