Releasing a long note acknowledging the incident and apologising for it, Mohit Gupta,  CEO, Food Delivery Business, Zomato, called the incident a highly unusual and rare case, saying, “Unfortunately, this highlights a real possibility for tampering with the food on the way to delivery from a restaurant. We will soon introduce tamper-proof tapes, and other precautionary measures to ensure we add an extra layer of safeguard against such behaviour.”

However, several customers claim that this is not an isolated incident.  On Dec 8, Swiggy received a complaint that a delivery agent ate half the ice cream that he was delivering to a customer in RA Puram, Chennai. On receiving the complaint, Swiggy quickly refunded the cost of the ice cream, but did not assure any corrective action.

Santhosh Muruganantham, founder of the city-based Kolapasi chain of take-away outlets, tells us, “The quality of food is obviously the responsibility of the restaurant or outlet. The quality of delivery and supply chain is the aggregator’s responsibility.”

While there is no doubt that aggregators have redefined the entire business of eating out, an increasing number of untrained delivery staff has been a point of concern. Some eateries have invested in packaging that cannot be opened easily, but many small outlets don’t have the budgets for that, and a lot depends on the integrity of the delivery agent – and the promise of aggregators to develop a more foolproof delivery process.