“On the Zomato app, customers always had the option to skip cutlery with their order. However, very few customers used that option. We learnt that it wasn’t because they always wanted the cutlery, but because they weren’t making an active choice. Defaults almost never get changed by customers during product flows,” shared Deepinder Goyal, Co-Founder & CEO, Zomato that it taking a step closer to environmental cause by saying no to cutlery when you order food online.
The food delivery platform surveyed thousands of their customers, and a whopping 90%+ of them said that they didn’t really need plastic cutlery with their orders. Keeping this in mind, it has decided to change the default mode for cutlery – customers will now have to explicitly request for cutlery, tissues, and straws, if they need it. This is now a ‘opt-in’ instead of a ‘opt-out’.
“We all know that plastic is bad for the environment. But did you know that a single plastic spoon can take 200-500 years to decompose? Millions of such plastic spoons get consumed every day, and we all contribute to it. This seemingly small change on the Zomato app will help save up to 5,000 kilos of plastic in one day – that is up to 2 million kilos of plastic in a year,” added Goyal by pointing that this will also help restaurant partners save ?2-5 (~0.5-1% of order value) on every order going forward.
He also urged restaurant partners to start channeling these cost savings to kickstart the transition towards non plastic packaging.
The Gurgaon-based platform also asked customers to drive compliance here. If a restaurant sends you cutlery when they weren’t supposed to, or doesn’t send cutlery when you had asked for it, please share feedback via the post delivery prompt (asking ‘did the restaurant send you cutlery?’) on the app.
The feature has already been rolled out to 50% of their customers. This will be rolled out to all customers over the next 3-4 weeks.
