In August 2019, The Quint explained why restaurants were logging out of Zomato Gold, whose buy-one-get-one offer covered food and drinks. The restaurants that left had two linked objections: a 1+1 deal gives away about half the bill, more than many margins could absorb, and it handed part of the control over pricing and discount timing to the platform.
What happened in 2019
In August 2019, The Quint published an explainer on restaurants logging out of Zomato Gold, the programme that gave diners buy-one-get-one deals on food and drinks. It is one of the earliest recorded cases of Indian restaurants openly quitting a major aggregator's discount scheme.
Most of The Quint's article is behind its membership paywall, with only the opening section free to read, so this summary is limited to what is publicly available.
What Zomato Gold offered restaurants
The deal for restaurants was simple. In return for giving Gold members a steep 1+1 discount, a restaurant got the chance of more footfall and more visibility through the loyalty programme.
Why restaurants logged out
The restaurants that left gave two reasons, and the two were connected:
- Margin: on a 1+1 deal the restaurant effectively gives up about half of each bill, and many outlets could not fund a subsidy that size from their margins.
- Control: joining meant handing over part of the pricing decision. How much a dish cost and when it was discounted came to follow Zomato's promotional calendar, instead of the restaurant deciding based on its own costs, its regulars and which nights were quiet.
The same complaints came back later
The objections did not end with Zomato Gold. Swiggy Dineout's wave of delistings in 2022 and the threatened commission boycott by Bengaluru restaurants in 2026 raised very similar points: discounts that restaurants do not fully control, and restaurants absorbing the cost of those discounts out of their own margins. The programmes have different names, but the underlying disagreement is the same.
What this means for your restaurant
- Before joining any dining discount programme, work out what a 1+1 offer costs you on a typical bill. Half the bill going to the diner was more than many of the restaurants that logged out could afford.
- Check who decides when your dishes are discounted and by how much. Losing that control was the second reason restaurants gave for leaving Gold.
- Weigh the promised footfall and loyalty-programme visibility against the discount you will be funding, rather than joining for the exposure alone.
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.