Zomato is testing a new approach to quick food delivery — one that could eliminate the delivery wait altogether.
The food-delivery company has reportedly begun piloting food vending machines, or fresh-food pods, at select corporate workplaces in Gurugram, allowing employees to access meals and snacks directly inside their offices.
The experiment marks another attempt by Zomato and its parent company Eternal to solve one of the biggest challenges in rapid food delivery: reducing the time between placing an order and actually receiving the food.
From 10-minute delivery to food already at the workplace
The latest pilot takes a different approach to the race for faster deliveries.
Instead of asking restaurants and delivery partners to prepare and transport an order within a few minutes, Zomato is testing a model in which food is already available at the customer's location.
According to a report by The Economic Times, the fresh-food pods are being deployed at a small number of corporate offices in Gurugram in partnership with food and restaurant brands.
The company has not publicly disclosed the number of locations involved, the participating brands, or the scale of the pilot. Zomato also did not respond to queries from The Economic Times regarding the initiative.
The concept effectively turns a corporate workplace into a small, automated food outlet.
Why offices are an attractive testing ground
Corporate workplaces offer an unusually concentrated pool of potential customers.
A large office campus can have hundreds or thousands of employees using the same facilities, with demand concentrated around predictable periods such as breakfast, lunch and evening snacks.
That concentration could make the model more efficient than conventional food delivery.
In a traditional order, a restaurant prepares the meal, a delivery partner collects it and then travels to the customer's location. With a food pod inside an office, the final delivery journey can potentially be reduced to a walk from the employee's desk to the machine.
For consumers, that could mean receiving food almost immediately.
For Zomato, it could also mean fewer delivery-related costs for small orders.
A different strategy from Blinkit Bistro
The pilot also highlights the different ways Eternal is experimenting with rapid food delivery.
The company has been expanding Bistro, its quick-food business operated through Blinkit, using dedicated kitchens designed to prepare and deliver food quickly.
The workplace food-pod model takes a different route.
Instead of establishing a network of kitchens and delivering meals from them, Zomato is testing whether food can be stocked directly at locations where demand is already concentrated.
The two models could eventually serve different use cases: Bistro for rapid delivery across a geographic area and workplace pods for near-instant consumption within high-density locations.
Zomato has been experimenting with faster food delivery for years
The latest pilot is not Zomato's first attempt to shorten food-delivery times.
The company explored 10-minute food delivery several years ago, working with restaurants and cloud kitchens to determine whether prepared food could reach customers significantly faster.
The broader industry has also moved aggressively into the segment.
Swiggy has developed Bolt, a rapid food-delivery service focused on selected restaurant partners and limited menus, while Eternal has been developing Bistro as part of its quick-food strategy.
The experiments reflect a larger shift in India's food-delivery market, where convenience is increasingly being measured not just in delivery availability but in minutes.
The biggest challenge could be food wastage
While the workplace model could solve the last-mile problem, it creates another operational challenge: inventory.
Unlike a conventional restaurant order, food placed inside a vending machine or fresh-food pod may have been prepared before the customer places an order.
That creates the possibility of unsold food.
If demand is lower than expected, operators could face wastage and inventory losses. If too little food is stocked, customers may find their preferred meals unavailable.
Zomato would therefore need accurate demand forecasting to determine what should be stocked, where and at what time.
Its large customer and restaurant network could potentially provide an advantage in this area, allowing the company to use historical ordering patterns and location-level demand to plan inventory.
However, the economics of the model will ultimately depend on whether the additional infrastructure and inventory costs can be offset by higher order volumes and lower delivery expenses.
The connection with Zomato's corporate food business
The experiment also fits into Zomato's broader presence in workplace food.
The company already operates Zomato for Enterprise, which helps businesses manage employee meals, team orders and corporate food spending.
A workplace food-pod network could potentially complement that ecosystem by moving beyond food ordering and into physical food availability within offices.
In other words, Zomato could potentially manage both sides of the workplace food experience — helping companies organise food and bringing food physically closer to employees.
From corporate offices to other high-density locations?
For now, the initiative remains a limited pilot, and there is no confirmation that Zomato plans to scale it nationally.
But if the model proves commercially viable, the concept could theoretically be extended to other locations with predictable, concentrated food demand.
Large campuses, universities, hospitals, airports, factories, coworking spaces and residential communities could all potentially offer similar characteristics.
The immediate priority, however, will be proving that the economics work at the workplace level.
Zomato's next quick-food experiment
The workplace vending-machine pilot shows how the quick-delivery race is evolving.
The industry's early approach was to make delivery faster. The next phase is increasingly about changing where food is prepared, stored and made available.
Zomato Now, if the pilot develops further, could represent another step in that direction.
Instead of asking how quickly a rider can bring food to a customer, the company is testing a more fundamental question:
What if the food is already there when the customer gets hungry?
For now, Zomato's fresh-food pods remain an experiment in Gurugram. But the outcome could offer an important indication of where India's quick-food market goes next — faster delivery, or eventually, no delivery at all.