Zomato CEO clarifies over button mushrooms labelled with ‘future packing date’

New Delhi, Nov 4 : After a food safety regulator’s raid at Zomato’s Hyperpure warehouse in Hyderabad allegedly found 90 packets of button mushrooms labelled with a “future packing date”, the company’s CEO Deepinder Goyal on Monday said it was due to a “manual typing error on the vendor’s side”.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) team had identified 90 packets of such button mushrooms with incorrect packaging dates. Zomato's Hyperpure is a business-to-business (B2B) vertical.

In a post on X social media platform, Goyal said these button mushrooms were already identified by “our warehouse team and were rejected during an inward QC (quality control)”.

“This is not usual, and was due to a manual typing error on the vendor’s side. Still, the concerned vendor has been delisted from our database. At Hyperpure, we have stringent inward guidelines and tech systems that helped our teams to identify this error in time,” said Goyal.

Goyal further said that they are committed to upholding industry food safety standards and are focused on not compromising on product quality at any stage of the supply chain.

“I am not sure why just these small number of mushroom packets worth Rs 7,200 (out of the crores of inventory in the warehouse), which were never going to make it to customers, are being talked about the media, while we got an A rating,” said Zomato Co-founder.

Last month, the Commissioner of Food Safety in Telangana had said in a post on X that its task-force team on October 29 conducted inspections at Zomato Hyperpure Private Limited, IDA, Kukatpally in Hyderabad and “Button Mushrooms (18kg) were found with future date of packing i.e., 30.10.2024 at the said premises.”

“Premises found open directly to the outside environment without proper insect proof screen. Houseflies were observed inside the premises. Few of the food handlers were found without haircaps and aprons,” the Telangana food safety regulator said.