Site gets food orders, avoids
busy signals
By David Brunner
Staff
Writer
When Cary Quadrangle closes its cafeteria on Sunday
evenings, Jeremy Brown doesn’t worry; he orders his food in. But
he does this in a modern and computer-suave way.
Brown, a senior in the School of Science, said,
"I was surfing the web a few months ago and found this cool site, campusfood.com,
where I can order my food online."
Campusfood.com is an online food order-in service
that started in 1997 after Mike Saunders, then a junior at Penn State
University, could not get through to his local sub shop on the phone.
Saunders, the founder of the company, said, "There
was a large demand for this sort of thing at Penn State. Students were
having trouble getting through to local shops on the phone so I decided
to design a way to order my food on the Internet," said Saunders.
Ordering food from campusfood.com is a very easy
process. Students just have to access the Web site and then choose from
the listing of participating restaurants. Each provided local restaurant
has listed its contact information and complete menu selections.
"The thing about calling a restaurant is that often
times you are put on hold or your order is not taken down completely.
You also cannot very easily request a menu over the phone," said Saunders.
After a student chooses their restaurant and food
selection, a fax is sent via the Internet to the restaurant where the
order is processed in seconds and delivered in the same amount of time
it takes most phone orders.
"The service, we have found, is doing quite well,"
Saunders said, "A.J. Wingers is the most used at Purdue."
Purdue has three other local restaurants, aside
from A.J. Wingers, cooperating with campusfood.com. Students can order
online from Bombay Express, Bombay Indian Restaurant and Pizza Hour.
Brown says that he is looking forward to ordering
from the variety of restaurants provided.
"I like Indian food a lot, so I think sometime
I will order from one of the Indian restaurants on line, but A.J. Wingers
is still my favorite," he said. "It is pretty exciting to
order food online."
This new age way of ordering food may keep orders
simple and free up some phone lines, but it is not without its glitches.
Tina Hodges, a senior in the School of Management
and an employee at A.J. Wingers, said, "We get a few faxes a night,
usually for wings and drinks … it is not difficult at all to complete
these orders, it is just that sometimes the order sits on the fax machine
for a while if we do not see it."
Frank Abuasabeh, the manager of A.J. Wingers, cannot
understand why people cannot just call.
"I just wonder how lazy people will get," said
Abuasabeh.
Laziness is not an issue that Saunders and campusfood.com
seem too concerned about, however.
"This is just a more efficient way of ordering
food in most places … the company has had no problem growing …
we are doing quite well," said Saunders.
Saunders says that campusfood.com is a very proactive
company that prides itself on good student relations and cooperate growth.
Growth is exactly what campusfood.com has experienced.
Since 1997, campusfood.com has expanded from the local Penn State area
to providing service to 190 schools and more than 1,000 local restaurants
in 30 states.
So the next time you reach for the phone to order
a pizza or some wings and get a busy signal, remember, that too can
now be done with a few simple keystrokes.
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