The online restaurant discovery and food ordering platform has waived off 'per cover' fee or platform fee for restaurants
The online restaurant discovery and food ordering platform has waived off 'per cover' fee or platform fee for restaurants

Zomato is using every trick in the book to stay ahead in the food tech race against Naspers-backed swiggy. To strengthen its most recent offering, the online restaurant discovery and food ordering platform has waived off ‘per cover’ fee or platform fee for restaurants that enable table reservations through Zomato.

CEO, Dependra Goyal said “Retrospectively from June 1, 2017 onward, our restaurant partners will not need to pay a “per cover” fee or even a platform fee to accept seamless digital table reservations from Zomato. Yes, the service will be completely free.”

The move follows Zomato’s 1 million reservations mark clocked in September through the one year old table reservation offering, a move that Goyal claims makes Zomato the largest in 3 of the 4 countries where the service is available.

Currently Zomato offers table reservation services across 10,000 restaurants in India, UAE, Philippines and Australia. Overall, Zomato has over 25,000 restaurants listed on its platform of which 7,500 are exclusive.

The Info Edge-backed firm is betting on the move to waive reservation fees to help onboard more restaurants for this service as it looks to strengthen its muscle against Swiggy which currently has 18,000 restaurants for delivery 
and listings on its platform.

Zomato has been offering incentives to restaurants to bolster its various businesses beyond listings as well. ET had reported last month that the online food ordering platform had changed its commission structure for restaurant partners waiving off commission charges for restaurants clocking over 50 orders a week.

The food ordering business which forms about 20-25% of Zomato’s revenues helps the platform clock 3 million orders a month, falling short of Swiggy’s 4 million monthly orders.

 
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