Why Some Restaurants Are Using Zomato As A ₹40 Delivery Service

A customer orders one roti on Zomato. The bill is ₹40. The bag that arrives at the door contains a full ₹1200 meal. The difference is paid via UPI directly to the restaurant. Zomato's commission applies only to the ₹40 ticket. The restaurant keeps almost the entire margin on the rest.

This kind of workaround is small in volume, fragile by design, and risky for the restaurant if caught. It is also one of the more telling signals about where Indian food delivery actually sits in 2026. When your suppliers and customers are jointly inventing ways around your pricing model, the problem is not enforcement. The problem is economics.

This post is not a defense of the workaround. It is a diagnosis of why operators are reaching for it, and what the legitimate version of the same impulse looks like.

The phenomenon

The clearest publicly reported version of this story dates back to a 2023 LinkedIn post from entrepreneur Vinay Sati, who wrote that a Zomato delivery agent told him next time he ordered food worth ₹700 to ₹800 on cash on delivery, he could pay the rider just ₹200 directly, mark the order as not delivered with Zomato, and keep the food. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal replied publicly: "Aware of this. Working to plug the loopholes."

That version of the loophole used cash on delivery and rider collusion. The newer variant skips the rider entirely. A restaurant lists a low priced item on the menu (a roti, a side, a dip). A repeat customer places that low order. When the rider arrives, the bag contains a much larger meal the customer ordered separately via WhatsApp or a phone call, paid for via UPI directly to the restaurant. Zomato sees a clean ₹40 ticket. The restaurant nets almost the full value of the actual meal.

It is not a mass phenomenon. It is not most restaurants. But it is happening enough that several Indian restaurant tech operators we spoke to have seen it firsthand, and it tracks with the larger pattern of restaurants quietly building parallel ordering channels.

Why it is happening

To understand the workaround you have to understand the math operators are staring at every day.

For every order on Zomato or Swiggy, restaurants hand over 25 to 35 percent of the order value in commissions, fees, and taxes. Take rates at Zomato and Swiggy sit at 24.4 percent and 21.9 percent respectively, much higher than global peers (China's Meituan operates at 16.1 percent).

The stack is heavier than the commission line item alone:

The base commission ranges from 16 to 30 percent depending on order value, brand status, and city. On top of that, restaurants pay a payment gateway fee of around 1.9 percent, 18 percent GST on the platform's service fee, and a 0.1 percent TDS. In mid 2025 Zomato added a new long distance delivery fee of ₹20 per order for 4 to 6 km and ₹40 per order beyond 6 km. Platform fees have been steadily rising.

Then come the soft costs. Restaurants are funding discounts that customers think the platform is offering. They are paying for promoted listings to stay visible. Multiple restaurant owners have reported being automatically enrolled in ad campaigns and charged without explicit consent.

The net effect is well documented. On a ₹500 order through Zomato or Swiggy, a restaurant often takes home around ₹325 before raw materials, packaging, rent, and labor. That is roughly a 35 percent erosion of revenue at the gross level, on items that may already be priced 2x to 3x higher on the app than they are at the table to compensate.

The regulatory environment has caught up to the math. A Competition Commission of India investigation found that Zomato and Swiggy breached competition laws, with practices including exclusivity contracts with select partners in exchange for lower commissions, and price parity requirements that prevent restaurants from offering lower prices on other platforms. Rapido entered the food delivery market in June 2025 with commissions of 8 to 15 percent, half the duopoly's rates, in partnership with the National Restaurant Association of India.

This is the context in which operators are quietly experimenting with workarounds. The platforms have priced their service at a level where the most rational economic move for some restaurants is to use the platform only for last mile logistics and route the actual transaction around it.

Where operators are going wrong

Two failure modes dominate.

The first is what we just described. Restaurants attempting the workaround at scale, getting flagged through delivery pattern analysis, and losing their listing entirely. The platforms have sophisticated fraud detection. Margin gain in the short term, business risk in the long term, no defensible legal position. Not a strategy.

