Zomato’s New Pure Veg Mode: Zomato is known for leaving not a single stone unturned, whether it comes to its marketing or whether it comes to their customer satisfaction. The recent announcement made on 19 March 2024 by Deepinder Goyal, co-founder of Zomato through his X (previously Twitter) account adds to this claim. Deepinder, through his X account, announced that Zomato will be launching a pure veg mode along with a pure veg fleet. This is for the customers who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference.
What is ‘Pure Veg’ mode and how once can use on Zomato?
To solve for their dietary preferences, we are today, launching a “Pure Veg Mode” along with a “Pure Veg Fleet” on Zomato, for customers who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference. pic.twitter.com/xzV9y9IQbU
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) March 19, 2024
The tweet introducing this new mode was a reply to his previous tweet mentioning India has a large percentage of vegetarians in the world and the concern regarding how the food is handled and where the food is cooked has come up in the majority of their feedback. They introduced this green mode feature to solve that problem. He further explains that the green mode will consist of restaurants that only serve pure vegetarian food and any restaurant that serves non-veg food items will be excluded from this mode.
Now coming on to the pure veg fleet, this fleet will consist of delivery partners which will be dedicated to serving the orders only from those pure veg restaurants. They will carry a delivery box where no non-veg item has ever been placed. This fleet will be wearing a green uniform instead of their signature red uniform and so will the box have a green colour.
He added to this thread by highlighting that offering a purely vegetarian option and ensuring vegetarian-friendly facilities doesn’t exclude or marginalize any religious or political beliefs. Although he received a huge amount of positive response on this there were some controversies as well.
Concern regarding the pure veg fleet
There was a lot of positive response but a lot of people had different opinions as well. Some were mocking by posting tweets like, they should have “a Halal fleet, a Jhatka fleet, no garlic feet, and eggetarian feet“ as well and some had concerns about on which basis the fleet would be decided.
Because if the fleet is based on the delivery partner’s dietary preferences then people might discriminate against the non-veg fleet, associating them with certain religions and certain practices. That would be very discriminatory and would not be fair to the delivery partners.
Some changes in the fleet regarding this concern
Update on our pure veg fleet —
While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet on the ground using the colour green. All our riders — both our regular fleet, and our fleet for vegetarians, will…
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) March 20, 2024
Keeping these concerns and questions in mind, there were some changes made in the pure veg fleet. These changes were also disclosed through his X account on 20 March 2024. While there will be a separate fleet for pure veg orders, the uniform for them will be the same as the uniform for the non-vegetarian fleet, which is their signature red uniform. This is done so that the Vegetarian fleet partner will not be identifiable on the ground.
This will ensure that the red uniform delivery partners are not incorrectly associated with non-veg food and blocked by any RWAs or societies during any special days. Also, this will ensure the safety of the customers who might get into trouble with their landlords because of their dietary preferences.
Deepinder also expressed his gratitude towards everyone who shared their opinions and feedback and made him & his team understand the unintended consequences of their decision.
