Zomato launches new feature, Food Rescue, to reduce food wastage

Meals supply firm Zomato has launched a characteristic, referred to as Meals Rescue, permitting customers to purchase cancelled orders at a reduced worth, in an effort to scale back meals wastage.

“Cancelled orders will now pop up for close by clients, who can seize them at an unbeatable worth, of their unique untampered packaging, and obtain them in simply minutes,” Zomato cofounder and chief government Deepinder Goyal wrote in a publish on X on Sunday.

More than 400,000 orders are cancelled by customers on the platform per month for multiple reasons despite a no-refund policy, according to Goyal.

Cancelled orders will appear for customers located within a 3 km radius of the delivery partner carrying the order.

“To ensure freshness, the option to claim will only be available for a few minutes,” Goyal said.

Items such as ice creams, shakes, smoothies and certain perishable goods will not be eligible for Food Rescue.

“Zomato will not keep any proceeds (except the required government taxes). The amount paid by the new customer will be shared with the original customer (if they made payment online), and with the restaurant partner,” Goyal said.

The company will also compensate its delivery partners for the entire trip. According to its latest shareholder letter, it had 498,000 monthly active delivery partners on average in the previous quarter.

“Restaurant partners will continue to receive compensation for the original cancelled order, plus a portion of the amount paid by the new customer if the order is claimed,” Goyal said.

The Gurgaon-based company has been experimenting with and rolling out various features over the past few months.

It recently launched Brand Packs, allowing users to purchase coupons for extra discounts on food delivery from their frequently ordered restaurants. In June, the platform introduced a feature allowing users to view the total number of orders they had placed on the app.

On April 24, ET reported that Zomato began piloting precedence deliveries, enabling customers to get their orders delivered quicker by paying an additional price of Rs 19-29 per order. It was additionally testing a ‘pay later’ characteristic for some customers the place they may place orders however make the cost any time earlier than the meals was delivered.

For the September-quarter, the company reported a 68% year-on-year jump in its operating revenue to Rs 4,799 crore, with a revenue of Rs 176 crore. The meals supply section recorded a gross order worth of Rs 9,690 crore, a year-on-year enhance of 21%.