Food Apps - Saving Housewives The Sweat In The Kitchen
It’s a hard day at the office, and Shreya Goswami, an investment banker after a grinding workload is left with little energy. Just enough to drive herself back home, but there are more challenges waiting at home.
Helping the kids do their their home-work, making coffee for a weary and tired husband, and looking after other household chores. It’s dinner time, and energy depleted Shreya can barely step into the kitchen to cook a meaningful meal for the family.
This scenario is becoming quiet common in many households across the country, especially the metros. Careers are leaving little time for women. Home cooked meals are becoming far and few, and food apps are turning out to be the family buddies.
Zomato and Swiggy have become household names.
Clutching the cell phone and stroking the touch screen opens out an assortment of restaurant menus. The Zomato or Swiggy apps flash discounts on the screen, some offered by restaurants, while others promoted by the apps.
All it takes is clicking on the food of your choice, whether its Pan Asian , European, Chinese, or our very own Indian cuisine. Pick out the food, and place the order, use digital payments to pay the bill, and in a matter of 30-40 minutes the food is delivered.
The apps are turning out to be indispensable elements of our changing lifestyle, in corona times they've become even more valuable.
We see a lot of improvement in the way food is packed and delivered, plastic containers have replaced polythene bags, the delivered food appears more decent and presentable. Restaurant are geared for a long absence of dine-in customers.
There’s nothing more pleasant than a sit-down dining experience in the cool ambiance of restaurants. Sadly, we are going through difficult times, many still don’t feel safe dining in indoor spaces. It will take time for a lot many of us to get over our anxiety, and return to dine-in restaurants.
Although many restaurants and cafe’s have implemented hygiene and safety measures, yet hesitancy seems to be all pervading. Many would rather continue using food apps than risk getting infected with virus recurrences.
Though not all seem to be inclined ordering food through apps, for instance Samrat Roy Chowdhuri, a blogger from Bhubaneswar, Orrisa, who feels that prices shown on the delivery menu of the food delivery apps are inflated.
He writes in his blog, that comparing the restaurant menu available on the food apps with the menu at the same dine-in restaurant, shows that prices are in excess of 10% to 25%. This is one of the reasons he mentions in his blog that it compelled him to discontinue using the food apps
However, many don’t agree with Samrat’s assertion, and say that they don’t mind paying the extra cost, as long as steaming hot hygienic food is delivered to them in 30-40 minutes. They feel safe and secure, its part of the business model, food apps currently lend employment to 55,000 delivery partners in India.
According to an article in ‘Livemint’, food app delivery staff at an average earn between Rupees 25,000 to Rupees 50,000 every month. This depends on the number of deliveries they complete, and the distance they cover, the report states that this a sharp increase from Rupees 10,000 to Rupees 25,000 that they were aggregating a year ago.
So no one should be cribbing, the food apps seeing their revenue grow, the restaurants staying afloat despite hard times, delivery staff earning a decent compensation, and the women folk experiencing some respite from the hard times in the kitchen.
Even folks with dated history of pairing their evening drinks nibbling away bites of chicken steak or chicken wings have turned to food apps, for their daily measure of home entertainment.
