Zomato has acted against several ‘fraudulent’ restaurants after users pointed out the presence of suspicious one-dish eateries on the platform, the food delivery and restaurant aggregator said in a post on X.
The Deepinder Goyal-led firm said it has ‘identified’ such restaurants, who are involved in “potentially fraudulent” activities, and have delisted them from the app. Moreover, the company has launched an investigation into other such potentially suspicious outlets with limited menus.
“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,” the Gurgaon-based firm said.
The company clarified that all the listed restaurants on the platform need to have FSSAI license and it actively blocks outlets selling alcohol, cigarettes/cigars/vapes.
"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,” it said in the statement.
Earlier last week, several social media users had highlighted the presence of several restaurants with questionable names serving just one dish at exorbitant prices in Chandigarh. Many of them didn’t have a single review, while several others had too many negative comments in order to deflect genuine customers.
Some of these restaurants were selling food items with unusual names such as “Citrus Punch,” “Naughty Strawberry,” “Blue Adventure” and “Merry Berry”.
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