By Saumya Tewari

Review portal for restaurants, Zomato has stated that it will revamp its restaurant rating feature post the Gurgaon based Lemp Brepub allegedly manhandled a group of teenagers who went to the restaurant after obtaining information from the website regarding a Hawaiian Sunday Brunch that the restaurant was hosting.

“We are implementing a widget on our reviews page for a restaurant where you can filter reviews which are 1/2/3/4/5 star rated specifically. Currently, you have to scroll through a chronologically stack of reviews to find out why some place is not good or worth visiting. We hope that this helps our users make a wiser choice, the next time they visit Zomato to find a perfect place to eat/drink,” read a blog post by Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato.

What happened?

A blog post accounting the horrid experience of a group of teenagers at Lemp Brewpub, at a mall in Gurgaon went viral on social media. The blog has been taken down now post the police complaint filed by the restaurant owners. However, the full text can be read here. The post states how these youngsters were mistreated and were threatened to pay overpriced amount for the meal which was allegedly advertised as a brunch for Rs 999 plus taxes on Zomato.

Police Complaint –

As per a Times of India report, the owner of the restaurant has reportedly filed a police case against whoever wrote the blog.

"The youngsters ran up a bill of Rs. 12,000. When asked to pay they misbehaved. I had to come in and call up the police. The youngsters paid only Rs. 4000 and yet made false accusations about us on the Web," a spokesman of the pub said to the newspaper.

Zomato clarifies –

After the blog post went viral eliciting hundreds of comments on Facebook and Twitter, Zomato sprung into action and came out with an official statement stating “Zomato only displays what is sent to us via email by the restaurant owners or their PR firms. So essentially, all these offers are validated offers from the management itself. However, whether the restaurant eventually honours the offer is entirely up to the restaurant. In this case, what has been outlined in the blog against Lemp is that the manager even confirmed the offer on the phone, but refused to honour it on the premises. There is nothing anyone can do about such behaviour.”

Zomato also added they do not delete any negative reviews admitting that they screen and remove abusive comments. They have accepted that the alleged restaurant has been their advertiser for more than a year.

“From our point of view, we run a neutral platform, and letting restaurant owners pick the reviews they want to display on that page would violate that neutrality. For us, customers come before ad dollars. Lemp was a paying advertiser for a long time, for about more than a year. But you can see a slew of negative reviews on their page which are as old as Lemp itself. Those reviews were never deleted and have been there forever for everyone to read. Anyway, in light of the incident and to honour the sentiments of our users, we took the ad down. As I said, customers before ad dollars,” it read.

Deepinder also contested the idea of delisting Lemp touting it as a ‘stupidest thing to do’. He said that Zomato’s aims to tell users if they should go to a particular restaurant or not. Delisting restaurants defeats that purpose.

Zomato’s full statement is available here.

Meanwhile, the Lemp Brewpub has come out with its statement stating that the blog post was well tailored attempt to malign their image.

“Those who are a little aware about the social media and the way it works would agree that it cannot be the handiwork of a few to malign Lemp Brewpub & Kitchen alone. The timelines and snapshots of the social media platforms wherein the hate wave was initiated against us is a proof enough. Our digital and social media agency has assessed and analyzed the same. Hundreds of LIKES and posts within a second of posting the content has to be the handiwork of a full-fledged digital and social media agency hired solely with a particular motive," read the release.

The full statement is available here.