The Week reported in May 2021 that NRAI had launched #orderdirect, running online bootcamps to help restaurants market themselves and take orders directly. Tools such as DotPe's QR and WhatsApp ordering and Thrive's all-in-one suite were being taken up, and Riyaaz Amlani of Impresario tied up with Mumbai's dabbawalas to deliver direct orders without aggregators.
From complaints to a campaign
Friction between restaurants and delivery aggregators existed well before Covid-19, but the pandemic slump made the question of dependence hard to put off. The Week's report from May 2021 records restaurants starting to set up other options rather than only objecting to the lack of them.
NRAI, the National Restaurant Association of India, started a campaign called #orderdirect. Through online bootcamps, it showed restaurateurs how digital tools could help them promote themselves and accept orders without a middleman.
DotPe: ordering by QR code and WhatsApp
DotPe's O2O system let a customer order through a WhatsApp message or a scan of a QR code, with no app to download. By 2021 more than 1,000 restaurants were on it, Haldiram's, Starbucks and McDonald's among them.
Anurag Gupta, DotPe's co-founder and COO, said the second wave of the pandemic had left owners fighting once more to keep their businesses open, and that DotPe wanted to persuade people to back their local restaurants by ordering from them directly.
Thrive: one suite to reduce reliance on aggregators
Thrive took a wider approach. It offered a single package covering digital menus, payments, delivery fleet mobilisation and analysis of customer data, designed so that restaurants would lean less on aggregators.
Its founder, Karan Chechani, said the pandemic had changed the sums for India's $50 billion restaurant industry, and that restaurants now needed to take charge of their own future.
Riyaaz Amlani and the Mumbai dabbawalas
The Week also reports on Riyaaz Amlani, whose company Impresario runs 57 restaurants in 16 Indian cities, including Salt Water Cafe, Smoke House Deli and Social. He went straight to the Mumbai Dabbawala Association to carry food ordered directly from his restaurants, so that volume skipped the aggregators altogether.
Food critic Priya Pathiyan described the benefit on both sides. The dabbawalas got work back once Covid-19 and people working from home had wrecked their trade, and the restaurants avoided 'giving aggregators a huge cut'.
She also named the complaint underneath it all: the aggregators, whose job is to collect and deliver the food, also hold the customer data and have the final say on decisions.
The 2019 #logout campaign came first
The 2021 effort followed an earlier clash. In 2019 NRAI ran #logout, urging restaurants to leave Zomato's Gold loyalty programme because of the discounts they were being made to absorb. Around 300 restaurants pulled out at first, more followed, and the scrutiny eventually reached similar loyalty schemes run by Swiggy, Magicpin, Dineout and Nearbuy.
Where #logout was a boycott, the 2021 alternatives came with working tools. DotPe, Thrive and the dabbawala tie-up gave restaurants a way to take orders and get them delivered on their own terms.
What this means for your restaurant
- Taking direct orders does not have to mean building an app. DotPe's model let customers order through a QR code or a WhatsApp message.
- Delivery can be arranged outside the aggregators. Amlani used an existing network, the Mumbai dabbawalas, for orders placed directly with his restaurants.
- Think about who holds your customer data. Pathiyan's point was that aggregators control it, while Thrive built customer data analysis into the restaurant's own toolkit.
- Before joining a platform loyalty scheme, work out who pays for the discount. That question sat behind the 2019 #logout campaign against Zomato Gold.
Sources
This article summarises the reporting and guides listed above; the figures belong to those sources and are attributed in the text. Check anything that affects your business against your own platform agreements, payout statements and advisers.