Recently, screenshots of the Zomato app showing multiple restaurants selling only a single dish went viral online. Most of these restaurants were located in Chandigarh and sold only a single dish with an obscure name, such as ‘Naughty Strawberry’, ‘Blue Adventure’ and ‘Citrus Punch’. The high prices of the dishes also raised doubts about whether these items were actually edible. Many social media users believed that these were fake restaurant names that were using the app for drug delivery or money laundering. Zomato has now taken action against such dubious restaurants and removed them from its food delivery application.
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Zomato wrote on its official To address this more comprehensively, we have also checked all other restaurants that have very limited menus on Zomato and may have listed prohibited items. Have worked around the listing method.
Elaborating on what is not allowed to be sold on Zomato, the post further said, “As per our policy, all restaurants listed on Zomato are required to have an FSSAI license and we are actively promoting liquor, also block items like cigarettes/cigars/vapes. However, due to being listed on our platform, the restaurants highlighted in our check using common food names like ‘Naughty Strawberry’, ‘Merry Berry’ manipulation We have further strengthened our fraud investigations to proactively identify such incidents so that such incidents can be avoided in future.”
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While some X users appreciated the update, others demanded more stringent action against such fraudulent restaurants.
An ex user wrote, “Good to see an update from you on the issue raised by some users.”
Another questioned, “So you didn’t verify the FSSAI licenses of those restaurants?” A third said, “I don’t think they (Zomato) even visit restaurants/cloud kitchens. Should be completely online.”
One X user commented, “If these restaurants were selling banned items, you need to involve the authorities immediately; mere “delisting” is clearly not enough.”
