Zomato on Wednesday said all its delivery partners will continue to wear red, rolling back its decision to introduce a green uniform for those delivering food to vegetarians under the new “pure Veg Fleet”.
The food delivery app drew huge backlash on social media since they announced the new fleet on Tuesday. The announcement triggered a row, where people accused the company of introducing “casteism” and raised concerns about delivery boys being discriminated against.
“While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet on the ground using the colour green. All our riders – both our regular fleet, and our fleet for vegetarians, will wear the colour red,” Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a statement.
“This means that the fleet meant for vegetarian orders will not be identifiable on the ground (but will show on the app that your veg orders will be served by the veg only fleet),” Goyal explained.
On Wednesday Goyal said, “Our dedicated Pure Veg Fleet will only serve orders from these pure veg restaurants. This means that a non-veg meal, or even a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box meant for our Pure Veg Fleet”.
“Will Zomato now also filter out delivery workers who r vegetarian only to service this fleet? Will @zomato in the future also take customer feedback about who can deliver their food and who cannot?” asked Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union president Shaik Salauddin.
