Swiggy expands its premium food delivery service Gourmet to 31 cities

Food aggregator platform Swiggy on Thursday said it has expanded its premium food delivery vertical, Swiggy Gourmet, to 31 cities across India.

The service was introduced in Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai in February 2022 and has since expanded to several other cities like Pune, Kolkata, Goa, Chandigarh, Surat, Vadodara, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Kochi.

Swiggy will additionally launch the service in 16 new cities including Dehradun, Pondicherry, Ludhiana, Udaipur, and more. The expansion of Gourmet, the company says, shows that the service has found resonance among consumers, especially in smaller towns and cities across India.

"We are excited as we expand our Swiggy Gourmet to provide more premium experiences to consumers at their doorsteps,” said Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Food Marketplace, Swiggy. “Our expansion reflects the strong demand for premium dining options and we are committed to partnering with more restaurants to provide unique and tempting offers exclusively available on our platform.”

This comes days after Swiggy closed down its premium grocery delivery offering, Handpicked, just six month after it was introduced as a pilot in Bengaluru.

Swiggy claims that Gourmet, which currently has more than 2000 brands and over 5000 restaurants under its banner, has played a significant role in the growth of several restaurants across Bangalore, Mumbai, and NCR, such as ITC Master Chef Creations, Smoke House Deli, Brik Oven, Pizza Bakery, Good Flipping Burgers, and Maiz Mexican Kitchen, among other.

On an average, the company says that these restaurants have seen a 48 per cent increase in the number of orders since partnering with Swiggy Gourmet. 

The firm recently started charging its users across the board a Rs 2 platform fee that drew the ire of many Swiggy users, as it looks to put a leash on its expenses.

Swiggy has also been undertaking retrenchments as it eyes a public listing. The food aggregator had laid off 380 employees from its workforce of 6000 in January, citing challenging macroeconomic conditions and a slowdown in the growth of its food delivery business.

Besides the layoffs the company had also shut down its meat marketplace as it failed to achieve a proper “product fit.” Two months later, in March, Swiggy also sold its cloud kitchen business, Swiggy Access, to Kitchens@ in a share-swap deal, through which it rented out kitchen spaces to restaurants.