Tired of being arm-twisted by food aggregators into offering loss-making discounts to customers, over 1,350 restaurants in the country—all under the umbrella of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) which has 5,00,000 restaurants across India as members—have logged out of the apps. If you are a customer of Zomato, EasyDiner, DineOut, Gourmet Passport, MagicPin and NearBuy, you will no longer be able to avail offers such as Zomato Gold's two-on-two drinks or a 50 per cent discount by DineOut for its ongoing festival.

The move, restaurateurs say, has been growing from small murmurs of angst, culminating into a final protest that was announced a day ahead of Independence Day. Rahul Singh, owner of The Beer Café, which has 40 outlets across India and NRAI's president, saying it's almost like a mass bunk at a college. "We took a unanimous decision to protest the arm-twisting methods followed by all aggregators. The fear of missing out [FOMO] became an epidemic as the aggregators propelled it. But, FOMO is reversible as we have witnessed in the #logout movement. It's time to ditch FOMO and switch to embracing JOMO, or the joy of missing out," he quips. While the cries of protest started at the Gurugram chapter of NRAI (which has 300-odd members) which opened only last week, within 24 hours, restaurateurs across cities including Kolkata, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai joined the cause. "This was a bubble waiting to burst," says Singh. Around 600 restaurants in Mumbai region (including Navi Mumbai and Mira-Bhayander) have joined the #Logout campaign.