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The National Restaurant Association of India has issued an advisory cautioning its members over deep discounting and payment gateway tools offered by aggregator platforms for dine-in operations. The advisory comes when food delivery giants including Zomato and Swiggy are aggressively focusing on expanding their dine-in customer base. NRAI urged restaurants to use aggregator payment platforms only if the payment gateway services are unbundled from the other services that it offers; and makes financial sense as a payment gateway independently compared to other payment gateways. In its advisory, NRAI asserted that aggregators use deep discounting as a tool to attract customers, including the restaurant's regular customers, to their platforms. The customers are then incentivised to participate through aggressive cashback and discounts, which eventually move the restaurants' existing customers to their platforms. "We are fine with aggregator platforms charging restaurants a reasonable .
The restaurant industry is expected to turn around on the back of India's overall strong fundamentals after facing temporary headwinds such as high food inflation and people dining out less that hurt the sector in the first quarter, according to Speciality Restaurants Ltd CMD Anjanmoy Chatterjee. The company, which has a slew of brands such as Mainland China, Asia Kitchen by Mainland China, Episode One, Haka, and Sweet Bengal, among others and shut 29 outlets during the pandemic, is now focussing on profitable growth while expanding its footprint. "It should be clear that India not eating out or inflation not settling down is something which I don't believe in. India is better than many more countries...," Chatterjee told PTI. He was responding to a query on how long factors such as high food inflation and people dining out less after the diminishing of 'revenge eating' post pandemic that affected the restaurant industry, will continue to impact the sector. "It is a short-term ...
Food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy on Tuesday launched marketing solutions to drive customer engagement for restaurant partners. This offering, accessible to partners PAN-India, aims to support restaurants to boost their online brand presence by leveraging social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The services include influencer marketing, social media ads on Facebook and Instagram, and WhatsApp marketing. These strategies aim to drive traffic to restaurant menu pages on the Swiggy app, leveraging hyper-local and behavioural targeting. "This initiative is now live across India. Interested restaurant partners can participate by accessing this service via the restaurant services icon on the Swiggy Owner app," Swiggy stated.
Those who couldn't buy fresh vegetables would smash open an onion, sprinkle salt and eat it with a roti. But even those days are gone with the humble onion just too expensive, says vegetable vendor Imad Khan, recalling the staple image of the poor in India. About 10 km from the Sahibabad Sabzi Mandi in Ghaziabad where Khan sets up shop, homemaker Poonam Singh in Delhi's Mayur Vihar has not put tomatoes in any dish for almost a month, taking away an essential ingredient from her cooking. Khan and Singh may be at different points on the socio-economic spectrum but sit on the same side of a graph that has put everyday vegetables out of the reach of many in Delhi-NCR. While restaurateurs and home catering businesses are looking at how to absorb the extra costs and wondering whether they should hike their rates, home cooks are going for alternatives or just doing without. How can one make almost anything without onions, tomatoes or potatoes? Not that other vegetables are any cheaper, b