Why do Zomato / Swiggy need one or more alternatives?

I hope it’s not blasphemy to ask this question. Many have asked this before but it is still appearing like an eternal quest for the cloud kitchens in India as to when and how will their dream will be redeemed.

For a customer, they came as a blessing and surely for the restaurateurs too, at least initially. For a novices like us who are zero in technology these are the best platforms to be on boarded to reach our customers.

But the game begins then. Here are some pain points of startups like ours that we are struggling with. I don’t know whether this simile is proper here but in order to wash your hands, you need soap but water is a must. The soap doesn’t get applied without water and to wash the very soap you can’t do away without water.

1.??????You are on boarded. They ask you to set your basics right, like properly engineered menu, great pictures and over all feel of your menu. Let me ignore the troubles everybody faces here with respect to this one saying these are initial hiccups. OK. Set. Next?

2.??????Next you will be given no star rating (obviously so) and named as New*. This means you are standing like a new show piece, almost like a modern art and wait for some customers of which very few may recognize you and appreciate.

3.??????You do great work, your food is great and even write a hand written ‘thank you’ note to please the customers. May be give away a couple of freebies. Few customers recognize it and probably rate you but most do not even acknowledge it. Your struggle continues to be recognized and to earn that coveted slot. It's not about the customers here and that is beyond the scope of this article.

4.??????May be messed up chronologically here but you finally manage to get a wow of 4.6 star rating on the platform. You are on cloud nine! You are able to get that rating with as few as 40+ ratings. This means people still suspect you to have won that with your family's and friends' help. Now reach more customers. More the merrier? Not really. You are exposed to more number of people means all kinds of people. People who do not recognize your efforts and people who find mistakes in smallest of the things and things beyond your control. They rate you low. Your ratings come down.

5.??????Accha, by the way, did I tell you that higher rating doesn’t mean that you are on the top of the chart? Never. You may be 4.6 or even 4.8 but you still will be showing up on 30th+ slot in the platform. Only a jobless hungry person who has the patience for going through all the list will be able to find you. 90% of the people scroll down only 4-5 times that is maximum of up to 10-15 restaurants. Hardly. You are not there, you won’t get the order.

6.??????Because you are New*, the platforms treat you like a young boy trying to play cricket with adults. You will be given the last batting (if overs remain or just one baby over without fielding set) and will be sent to fetch the ball beyond boundary. The riders are not guaranteed for you boss, not always. They are assigned for the person next to you who is apparently giving them more business and for you they will show as ‘sorry there is no delivery partner near you’. But the restaurant in the same complex will have enough delivery partners. So it is not the area. It is YOU.

7.??????What will you do to appear in the first 5-10 slots? There is something known as Ads. No no, it is not a part of the huge commission they charge you. That is simply to onboard you and give you business (if at all) and provide with delivery. This is on and above that, you are supposed to buy the clicks. The clicks will be as expensive as Rs 10 or above. This means, if you are New* restaurant, a customer is curious to check you out and he clicks, you pay Rs 10. But he changes his mind (note that he hasn’t even tasted your food) for whatever personal reasons he has, your money is gone. Very soon you will liquidate the ad budget you have kept with few orders converted from clicks. They give it a fancy name – Click to Order Ratio. There are other terminologies that will perplex us so much that we forget the main question, “woh sab theek hai but how will we get our business?” Again the standard answer awaits you – “Work on your basics. Give the great food. Enhance the experience of the customer”

8.??????Talking about the customer experience, the 1st thing that is advised by every other person is packaging. You don’t have a face. Your packaging is your representative. Make it great. Ok, let me spend on the packaging then. But unfortunately there is no packaging that withstands the conditions of Indian roads and the urgency of the riders riding through them. They don’t even care (well some of them) that it is the FOOD they are taking which is subject to leakage or contamination. They have only one thing on their mind. Maximum deliveries means maximum money earned. I heard a lot of cries from the delivery partners also about their employers. My heart goes out for them. But that is beyond the scope of this write up.

