Zomato Vs NRAI: Deepinder Goyal Questions Gold Standard At Beer Cafe, Says Logging Out Of #LogOut

After the last two weeks of constant back and forth between restaurant dining aggregators and National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), the war has now become personal. Following several debates and promises of working it out, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal took to Twitter saying Zomato is logging out of the logout campaign.

Zomato CEO was calling out NRAI president Rahul Singh for embracing “Gold” standard for his own restaurant— The Beer Cafe— while targeting Zomato’s Gold service with #LogOut campaign. Claiming that aggregator platforms were being “painted as bullies,” Goyal said Zomato will stand by the changes made to its own ‘Gold’ programme as they are in the supreme interest of its restaurant partners and members.

“This proves that Rahul Singh, is not really against deep discounts, as these discounts are being offered on his own brand, on his own app,” Goyal tweeted, attaching a statement. “This logout campaign as it seems now is driven by Rahul Singh, along with the participation of a few large restaurant owners, to use the NRAI platform to sabotage aggregators and benefit themselves.”

For the uninitiated ones, the movement began last week when over 300 restaurants under NRAI started a #Logout campaign. These restaurants in Gurugram were delisting themselves from platforms such as Zomato Gold, EazyDiner, Dineout’s Gourmet Passport, Nearbuy, MagicPin among others. The association also highlighted the “unreasonably high commissions, payment terms and arbitrarily applied additional charges” they’ve been charged to be a part of the inventory.

The protesters were soon joined by more than 1000 restaurants. This forced restaurant aggregators to agree to change their features to lower discounts offered at these restaurants.

However, this call out on Twitter raised questions on the impact and the reason for this #LogOut movement. Singh, in his capacity as Beer Cafe founder and CEO, told PTI that the company understands the importance of loyalty “as it has to be earned, not purchased”.

“It’s for our top 500 ‘BeerOcrats’, a privilege. Our loyalty program has been up since 2014 and has 3.5 lakh downloads when Zomato was a director app. As a brand owner, we have the right to provide privileges to our loyalists. Brokers cannot enjoy the same right as owners!” he said.