Zomato Now pilots vending-machine food pods at Gurugram workplaces

Zomato, owned by Eternal alongside quick-commerce firm Blinkit, is India's food delivery major now experimenting with workplace food pods.

Eternal had already called off its second attempt at rapid food delivery in May 2025, consolidating the 15-minute experiment under sister company Blinkit's Bistro vertical, which runs its own cloud kitchens. Zomato's new idea, Zomato Now, removes the kitchen entirely: fresh food pods installed at corporate offices, stocked in partnership with food and restaurant brands.

The pilot is small and deliberate — pods set up at a few corporate offices in Gurugram, essentially serving employees of those workplaces with items from 'high-quality brands and restaurants', people familiar with the matter told ET. A photo of one pod circulated on LinkedIn via user Daksh Jain; Zomato did not respond to ET's queries. The move lands in a fast-shifting field: rival Swiggy shut down Snacc, which ran a model similar to Bistro, and launched standalone app Toing for the same segment, while mobility firm Rapido rolled out its own food app, Ownly. Bistro remains one of Eternal's key rapid-delivery bets, with CFO Akshant Goyal reporting on July 22 that Blinkit adds around 10 kitchens a quarter, sees improving throughput in older kitchens, and will expand cautiously until the business turns profitable.

Workplaces concentrate demand: hundreds of employees with lunch windows and no cooking facilities, steps from the pod.

Vending pods trade the cloud kitchen's biggest costs — rent, staff, prep — for restocking, making the unit economics independent of delivery distance.

Partner brands supply the assortment, so Zomato tests demand without committing capital to menus that might not sell.

After two failed rapid-delivery attempts, the third idea removes the costliest input — the kitchen — and rents space where hungry people already are.

As of August 20, 2026, Zomato Now existed as a small Gurugram pilot at a few corporate offices, with no announced rollout plans and no comment from the company.