INDIA- Food delivery and ecommerce platforms Zomato, Swiggy, UberEats and Food Panda have abandoned and delisted 10,500 restaurants after failing to meet the food safety regulator’s requirements.
According to ET Retail, the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India’s (FSSAI) review indicted that Zomato had delisted 2,500, Swiggy 4,000, Foodpanda 1,800, UberEats 2,000 partner hotels and around 200 restaurants on other platforms.
FSSAI in July issued a directive to ecommerce firms to remove all unlicensed and non-registered restaurants from their platforms by September 30.
This was triggered by complaints about substandard food being supplied by restaurants and vendors listed on these delivery platforms.
FSSAI said it had shared a checklist of compliance for hotels and restaurants with the e-commerce sites which they can refer for their internal food safety audits while Zomato and Swiggy had conducted internal food safety audits of some of their partner hotels and restaurants.
“These food aggregators have been directed to share the list of delisted hotels and restaurants so that action can be initiated against the defaulters,” said the food regulator.
Additionally, some of the food delivery aggregators have also come together for training and certification of the supervisors of hotels and restaurants.
“It is also the responsibility of the aggregator to ensure that a hotel or a restaurant using its e-commerce platform is compliant to law.
Further on in case of non-compliance, the liability is also of the e-commerce platform,” said an FSSAI official.
FSSAI announced a mandatory requirement for e-commerce companies in the food business to display licence number of listed firms on their platforms as well as ensure their partners comply with food safety rules and regulations.
According to it, the efforts aim to regulate the online marketing companies involved in the selling of food items.