9.??????Now when the rider spills the food and somehow manages to deliver to the customer as if nothing happens, the customer promptly puts a lower rating on us on the platform. The customer doesn’t even think twice whether it could be because of the rider issue. No restaurant wants the food to leak and they would have taken a proper care already. Remember the fate of packaging material I told you before? But the customer goes ahead and blames the restaurant.

10.??I know this is already a long post and don’t even know how many concerned read it. I am saying this out of my gut as several of my earlier grievances have gone unnoticed and unattended. May be they were thinking these are the cries of a novice, he will get used to it as he progresses (?). I remember of a movie which shows a jail where the new inmates cry for a day or two before they get accustom with the circumstances there.

11.??You write to them once. You get an answer but no action taken. You write to them again and you get an answer. Aah wait! Isn’t it the same answer you got last time? Then again and again, the same answer. If you wondered how a person is able to remember exact words what he wrote last time, it’s called an auto response which is pre-typed.

Let’s play this game.

Me: Hey this happened.

Platform: We are sorry to hear that. We at our platform make sure everything goes smooth. However what you have addressed doesn’t violate our guidelines and blah blah blah.

Me next time: Hey that happened.

Platform: We are sorry to hear that. We at our platform make sure everything goes smooth. However what you have addressed doesn’t violate our guidelines and blah blah blah.

Me in reply: Hey but THIS isn’t same as THAT!!

Platform: We are sorry to hear that. We at our platform make sure everything goes smooth. However what you have addressed doesn’t violate our guidelines and blah blah blah.

12.??Higher ad spends don’t mean you will get orders. They will give you visibility. Higher ratings do not guarantee you the orders. But they can go down for any reason other than bad food.

13.??Did I say higher ad spends do not give you orders? Of course they do, sorry if I said that before. Must have been one of my experiences. But who will stop me when to stop spending? We spent a whopping 90% of our revenue once on the ads! Nobody said to me please do not spend that. They too thought that higher ad spends means higher orders.

14.??Now you think you know the game and sit with analytics with your POC. Your menu is right, your prices are proper, you have best possible pictures, you have done everything that the basic advice you received from various sources. But you still aren’t getting enough orders. Why? Be ready for the new answer. “There was no enough search for your item category on the platform”. (!#$%#@$%!!)

15.??Again I forgot to mention. Even if you have a lot of money for the Ads, it doesn’t mean anything as you won’t be able to advertise for the new outlet!! Yes, they say your outlet hasn’t earned enough CPC (cost per clicks). But the worst point is that when you, as a customer log in to the platform and search your category item (viz. pizza) and scroll down and down. Your search has only a handful of results and your name is not there! Even when you spend or otherwise.

I mean I fail to understand this simple fact. There are say 100 outlets near you that deliver pizza. You have to be in the top 30 or whatever in order to be noticed and the ad game comes into the picture. I understand this. But when there are only 10 outlets near you and you don’t even appear in the search, what on earth is this? The tech people say its algorithm! Wait, What?

16.??The famous chicken or the egg story must have started from the restaurant. Rightly so. You are new, you have less money. You get less orders and again less money. You will have more money when you have more orders but you will get less orders because you have less money. If its irritatingly confusing to you, let me put it simply. Spend from your pocket till you make it with the hope that you will make it.

17.??If I don’t mention that they are ultimately human beings who have built the tech that they thought would help us, it’ll be inhumane of me. They are the human beings and they do mistakes. The technical glitches are innumerable and we don’t blame the human limitation for that. But guess who will bear the brunt? US! The Restaurateurs!

I know that I haven’t even listed half the problems we restaurateurs face due to these platforms. Not to mention the problems we face with regards to our labor, day to day operations, our own challenges in keeping the food quality intact etc. But like they say “dukh bantne se kam hote hain” I am writing this not with any expectation in particular but mera mann thoda sa halka hua. If someone reads it and relates with it, most welcome to share their experiences!

Sorry for the long read if you have come till here. Ignore my typos and grammatical mistakes.?