For days, social media has been flooded with posts about unusual listings on Zomato in Chandigarh, where “single-dish” restaurants were spotted selling items with bizarre names like “Naughty Strawberry” and “Merry Berry” and that too at sky-high prices. Believe it or not!
These listings stirred suspicions about potential misuse of the platform, leading to a public outcry and mounting pressure for Zomato to take action.
Responding to these concerns, Zomato addressed the controversy on X (formerly Twitter), announcing a major crackdown on potentially fraudulent listings. Zomato shared that they had delisted all flagged restaurants and committed to a broader investigation to assess other limited-menu restaurants on the platform.
Zomato’s statement on X read:
“We have noticed social media conversations around single-dish restaurants listed on Zomato. We have identified all such restaurants that were potentially fraudulent and have delisted them from our platform. To solve this more comprehensively, we have also investigated all other restaurants which have a very limited menu on Zomato and might have listed prohibited items or worked around a way to list prohibited items.”
The food delivery company also clarified its regulatory policies, emphasizing that all restaurants must hold a valid Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) license and comply with strict guidelines that prohibit items like alcohol and tobacco. Despite these checks, some restaurants found loopholes to list unconventional and potentially suspicious items by masking them under harmless-sounding names.
Zomato explained:
“As per our policy, all restaurants listed on Zomato need to have a FSSAI license, and we also actively block items such as alcohol, cigarettes/cigars/vapes from being listed on our platform. However, the restaurants highlighted were able to game our checks by using generic food names such as, ‘Naughty Strawberry,’ ‘Merry Berry’.”
In its closing remarks, Zomato assured users that it has now reinforced its fraud-detection measures to identify similar cases proactively and prevent misuse of the platform in the future.
“We have further strengthened our fraud checks to proactively identify such cases to avoid similar incidents in the future.”