55% Say Prices On Food Delivery Apps Higher Than Restaurant Rates: Survey

A total of 55% consumers who ordered through food aggregator platforms say food prices on app are higher than at restaurant, a LocalCircles survey found The new survey received over 79,000 responses from consumers located in 359 districts of India. 61% respondents were men while 39% were women. 45% respondents were from tier 1, 33% from tier 2 and 22% from tier 3, 4 and rural districts. One of the questions of the survey was: “What has been your top issues with pricing of food aggregator/delivery services?” Three-fourth of the app-users are unhappy with either higher listed prices and taxes or both, only 26% respondents had no such complaint or did not want to share it. Of those with complaints, 9% stated that “taxes and other charges and delivery charges are too

high”; 10% said the “menu prices on the food aggregator apps are higher than those at the restaurant while 55% had issues on both the fronts. To sum up, three in four consumers of food aggregator services find taxed, other charges levied along with higher list price of restaurant food (as compared to in person dining) as top pricing issues with such platforms.

58% use the apps 1-5 times a month

LocalCircles survey revealed that three out of four households order food at least once a month using mobile apps. To the survey question “on an average how many orders for food delivery does your household place every month via apps like Swiggy, Zomato, etc.”, 29% out of 12,398 respondents revealed that they did so at least once or twice a month, while another 29% ordered three to five times, 16% ordered 5–10 times a month, and 1% used the service between 10–30 times a month. On the other hand, 22% indicated they preferred to eat home-cooked meals and never used food aggregators. To sum up, 75% of respondents are users of food delivery apps; 58% use them 1–5 times a month; 1% use them 10–30 times a month.
Online food delivery works on two delivery types, i.e., Aggregator and Cloud Kitchen. Food aggregators allow consumers to compare and order meals from different restaurants through a single app. This model is more prevalent in India than cloud kitchens, which are commercial facilities purpose-built to produce food specifically for delivery.

Over 95% respondents had complaints quality of packaging, food

Users of app-based food delivery were found to have concerns beyond higher charges. These included unsafe containers used for delivery. The LocalCircles survey found 27% concerned about unsafe food packaging, 25% complained about stale food or food quality, 25% about food temperature not being maintained, 16% cited other issues, while 7% did not clarify. Food quality and temperature maintenance emerged as top issues that could hinder long-term growth of the industry.

56% received damaged, spilled or distorted food more than once last year

The next survey question focused on “what percent of the times in the last one year have you experienced that the food ordered has been damaged, spilled or distorted in handling by the delivery agents?”
Out of 10,354 who responded to this query, 56% indicated that they had such an experience while 36% stated “never had out food damaged, spilled or distorted in the last one year, while 8% gave no clear response.
The data shows that 11% had a poor experience over 50% of the times; 6% had such an experience 30-50% times; 11% had such an experience 10-20% times; 17% got spilled/ damaged/ distorted food 5-10% of times and 11% had such bad experience less than 5% of times.

One-third were able to avail of restaurant or payment channel/ bank discounts

To the survey question on the “experience this year with discounts when ordering via food aggregator apps”, one-third of the respondents shared that they were able to avail discounts with most of their orders.
Of them 15% were able to avail the payment channel/bank discounts with most orders and another 18% benefitted from restaurant discounts with most of the orders. The survey data shows that 11% respondents “have not been able to avail much of the restaurant discounts with most of my orders” while 45% food aggregator app users have not benefited much either from restaurant discounts or payment channel/bank discounts during most of their food orders. Out of 11,734 respondents to this question, 11% declined to comment.

37% were charged lower than the restaurant bill that came with the food

On the other hand, the survey question on “have you had one or more experience this year with the food aggregator/delivery services where the total amount charged to you by Swiggy, Zomato, etc., was lower than what was in the restaurant bill that come with the food” 37% out of 11,832 respondents said they had benefited on one or more occasions. The break-up of data revealed 20% were beneficiaries on one or two occasions while 17% had benefitted several times. However, a large majority of 43% had reaped no such benefit while 20% were uncertain on this count.

87% want restaurants to display pickup/ dine in food price and online food price

The last survey question sought to know “should it be mandatory for food aggregators (Swiggy, Zomato, etc.) to enable and for restaurants to display both the in-person pickup/ dining food price and online food price on the food aggregator platforms” to which an overwhelming 87% responded “Yes, absolutely”. Of the 10,644 respondents to this query, only 10% responded that there was no such need, while 3% were undecided. To sum up, 87% of consumers want restaurants to display pickup/ dine in food price and online food price on the food aggregator’s platform.
LocalCircles, a community social media platform, enables citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement interventions and enables the Government to make policies that are citizen and small business centric.