Zomato has taken action against suspicious “one-dish” restaurants listed on its platform. Following a social media uproar, the food delivery platform said that it has identified and delisted all potentially fraudulent restaurants.
Here’s Zomato’s full response on ‘fraud restaurant’ listing
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.
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’.
We have further strengthened our fraud checks to proactively identify such cases to avoid similar incidents in the future.
How Zomato found about suspicious “one-dish” restaurants
Earlier this week, several social media users raised concerns about some restaurant listings that have been offering single items with unusual names and prices.
A Reddit post highlighted restaurants in Chandigarh offering single dishes with peculiar names like “Citrus Punch,” “Naughty Strawberry,” and “Blue Adventure” at exorbitant prices. Social media users speculated that these listings could be a cover for drug dealing or other illicit activities.
Zomato also acknowledged that the suspicious restaurants had bypassed its checks by using generic food names to disguise prohibited items.