A day after a video went viral of a delivery agent from food aggregator Zomato eating food meant for delivery, the person has been removed from the company’s services.
According to the company, Zomato conducted a thorough investigation as soon as they discovered the food tampering incident and found that the video was shot in Madurai.
In a statement, Zomato said, “The person in the video happened to be a delivery partner on our fleet. We have spoken to him at length – and while we understand that this was a human error in judgement, we have taken him off our platform.”
Zomato called it a highly unusual and rare case, given its multiple communication channels with users, who expect the highest standards from Zomato and highlight the smallest of deviations to them as soon as they receive their orders.
While highlighting this as a real possibility for food to be tampered with on the way to delivery from a restaurant, Zomato said, “We take this very seriously and will soon introduce tamper-proof tapes, and other precautionary measures to ensure we add an extra layer of safeguard against such behaviour. Additionally, we will educate our delivery fleet of over 1.5 lakh partners to highlight or escalate any such deviations to us, while also encouraging our users — the custodians of our platform — to highlight the smallest of anomalies to us.”
After the video went viral, many people took to Twitter to express concern over the incident. The company issued a statement shortly after, stating that it had launched an investigation into the matter.
Zomato said it maintains a zero tolerance policy for tampering of food. It added, “This particular incident, while unfortunate, only makes our commitment to fleet training, scheduling and process even stronger. We stand behind our extensive fleet who do the right thing across many hours of the day.”