The synthetic paneer scandal was big on X dot com a few months back.
People were freaking out over food adulteration.

But did this actually change how people order food?

Every food delivery company has this goldmine of data sitting right there. They know who’s vegetarian based on order history. They can see if you suddenly stopped ordering paneer makhani after those videos went viral. They can track if you ever came back.

What I want to know is whether that outrage led to action and long-term behavior change in people.

The data analysis would be straightforward. I am sure all food delivery apps already tag users as vegetarian or non-vegetarian based on their order history. They should look at ordering patterns before and after the scandal.

If there was a dip, how big was it? Furthermore, they should examine order frequency of different cohorts, basket value (maybe they order fewer items), and specific dishes where they assume there might be adulteration.

Did they switch categories? Maybe non-vegetarians who ordered veg items from time to time stopped ordering veg items? Perhaps they still ordered veg items, but not paneer?

For different segments: Heavy, Medium, and Light food delivery users, whose behavior changed the most? Did people replace paneer with tofu, mushroom, soy, or other vegetarian alternatives, or did they stop ordering (cut ordering frequency) for a while?

Did these food delivery platforms measure weeks for: percentage of users who returned to old patterns, percentage who never came back, and percentage who stayed off food but migrated to groceries and cooking at home?

People who were heavy users, say ordering five times a week, cannot suddenly change their behavior and replace all these orders by cooking these meals. Convenience usually wins. If they hired a cook, and in India you can always get a cook, did they drop off completely from these platforms or did they continue to order occasionally?

Did their behavior shift from ordering from new restaurants to older, more established ones where trust is higher? Are they now ordering more from higher priced restaurants, assuming that better quality ingredients are used and the risk of adulteration is lower?

Did cloud kitchens suffer more than established restaurants? Did some places advertise “100% pure paneer”? Maybe they should have.

Now comes the most interesting part.

Most of these delivery apps aren’t just food delivery anymore. They’re super apps with grocery delivery. Swiggy has Instamart. Zomato has Blinkit. Zepto has Zepto Cafe & Zepto. So when someone stops ordering cooked paneer from restaurants, do they start buying raw paneer from the grocery side?

Do they trust Amul paneer from the grocery section of the super app but not restaurant paneer?

Did trusted labels (Amul, Mother Dairy) see higher sales in groceries over generic paneer? Do people lose trust in in-house brands of these super apps?

Even more interesting: what if more and more systemic gaps don’t lead to outrage, but instead lead to people just giving up? What if there’s a threshold after which people stop caring entirely, and start accepting it all as “the cost of living in India”?

A bridge collapses. A plane crashes. Food adulteration hits the news again. People panic, but for a bit. They complain on Twitter. They protest by posting memes. And then? They go into “fuck it” mode because they feel like they have no control. And when you feel powerless long enough, you don’t resist, you rationalise. “Everything is broken anyway.” Why care so much? Why not just order that Paneer Manchurian from the nearby place at 30% discount? They order from the same old restaurants again. They eat the same cheap adulterated paneer. Life goes on.

What if it’s not convenience that brings people back to their old behavior? It’s resignation.

So yeah, I want to see how long did user behavior go back to baseline. And for how many people the ordering frequency changed permanently.

I think people have short memories. My hypothesis is that heavy users come back fastest. They’re addicted to convenience. Light users might stay away, cut ordering frequency permanently because they have alternatives.

Maybe people didn’t stop ordering. They just switched items. No more paneer butter masala, but the chicken tikka orders went up. That’s not a trust issue with the platform. That’s a trust issue with a specific ingredient.

The cross-platform data would be fascinating. If someone stops ordering food from the food delivery product but their grocery orders went up, then the platform did not lose a customer. They just shifted spend. But if both drop? Then it could be a trust problem with the ingredient, how the sourcing was done, or maybe it is a brand problem. And these super apps need to regain trust.

What about the people who complained loudly on social media? Did their behavior actually change? (Food delivery apps won’t have this data though.)

This kind of analysis could influence product strategy. If people trust groceries more than restaurants, maybe you push the grocery product harder during food scandals and promise high quality ingredients. This is where having a super app helps. If certain restaurant brands maintain trust, maybe you highlight them more prominently.

Now, if only these super apps had payments integrated too like some Chinese and South East Asian super apps. I would have loved to see if spend moved offline. People ordered less, be it food or groceries, but went out to eat more, where they could physically see people making their food.

Does it mean that Darshinis in Bengaluru now attract more people?

Running this analysis would not be hard. I would definitely have done it if I was a PM at these super apps.