INDIA – Food delivery giant Zomato has launched Food Rescue, a new initiative meant to reduce food waste from canceled orders.

Zomato’s new feature offers canceled orders to nearby customers at a discount, keeping meals in their original, sealed packaging to ensure freshness and safety.

When an order is canceled, it appears on the app for users within a 3 km radius of the delivery partner carrying it, but only for a brief period to maintain food quality.

To protect customer privacy and prevent misuse, neither the original buyer nor nearby users can reclaim the meal.

Founder Deepinder Goyal explained the initiative, saying, “We don’t encourage order cancellations at Zomato because it leads to a tremendous amount of food wastage.”

Despite strict no-refund policies, over 400,000 orders are canceled monthly on the platform. This feature aims to address the concern of food waste, shared by Zomato, the restaurant industry, and customers.

Acquiring a canceled order is straightforward, and the financial structure benefits all parties.

When a canceled order is purchased by a new customer, the original buyer receives a partial refund if they paid online, while the restaurant receives compensation and Zomato retains only the required taxes.

The ‘Food Rescue’ feature excludes items that spoil easily, such as ice cream and smoothies.

Additionally, dietary preferences are accommodated, as vegetarian customers are shown only vegetarian options.

For restaurants, integration into the system has been seamless; they can track ‘Food Rescue’ orders through their existing apps and receive weekly payouts for new sales. Participation is voluntary, and restaurants can opt-out anytime through their app or dashboard.

In addition, Zomato recently launched an order scheduling feature that allows customers to plan deliveries from two hours up to two days in advance.

Available in over 35,000 restaurants across 30 cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, and Ahmedabad, this service provides greater flexibility for meal planning.

Furthermore, Zomato has focused on sustainability initiatives. It partnered with Startup India to launch the “Plastic-Free Orders Packathon,” which incentivizes startups to innovate in sustainable packaging for food delivery.

Recognizing restaurants that adopt plastic-free packaging, this program already highlighted over 3.6 million such orders by the end of 2023.

Additionally, Zomato aims to deliver 100 million plastic-free orders by 2025 and has implemented policies that avoid default cutlery inclusion, significantly reducing waste​.

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