A few restaurants in Gurgaon have pulled out loyalty programs like Zomato Gold, Dineout, EazyDinner, Nearbuy and MagicPin, which basically offered great discounts for customers on their bills. For instance, they offered customers – ‘one plus one’ on various dishes, beverages and drinks. Restaurant owners say that these offers are not financially profitable for them.
What the hassle is all about?
The offers displayed to customers were exclusively created to entice them to visit that particular restaurant but as time passed, these offers became a headache for the restaurants. Few offers just completely halved the whole restaurant bill, which was extraordinary costly and unaffordable for most of the eateries. But on the other hand, the restaurants were forced to sign up for these apps, as the competition was tiff and customers always preferred restaurants with such offers, for obvious reasons.
The #logout Movement
The National Restaurant Association of India’s Gurgaon sector has started a movement under the name #logout which basically focuses on giving restaurants freedom from these apps that have ruined their business up to some extent. The NRAI is a pan India restaurant body heading more than 300 restaurants. This body says that restaurants have been already suffering due to high rental rates and denials of taxes, but the increased use of these anywhere, anytime, any-day discount offers have deteriorated the conditions.
Zomato stays un-effected
Zomato says that the #logout movement has not impacted its customers at all and there are still a lot of restaurant owners in Gurgaon associated with Zomato and have no intention to join the movement initiated by a few restaurant owners. They continue to say that the Gold package has been a business driver for Zomato from over a year and they have no intention to remove this strategy from their business plan.
Restaurants adamant on removing such offers at any cost
Rahul Singh, the president of NRAI has said that this movement is just not limited to the city of Gurgaon. There is a high possibility that other cities might also be joining the movement. The restaurants have gone Zomato en masse, which basically means that the customers won’t be able to avail discounts anywhere in any of the restaurants forcing them to pay the actual regular price.
The restaurants are so determined to remove these kinds of offers from the industry that they are even ready to bear a downfall in the customer rate.