The second is the opposite failure: doing nothing. Accepting the 25 to 35 percent margin compression as the cost of being discoverable. Treating Zomato and Swiggy as the only viable distribution channels. Letting the platform own the customer relationship, the data, the pricing power, and most of the upside. This is the more common mistake, and the more expensive one.

The actual answer is neither of these. It is to recognize what the workaround is reaching for (delivery logistics without the commission and customer-data tax) and to build that capability legitimately.

The aggregator independence playbook

1. Audit your aggregator P&L line by line

Most operators know roughly what they pay in commissions. Far fewer have a clean breakdown of base commission, payment fees, GST on fees, TDS, packaging charges, long distance fees, ad spend, and restaurant funded promo costs as separate line items. Run that audit. The actual take rate is almost always higher than the headline number, and almost always higher than operators expect.

2. Price your aggregator menu and your direct menu differently

Most restaurants now do this implicitly, marking up app prices 2x to 3x to net the same revenue. Make it explicit. Build two menus: aggregator priced for net payout parity, and direct priced for actual value. Be transparent with dine in customers about why the app version costs more (because Zomato takes a cut). This protects your in restaurant pricing power and makes the direct channel obviously more valuable to repeat customers.

3. Set up a QR menu and direct ordering at every table

This is the foundational piece. Every dine in customer should be able to scan a code at the table, see the menu, place a repeat order through your direct channel for future deliveries or pickups, and join a contact list you control. This is the layer Menuthere was built for: a single QR menu that doubles as your direct ordering channel, your daypart specific menu switcher, and your customer capture mechanism. The economics are not subtle. Direct orders carry no aggregator commission. On 100 orders per day at a ₹500 average, the difference between routing them through Zomato versus through a direct channel is roughly ₹4 lakh per month in retained margin.

4. Build a WhatsApp ordering layer for repeat customers

WhatsApp is already where Indian customers transact. Most operators have a number. Few use it strategically. Set up a Business number with a catalog, automated greetings, and a simple ordering flow. Train front of house to mention it to satisfied customers. Over six months, a meaningful share of your highest frequency customers will move from Zomato to WhatsApp for reorders, and you will keep their margin and their data.

5. Diversify across aggregators including the new entrants

The Zomato Swiggy duopoly is no longer the only game. Rapido is offering 8 to 15 percent commissions in partnership with NRAI. ONDC has operator friendly economics on certain categories. Don't get exclusive with any one platform. Exclusivity is one of the practices CCI explicitly flagged as anti competitive, and operators who locked in are now stuck.

6. Own your customer data

Every direct order, QR scan, WhatsApp interaction, and repeat purchase should be feeding a customer database you control. Phone number, order history, frequency, average ticket, last visit date. This is the asset that the aggregators have been quietly building on top of your restaurant for years. Build it for yourself.

The bottom line

The grey market workaround is a symptom, not a strategy. It tells you that operator economics on the major aggregators have hit a level where some restaurants would rather take legal and business risk than keep paying the commission stack as designed.

The legitimate version of what those operators are reaching for is available, and it is increasingly straightforward to set up. Direct ordering through QR menus, a parallel WhatsApp channel, and disciplined platform diversification together claw back most of the margin the aggregator stack absorbs, without any of the delisting risk.

The restaurants that build this capability in 2026 will not look dramatically different on the outside. Their menus will still be on Zomato. Their riders will still arrive in red shirts. But on the inside, their P&L will look very different from operators who treat aggregators as the only path to the customer.

Build the direct ordering channel your aggregator math actually demands. Menuthere is a digital menu and QR ordering platform built for Indian restaurants who want to keep more of what they earn.

Sources: Reuters, Business Standard, MediaNama, BOOM, Deccan Herald, Spice Advisors, Tribune India, TechCrunch.