Campus food delivery has been a consideration for some time, but covid has put another twist on the need for a food delivery option on campus. In many instances if students must quarantine, the campus must provide a way for them to get essentials like food without leaving their rooms. Covid aside, food delivery on campus can benefit numerous other students and staff. From studying in the library, to having staff meetings – food delivery allows students an extra level of convenience.
In our app, users have the option to choose between pickup or delivery based on your configuration. On the checkout screen, users are asked to select their location for delivery. Based on the delivery spot configuration, users will select from a list of locations.
Delivery Options to Consider
When it comes to the best method for delivering meals across campus, there are a few options to consider. We’re seeing an uptick in door-to-door delivery, drop off spots, and delivery robots. Hangry strongly believes drop off spots are the way to go, as they are the most economical and scalable.
Door-to-Door Food Delivery
Many campuses are vast and spread out across numerous blocks. Even if a campus is on the smaller side, it will typically have a building with several floors. This makes options like door-to-door delivery and robots less than ideal. Door-to-door delivery is expensive and time consuming, especially when you consider the average campus meal is around $10. A typical campus would need to have an army of staff to accommodate door-to-door delivery. This results in higher staffing costs. It would also take a lot of time to execute delivery, especially with larger campuses.
Delivery Robots
As for robots, they certainly are a neat idea in terms of the technology. However, their cost is relatively high, and they can only do so many deliveries per hour. Not to mention, they have limited capacity to fit food items. On top of that, the speed of a robot is also limited – it needs to be slow enough so as not to make a mess of the food order, and may get stuck in foot traffic during the class exit rush. That speed is likely a lot slower than a human’s walking pace. In addition, large campuses would need a significant number of robots to cover ground. Can 40 robots deliver to 20,000 hangry students? Even with all those robots, it’s not likely they can navigate a building with multiple floors.
Delivery Spots
Incorporating delivery spots is a great way to include delivery for customers, while mitigating the potential pitfalls of other options. Having centralized pickup spots allows your staff to minimize the number of locations they would need to visit. Instead of going door-to-door, they can deliver in batches to designated drop off areas. Our backend dashboard allows for extremely flexible configuration. You’re able to designate delivery spots as buildings, floors, rooms, etc. on campus. You can also set specific hours for delivery, which can be separate from your restaurant location’s pick-up hours. Schedules can be attached to delivery spots, making them automatically available or unavailable based on the schedule rotation — e.g. only available during dinner. Read more about delivery configuration in our guide: https://gethangry.com/delivery-retail-residential-dining-campus/
Hangry provides campuses with a cross-functional, branded mobile app that includes modules for: food ordering, dietary filtering, nutrition tracking, campus-wide loyalty & rewards, rich-push marketing, announcements, surveys, and feedback. Built by us, driven by you, trusted by your users.
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