New Delhi: Zomato has offered an olive branch to restaurant owners amid an ongoing battle between the NRAI and food aggregators.

On Saturday evening, Zomato' s founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal took to Twitter requesting restaurant owners to stop the logout campaign and urged restaurant partners to initiate a dialogue with aggregators.

“In the interest of consumers, we request restaurant owners, to stop the logout campaign, and have a collaborative discussion with internet aggregators for finding a sustainable way forward," Goyal tweeted.

Goyal was responding to the recent delisting of over 1,000 restaurants from across the country that decided to pull out of membership and restaurant reservation apps last week over concerns that such apps were hurting business with their deals and discounting driven model.

The move led by the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) triggered a #Logout movement against the likes of Zomato Gold, magicpin, EazyDiner, Nearbuy, and Dineout. While other dining apps said they were willing to resolve the issues faced by the restaurant partners, Zomato said in a statement on Friday it was open to resolving issues.

However, on Saturday, Goyal took to Twitter to further address concerns raised by the NRAI.

He acknowledged that the company had made mistakes and “things haven’t gone as planned. This is a wake-up call that we need to do 100x more for our restaurant partners than we have done before."

He further added that Zomato remained committed to working with the industry and making modifications to its Gold membership platform “which will result in a win-win situation for restaurants and consumers."

He said that the Gold programme—a paid membership for diners that offers deals such as one plus one on food and drinks—had been a major hit since its launch, but bargain hunters who had joined Zomato Gold were hurting some segments of the restaurant industry.

Interestingly, Goyal also appealed to restaurant owners to “bring down prices" of the food services business in order to grow out-of-home food consumption in the country. Citing the example of China, he added that while the average price of a delivery order in India was the same as that of China, the per capita income of China was 4.5 times that of India. "It's important we bring down prices to find sustainable growth in the food sector in our country."

Goyal’s response comes three days after 300 restaurants in Gurugram said they would pull out of reservation- and membership-driven dining apps, including EazyDiner (Prime), Zomato Gold, Dineout, nearbuy and magicpin in a bid to protest against discounts being offered by such platforms. What started with 300 restaurants last Thursday escalated to over 1,000 restaurants backing out of such apps.

This led to most companies reaching out to the NRAI, promising to resolve their issues at the earliest.

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