Sunday, September 14, 2014

Love Zomato ? Hate Zomato ? Now , Karans feedback for Zomato !!

Its been a long time since I started reviewing places on Zomato and my interest into the world of gastronomy or molecular gastronomy ( the new trend ) started  . A big credit of this goes to Zomato in bringing out the foodie in me . As part of the process , not only I have learnt that there is more to a restaurant than just going there and ordering a meal and paying and coming back . A lot more things happen in between all these stages and I am sure , as Indians we all love our food and knowing the places where its served best - just helps .

And in this step-up , I always believe there is no better way than a feedback to make things more smarter and more friendly . After all ,Zomato is for foodies like us and we also need to do our bit for the big Zomato family that we all are a part of . So , here are some thoughts I felt like sharing with all ( on a special request from the team at Zomato : ) )


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Three features I love 



  1. I like the fact that Zomato has played interestingly in the larger benefit of the foodies . Not everyone needs to be a member to be able to read reviews , browse places and check out what other foodies are writing about .  In this way they capture and build both type of target audiences -  Active writers /  reviewers and also those passive folks who just want to browse and pick up a quick place. A win-win for all . 
  2. Collections -  A kudos to the entire team at Zomato and specifically to the folk who thought about this . It saves a hell lot of a time by clustering places basis a key genre and thereby narrowing the search all together .  A 'wow'  in terms of customer experience and innovative thinking. 
  3. Foodie levels -  The foodie ladder is a thoughtful way of ensuring 'serious' foodies continuously do their bit of fair reviews and keep on climbing the ladder .  The four levels are good enough where Zomato ensures that the interest is build up and there are points for everything that one does. 

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Three features I think we can have / refine them to be better 

  1. Photos  - My personal experience , uploading photos is a pain since half of the time it gets rejected due to a lower size file or something on similar lines  . Zomato needs to work to ensure the 'photo' option factors in almost all formats and the size limit something that has 99% success rate .  A big reason why I have stopped posting pictures even though I do click them . 
  2. Twitter -  Zomato needs to be integrated with Twitter as that has a big chunk of audiences , globally & locally and far better than the Google+ . Currently the integration to find friends is only available on Facebook and Google+ . May be a next step would be to have LinkedIn as well as an option along with Instagram . 
  3. Zomato foodie card - This is something on mind for a long time and I feel Zomato should work in creating a proposition for only genuine and top foodies as there way of appreciating them .This could be criteria based  - Only big foodies and above can apply.The proposition could build in plug-ins like: 
        1. Exclusive invites to new restaurant launches in respective cities ;
        2. A fixed savings of 15% or above at ALL Zomato featured restaurants;
        3. Invites to Zomato foodie meets and a chance to may be featured in the Zomato restaurant guide.
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Hope the above helps in a tiny way to ensure we continue to do what we do best - serving foodies and building the food culture locally available  ,globally. 


Aloha on the Ganges

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