Online food delivery App Zomato on Tuesday announced the launch of its new service 'Pure Veg Mode' to cater customers who have pure vegetarian dietary preferences.
Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal took to social media platform X and announced the launch of the new service. In a series of posts, Deepinder Goyal said, "India has the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world, and one of the most important feedback we’ve gotten from them is that they are very particular about how their food is cooked, and how their food is handled."
"To solve for their dietary preferences, we are today, launching a “Pure Veg Mode" along with a “Pure Veg Fleet” on Zomato, for customers who have a 100 per cent vegetarian dietary preference," he said.
"Pure Veg Mode will consist of a curation of restaurants that serve only pure vegetarian food, and will exclude all restaurants which serve any non-veg food item. Our dedicated Pure Veg Fleet will only serve orders from these pure veg restaurants. This means that a non-veg meal, or even a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box meant for our Pure Veg Fleet," Goyal informed.
"Please note that this Pure Veg Mode, or the Pure Veg Fleet doesn’t serve or alienate any religious, or political preference," he added.
Deepinder Goyal further informed customers about other initiatives that will be coming up in future. He said, "In the future, we plan to add more specialised fleets for special customer needs. For example, there's a special cake delivery fleet coming up with hydraulic balancers which prevent your cake from getting smudged during delivery."
"This feature will see a phased roll-out across the country in the next few weeks. We remain committed to listening to our customers, and serving our community in the best possible way," Goyal further said.
However, Zomato's move to launch "Pure Veg Mode" with "Pure Veg Fleet" received a mix response on the internet. Many people appreciated the new service while many questioned it. Let's take a look at some reactions.
A user named Kamal Kumar wrote on X, "True. Vegetarians feel most comfortable in eating and ordering from ONLY VEGETARIAN restaurants. The biggest concern is how their foods are handled. Whether separate utensils and oils are used or not?"
Taking a dig at Zomato's new service, a user named Mukesh wrote on X, "We non vegetarians need parallel service of pure non veg , we don't want out food mixing with low protein pure veg food."
Another user Shashank Shekhar Jha wrote on X, "Many time, non-vegetarian food used to get delivered to customers ordering vegetarian food.
Results:
1. Difficulty to Customers
2. Bad ranking to Restaurants
3. Compensation to be paid by Zomato
Solution: to keep veg and non-veg food separate.
Good work"
Criticising the initiative, a user named Rashmilata said, "Stop this discrimination...We have enough on this name.. I am a pure non-vegetarian.. stop this veg supremacy thing..".
"This is a great initiative! People's food choices must be respected (mostly)," wrote a user named Chronicallycritical on X.
A user named Madhusudhan ML said, "In one stroke you have captured the hearts and bites of vegetarians!"
One user named Shivani Verma accused Zomato of promoting casteism.
After announcing the launch of the new service, Deepinder Goyal in another post shared on X wrote, "I have received an overwhelmingly positive response on this launch from so many people. A lot of comments from young people who eat non-veg food saying 'now my parents can also use zomato'".
"I would like to repeat that this feature strictly serves a dietary preference. And I know there are a lot of customers who would never order food from a restaurant which serves meat, irrespective of their religion/caste," he added.
"But why did we need to separate the fleets? Because despite everyone's best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the smell of the previous order travels to the next order, and may lead to the next order smelling of the previous order. For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders," he said.
"Please note that participation in our Veg delivery fleet will not discriminate on the basis of our delivery partner’s dietary preferences," he wrote.'
"There’s an opinion that some societies and RWAs will now not let our regular fleet in. We will stay alert for any such cases and work with these RWAs to not let this happen. We understand our social responsibility due to this change, and we will not back down from solving it when the need arises," he mentioned.
"And I promise, that if we see any significant negative social repercussions of this change, we will roll it back in a heartbeat," Goyal said.
ALSO READ | Zomato launches ‘Pure Veg Mode’ with ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ for vegetarians: Check out its features here
