CHENNAI: Online food delivery company Zomato on Tuesday announced the launch of a vegetarian-only delivery service to cater to those who prefer ordering from pure-veg restaurants.
The Pure Veg Fleet will have green delivery boxes instead of the standard red ones. Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal cited feedback from customers as the reason for the launch of the new service. He said the new vertical is for customers who follow a 100% vegetarian diet.
The pure veg vertical will handle orders from restaurants that serve only pure vegetarian food and will exclude those serving non-veg food items. “This means a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box,” said Goyal.
Most online food delivery platforms including Zomato already have a filter to search ‘pure veg’ restaurants, from where customers can order veg food. However, there have been instances of wrongful delivery of non-veg food to vegetarian customers, embarrassing the online platforms.
“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,” Goyal said.
While some users welcomed Zomato’s move, many others termed it casteist.
Goyal said the veg fleet will not discriminate on the basis of the delivery partner’s religion or dietary choices. He said he would roll back the service if there are negative repercussions, such as residential societies allowing only the pure-veg fleet inside their premises.