Their discount, our loss: Bengaluru eateries flag hidden discounts by food delivery platforms

Bengaluru: Restaurants in the city are reporting mounting losses from hidden discounts applied by food aggregator platforms Swiggy and Zomato without prior approval, adding to a growing list of grievances against the two platforms.

Nikhil Agarwal, owner of Bamey's, walked into his Koramangala restaurant on Tuesday to find a discount of Rs 80 being applied on Swiggy orders without his knowledge.

"I was livid when I saw the bill plastered on top of the food order. I had not approved this discount. But this has become way too common. Each time, I have to log onto the app and manually switch off the order," he said.

He said he faced a similar problem with Zomato, where a 40 per cent discount was applied on online orders multiple times over six months.

The duopoly makes it harder to resolve the problem.

"If you agree to run a promotional offer on Zomato, Swiggy will immediately run either the same or a higher value offer without my approval. When I ask them to take it down, they will ask me to first pull down the offer on the competitor's platform. We get stuck in a never-ending cycle," he said.

Ananth Narayan, Bengaluru Chapter Head of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), said similar complaints had been pouring in from across the city.

"Our members are consistently reporting serious issues around non-transparent and unilateral practices by food delivery platforms. These include auto-applied discounts and ad spends without consent, rising commissions, unexplained deductions, and delayed or missing payments. The industry urgently needs transparency, consent-based billing, and a fair, accountable ecosystem to ensure long-term sustainability for restaurant partners," he said.

The NRAI is in active dialogue with platform leadership in Bengaluru, he added.

Mounting losses

Managing Partner of the NH8 chain Amit Sharma faced a loss of Rs 13 lakh due to auto-applied discounts on Swiggy across his restaurants and cloud kitchens.

"We started facing issues with auto-applied discounts in 2023-2024. That is when we realised losses on our online orders were mounting because of these hidden discounts. We had to go back and forth with Swiggy for almost two years to get the money back. Only in March 2026 did they repay Rs 10 lakh," he said.

Sharma has since taken all his businesses off Swiggy.

Restaurant owners also say platforms make it nearly impossible to raise complaints efficiently.

"It is an endlessly long ordeal, and many restaurants give up the fight. For each platform, we have a point of contact, but the platform routinely changes the contact without informing the restaurant," said Nikhil Shetty, who runs three food businesses in the city, including Hunan Square in Electronics City.

Owners reported similar concerns with dine-in offers, where platforms promoted discounts on bills without prior approval.

Swiggy and Zomato have denied to comment.