Pran Pratishtha: Food aggregators go veg, customers left wringing hands

Online food delivery giants in Lucknow, India removed all non-vegetarian options from their menus on Monday due to a statewide ban on the sale of meat and liquor for a consecration ceremony in Ayodhya. The ban was lifted on Tuesday. Popular non-veg restaurants and international food chains also temporarily stopped serving meat products. Some people welcomed the ban, while others criticized it as a limitation on food choices. Swiggy clarified that non-veg delivery was disabled in certain states as per government notice.

After the state government declared the statewide ban on the sale of meat and liquor on January 22 for the consecration ceremony in Ayodhya, online food delivery giants removed all non-vegetarian options from their menu for Monday. The restriction will be lifted on Tuesday.

A screen grab from a food aggregator’s website (HT Photo)

Not a single shop in the city was selling non-veg items on their menu as all the non-veg options were removed from the menu sections of all the restaurants.

“We could not find any matching results. Let’s try something new!,” read the message as soon as a non-veg option was selected.

City’s non-veg hot spots, int’l food giants go meatless

All the popular restaurants of Lucknow known for their non-veg delicacies remained shut on Monday and were also not delivering online. Outlets such as Tunday Kababi, Dastarkhwan, Idris ki Biryani among others were closed and did not accept orders online.

International food chains like KFC, McDonalds, Domino’s too were open without non-veg items. Domino’s Pizza removed the Non-veg section entirely from the menu, while KFC outlets remained closed. Similarly, McDonalds and Burger King refrained from selling meat products and were only accepting orders of vegetarian food.

While the ban in several states was welcomed by many people, several expressed their displeasure.

“Welcome to New India. Now, we don’t have the right to choose our food. Businesses must suffer to appease the majority. This is a fascist country,” wrote X user, Mrinal.

Swiggy wrote in a clarification, “Hi, we have disabled delivery of non-veg items in Uttar Pradesh, Assam, ⁠Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan as per govt. notice. Hope this clarification helps!.”