Zomato launches 'Pure Veg Fleet' for vegetarian customers

Bengaluru: Food delivery platform Zomato on Tuesday introduced a Pure Veg Fleet within its delivery network, that will cater to users that are staunch vegetarian, chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal informed on Twitter. For interested users, the platform will introduce a pure veg mode where only the restaurants in this category will be visible. The feature will be rolled out across the country in a phased manner over the next few weeks.

“India has the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world, and one of the most important feedback we’ve gotten from them is that they are very particular about how their food is cooked, and how their food is handled,” Goyal tweeted, adding that the new features have been added keeping in mind the dietary preferences of purely vegetarian consumers.

As per Goyal, the pure veg fleet will be dedicated solely for such orders. “This means that a non-veg meal, or even a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box meant for our Pure Veg Fleet,” he added.

The CEO posted pictures of him making deliveries today with the all veg fleet, which also features a green delivery box and uniform for delivery partners instead of the company’s classic red colour.

Other specialised fleets are also in the pipeline for Zomato, including a cake delivery fleet that will be enabled with hydraulic balancers to prevent cakes from being smudged in transit.

While Goyal highlighted that the pure veg delivery option is not intended to “serve or alienate any religious, or political preference,” the move was ridiculed by many on social media.

“How about a halal fleet and a jhatka fleet and a no garlic fleet and an eggatarian fleet... let's fully use religious sentiments and habits to further divide people into groups,” one user on X (formerly Twitter) replied.

“We non vegetarians need parallel service of pure non veg , we don't want our food mixing with low protein pure veg food,” another tweeted.

Food delivery platforms have in the past run into trouble for accidentally mixing up vegetarian and non-vegetarian orders. In December 2022, Zomato was ordered to pay Rs 5,000 to a vegetarian customer for delivering a chicken burger to him instead. Earlier this year, the food aggregator had also received criticism for turning off non-veg delivery options in certain parts of the country during the Ram Temple inauguration in Ayodhya.