Zomato, Swiggy and others delist over 10,000 restaurants for not meeting food safety law

Leading food aggregators in India including Zomato and Swiggy have come under scrutiny after a video of Zomato delivery guy eating food out of boxed orders meant for delivery went viral on social media earlier this week. In the latest development, over 10,000 restaurants have been delisted by all the food aggregators combined for not complying with the food safety law.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare and a member of the 16th Lok Sabha, Ashwini Kumar Choubey said that FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) in July directed Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats and FoodPanda to de-list restaurants without registration under the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act, 2006.

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As a result, Swiggy has delisted the most number of restaurants (4,000), followed by Zomato (2,500), UberEats (2,000) and Foodpanda (1,800). Homemade food delivery company Foodcloud has also delisted 200 unlicensed food business operators (FBOs). A news agency PTI cited Choubey as saying:

“The Food delivery aggregators informed that they have already initiated action against the defaulting partner hotels/restaurants. As per information received, Zomato has delisted 2,500, Swiggy 4,000, Foodpanda 1,800, UberEats 2,000 and foodcloud 200 unlicensed/unregistered FBOs.”

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Following the issue of tampering food boxes came to a limelight, Zomato said that it will soon introduce tamper-proof tapes, in addition to other precautionary measures to prevent such incidents from taking place in the future.

Zomato also assured that it will educate delivery fleet comprising of more than 1.5 lakh partners to bring issues like these to the company’s notice. Zomato also urged users to bring such irregularities to the company’s notice.