Restaurant discovery and food ordering platform Zomato will start displaying fire safety licenses of restaurants on its platform.
These license scans will be visible in restaurant listings on the company’s website and mobile apps.
Zomato co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said in an official blog post that they currently show these scans for select restaurants and are actively reaching out to more restaurants to furnish their fire safety licenses.
“For restaurants which fail to furnish their fire safety certificates, we are going to put a “Denied” symbol on their pages, so that our users know that that restaurant failed to share their fire safety certificate with us,” Goyal said.
This move comes in response to Kamala Mills fire tragedy that claimed the lives of 14 people in December last year.
“This was a deeply introspective moment for us here at Zomato and made us take a step back and think that at some point of time in the past, we could have done something to reduce the probability of such an incident; and that realization pains us immensely,” Goyal said. “Looking forward, we are committing to using the power of Zomato as a discovery platform to bring in a systemic change in the entire industry so that people eat and live better.”
He added that displaying license scans is a small starting step and the company is “committed to finding systemic solutions to these issues” to lower the probability of any type of safety incidents in restaurants.
In October, Zomato had introduced food hygiene ratings for restaurants listed on its platform, wherein it is working with accredited third-party auditors to conduct surprise physical food hygiene audits at participating restaurants.
This initiative was launched in the UAE and Australia region with the company announcing plans to launch a similar initiative in India.
“Eventually, our goal is to make comprehensive safety information easily accessible on the platform, so our user community can make informed choices. We believe this will help raise safety standards across the industry and make attention to safety a differentiator for our restaurant partners.” Goyal said.
