Splitting Zomato’s crew could’ve driven a wedge
Zomato has thankfully rolled back its plan to have a distinct attire for delivery partners carrying ‘pure veg’ food. Colour profiling could have deepened a social division in India
Food packaging usually has either a green or red marker to identify its contents as vegetarian or otherwise. This helps those who are sensitive about what they eat ensure they don’t end up consuming anything taboo by accident. So, a vegetarian person can instantly identify a box that may have non-veg food even without opening it. These colour codes are well established in India and food-delivery services use such labels too. That’s great. Our dietary preferences are a matter of individual choice, after all, and it makes sense for marketers to ease how we exercise our will. Yet, if we extend the logic of colour codes to drape delivery agents and their cargo in either green or red, we could face a profiling problem that may defeat the very idea of free choice. Food-delivery major Zomato found this out the hard way. On Wednesday, CEO Deepinder Goyal reversed a decision to segregate its delivery crew on the basis of what food they deliver. Like before, all its agents will be dressed in red.
Announced at the start of this week, Zomato’s original proposal appealed to pure vegetarians with a new service that promised end-to-end handling of food preparation and delivery—all the way from kitchens to the customer’s doorstep—by a dedicated staff. This way, there would be no risk of a mix-up, not even of a nonveg package’s odour left clinging to a vegetarian pack. To emphasize the integrity of this new bifurcation, Zomato decided to split the highprofile get-up of its delivery agents into green and red. While the pure-veg service was welcomed (and is being rolled out as planned), the idea of colour-identified teams sparked an uproar on social media. It was pointed out that such open segregation would end the public anonymity of what is being delivered, raising the risk of discriminatory treatment meted out to some delivery agents. This is a valid concern in a country where dietary preferences get mixed up with socio-political attitudes. Think of why non-veg consumption is kept closeted by some folks: there are several settings in which it attracts reproach. Friction over food attends not just questions of whether tables are shared by vegetarians and others, with age-old notions of ritual purity casting their shadow at times (though separation can simply be driven by discomfort arising from distaste), but also residential arrangements. Even in some upscale parts of Ahmedabad and Mumbai, for instance, there exist housing societies that won’t let nonvegetarians take homes on rent. Food deliverers dressed in red, critics feared, could have found themselves shut out by dietary gatekeepers in such places. Closet non-veg order placers could’ve been exposed to nosey neighbours too. In sum, a divided delivery crew could have driven a new wedge in urban Indian society.
The answer is to adopt a Pareto-path strategy that maximizes overall customer satisfaction without doing anyone a disservice. Pure-veg customers form a segment of demand that must be catered to—on people’s own terms. Just as some eateries assure us no contact with nonveg food and odours, so can delivery services, even if it raises logistical costs. This explains why Zomato has retained its exclusively pureveg channel to go with its scroll of pure-veg kitchens, but rolled back the idea of special liveries. To the company’s credit, it acted swiftly in response to feedback. That it could easily have gone wrong reveals a market peculiarity we cannot be proud of. But businesses can’t afford to mistake a salad bowl for a melting pot.