-KH News Desk
Food aggregator Zomato announced on Friday that it will physically audit cloud kitchens that manage more than 10 brands from a single location in an effort to prevent operator fraud.
“Certain cloud kitchen operations create and operate multiple brands that are serviced from the same kitchen. When done thoughtfully and professionally, it brings innovative and high-quality experiences to customers at relatively lower prices as it creates operational and cost efficiencies in the kitchen,” shared Zomato’s Mohit Gupta in a Blog post.
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), a statutory agency, has announced that cloud kitchen businesses are allowed to operate several brands under a single FSSAI license (typically specific to a kitchen).
However, Zomato claims that certain “fly-by-night operators,” who represent fewer than 0.2% of restaurants and the majority of whom have “terrible reviews” on the site, are taking advantage of this legal freedom.
The food aggregator further added, “These brands have little to no differentiation in the product offering; instead they confuse/cheat customers by creating a false perception of choice, while none of it actually exists”
Zomato says it is going to work with the National Restaurants Authority of India (NRAI) and restaurant partners in formulating the right approach to deal with such kind of practices.
In the meantime, however, Zomato said, “We are going to manually check any physical location which runs more than 10 brands out of a single location. While there is no exact science to the right number of brands, we believe that even the most organised outlets in the industry don’t see operational benefits and customer trust in operating too many brands from a single kitchen”
