SROYS

Every now and then there is a company which has the potential to change or rather inspire quality by showing organizations a promise of more business. Zomato is right now at that place, where they have a statistically significant amount of data on Indian restaurants to help create a change.

Not many years ago - eating out in India was almost always concluded with some form of unhappy abdominal pressure. Having the restaurants care about a rating will make them cleaner and possibly even make them look into innovating unique offerings. But there seems to be some fundamental problem in the system of rating and this can be improved in some ways… It’s a long list but please read slowly and carefully to understand the ideas…

• Getting people to give a simple star rating is a good start but it’s not sufficient - have a link appear after the initial rating asking people if they would like to subscribe and rate the various aspects. Show them the aspects - ambiance, customer care, food quality, kitchen cleanliness etc. Make them register to make specific changes & get specific interest details - that way you get more people to come back when you send them promotions about the kind of food they like - ask for their permission and interests first.
  
  
• Restaurants will be more keen on getting registered if they are shown clear indications that the site is giving them more business. Include a way on your mobile app for the user to get a photo of them clicked by someone in front of the restaurant and post it to the restaurant listing. Allow only positive photo votes - so it works like - the more photo votes you have the better you probably are.
  
  Let the listing owner remove any photos they want. This way you will remove the fear from the restaurants perspective for negative votes. Give people an easy way to post the photo simultaneously to their social networks like facebook, Instagram, twitter via checking simple check boxes.
  
  
• Add focus on important aspects like locality, cleanliness, chef credentials, manager speak, special events. Inspire these places to be more interactive with their customers and be more open. Create chef channels where users can immediately send a “Pat on the back” if they like the food. Almost everyone will have an Android phone soon - so create that app first and promote it among the chefs so they get the feeling that they are doing an important job. If you can get the chefs and the owners to care - people will have a valid way to send feedback and will automatically embrace this.
  
  
• Allow users to upload water marked (zomato plus restaurant name, address) images of the food they are eating. Again allow the listing owner to remove anything they want to remove from their listing.
  
  
• Create an app specially for the restaurant manager to keep track of their listings - to view their position add/edit details, view/remove social photos etc. The more feedback you are able to provide them directly the more connected they will feel to this service - the more people will care.
  
  
• Use the foursquare model and create a community around locations with mayors (big foodie, giant foodie etc). People will care for these positions as they want to feel important and will create regular updates on places. Make it so that no one misuses these powers to harass restaurants (very important).
  
  
• Let these restaurants send out special promotions to carefully curated lists of people (the list you created when you asked people for their interests) who are in the locality and like certain kinds of cuisine. Charge them per email. Automate this process as much as possible so you make the highest profit and don’t need to add staff to get this done. Have a help desk maybe and teach the restaurants how to do these promotions themselves by creating visual “how to” guides and possibly a telephone help desk for the people who are just not able to do it.
  
  
• Simplify the process of getting listed - create steps to get them on quickly. The on boarding process can be much simpler. Ask them to fill in the details and upload everything themselves and then review the listing and ask for corrections. Don’t first ask them to copy paste the form into excel and email you. Just because you think they can’t do it yet is not reason enough to not make them learn - it’ll work to your benefit in the long run. Create an interface that is intuitive -  provide language translations and helpful tool tips.
  
  
• Keep cost to the minimum and create a community around your site to make your voters tell restaurant owners about you. The more real interactions you can provide the more you will be known.
  
  
• Now that you have the largest database of listings - you should move into creating an intuitive interface for online ordering. There needs to be an app on both sides - easy ordering on customer’s side and easy editing of the menu/prices on the manager’s side. Keep a fee for yourself - another revenue stream. There is of course a lot of things that need to be taken care of inside the ordering application.
  
  
• Allow future checkin to the restaurants and give the option to the owner to display it on their listing (option because they may not have many checkins and may not want to display it) - something like 16 people are having dinner here tonight. Again give options to update foursquare and facebook checkin system (and twitter post) to make the event social. Privacy is a concern here so see if there’s a way that users can choose the group to which to post the event.
  
  
• One of things I find missing is crowd demographics - the social sharing of the photos will tackle the problem to some extent but there should be some classification of what kind of place it is. Is it suitable for family outings or is it a teens place, easy access for the elderly, play area… many such things. There needs to be some sort of easy categorization for such details.
  
  
• Food is something very personal and has the ability to give people a lot of joy. When I go to a restaurant I want to see that the people serving the food are excited about it - I want it to be festive and not some dull experience of eating with some nice background music. Unfortunately I find this to be very rare.
  
  Zomato should try to think of ways for these restaurant owners to liven up their service so there is more and more reason to go out to eat and experience different cultures (without worrying about health hazards). A kind of a revolution for restaurants in India. Absolutely NO ONE is doing this or have the capability to promote new ideas. If Zomato can create a team and an advisory blog for restaurants to help create new fun ideas it would really be awesome.
  
  There is one restaurant in Gurgaon which created a jungle safari atmosphere - but when we went there we found the place sticking of alcohol - clearly the idea was not followed through properly. Creating a support service for restaurants will help Zomato really stand out in this niche.
  
  
• Get into listing and rating of catering services and event locations - we do not have enough data on either - we are never really making an informed decision in these matters.
  
  (List may get updated if something else comes up)