Zomato launches ‘food rescue’ feature to offer cancelled orders at discounted prices

According to Goyal, the cancelled order will pop up on the app for customers within a 3 km radius of the delivery partner carrying the order.

To ensure freshness, the option to claim will only be available for a few minutes. Zomato will not keep any proceeds (except the required government taxes). The amount paid by the new customer will be shared with the original customer (if they made payment online) and with the restaurant partner.

“Orders containing items sensitive to distances or temperature, such as ice creams, shakes, smoothies, and certain perishable items, will not be eligible for Food Rescue,” he said.

Restaurant partners will receive compensation for the original cancelled order, plus a portion of the amount paid by the new customer, if the order is claimed.

According to Zomato CEO, most restaurants have opted for this feature and can opt out of it easily whenever they want.

Delivery partners will be compensated fully for the entire trip, from the initial pickup to the final drop-off at the new customer’s location.

Food Rescue will show up on the homepage of the app automatically if there’s a cancelled order available.

“We don’t encourage order cancellation at Zomato because it leads to a tremendous amount of food wastage. In spite of stringent policies and a no-refund policy for cancellations, more than 4 lakh perfectly good orders get cancelled on Zomato for various reasons by customers. The top concern for us, the restaurant industry, and even the customers who cancel these orders, is to somehow save the food from going to waste,” Goyal said in his social media post.