Zomato’s Food Rescue Initiative Aims to Curb Food Wastage
Food delivery platform Zomato has announced a new initiative called ‘Food Rescue’, which aims to reduce food waste to zero. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal shared information about this new policy on social media platform X (earlier Twitter). Under this policy, orders that get cancelled can be purchased by other nearby customers at a discounted rate.
Deepinder Goyal wrote on X, “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 explained that the aim of this new feature is to prevent food waste by reusing cancelled orders.
Food Rescue: How will this feature work?
It is worth noting that under the ‘Food Rescue’ facility, if an order is cancelled, customers within a radius of 3 km around it will get a notification of that order. Customers can buy this order at a discounted price within a few minutes. This will not only help them get food at a lower price but the food will reach them in fresh and untempered packaging.
However, Zomato clarified that icy foods such as ice cream, shakes, and smoothies that are temperature-sensitive are excluded from this initiative.
Deepinder Goyal also said that this facility will benefit not only the customers but also restaurant partners and delivery partners. A part of the payment made by the new customer will be refunded to the customer who cancels the order (if he paid online), and the remaining amount will go to the restaurant partner. Additionally, the delivery partner will get paid for his entire journey, which includes the route from the initial pickup point to the new customer.
Now if there is a ‘food rescue’ order available for someone in the Zomato app, it will automatically appear on the home page. By refreshing the Zomato app home page, customers can see the newly available order and contribute to the rescued food.
This move of Zomato will not only provide food to customers at affordable rates, but it is also considered an effective initiative from the environmental point of view, which will reduce food wastage.
