Zomato Puts the Brakes on ‘Infinity Dining’ Offer for Gold Users

Zomato has paused its attractive food ordering offer for those visiting its partner restaurants across the country.

Zomato food delivery app (Image used for representational purposes.)

(Photo Courtesy: iStock / Altered by The Quint)

Food delivery and restaurant booking giant Zomato has some bad news for its existing Zomato Gold subscribers across the country this week.

The company has confirmed that its ‘Infinity Dining’ program has been paused, and won’t be available to users through its app for some time.

However, the company mentioned that the feature has only been pulled down and after taking feedback from the consumers, and probably its restaurant partners, it will be back in a new avatar. Zomato hasn’t given a definite timeline for its availability for now.

These changes could also be a part of Zomato’s efforts and its founder’s promise to work with the industry and ease the concerns of the restaurant fraternity, after the #Logout campaign took shape across the country.

Most of you will agree that demand for food delivery and restaurant visit these days have relied on attractive discounts, working in favour of the consumer’s pocket. But this is claimed to have resulted in restaurant chains making losses.

This is what Zomato told us earlier on Friday about the development:

Infinity Dining was launched just over two months ago in three cities with 300+restaurants. The product is in alpha stage and being tested continuously. Group dining, whether organised office parties or family outings, is a valuable large-table opportunity. The very focus of infinity was to enable more of these opportunities for restaurants. 

Zomato spokesperson to The Quint

Zomato also mentioned that after receiving feedback on its two-month old service, changes will be incorporated and brought back to the consumers very soon.

We received a range of feedback about the service and have paused it as we incorporate the feedback.

Zomato spokesperson to The Quint

A few weeks back, as many as 1,200 restaurants in several major cities had reportedly de-listed themselves from the dine-in programmes of online platforms over "unsustainable" deep discounting offered by the aggregators. Restaurants concern was that the table reservation services were hurting their business models.

We’ll have to wait and see if these changes to the de-listed programme satisfy its partners in the coming months.