Liberty Dining announces that students can pre-order meals with the Grubhub app

With mobile food ordering becoming more and more popular, Liberty Dining recently announced that, starting in the fall, students can pre-order meals with the Grubhub app to bypass lines. 

Grubhub, a food order and delivery service, will enable students to pre-order their food, skip the line and still receive an on-campus meal. 

“From school, homework, managing friendships, jobs and more, (students) have a lot on their plate and sometimes finding time to eat is difficult,” Ryan Wheeler, Sodexo field marketing specialist, said. “Mobile ordering allows the student to skip the waiting in line process and get directly to what they want, which is a good meal to keep them going.”

The app allows the student to create an account linked totheir Liberty profile and use their Flames Cash, Dining Dollars and Swipes to purchase food through the app. After ordering, the app notifies the user of the wait time and alerts them for pick-up when the order is ready. This is only for pick-up, as Liberty does not use the delivery portion of the Grubhub app. 

After Liberty unveiled this feature this past week, it ran smoothly. However, Wheeler said that when campus is at full capacity again, some issues could arise. 

“One situation we see is that during busy times, such as post-Convocation lunch rush, we will have to limit the amount of orders that come through the app as we need to be able to service the students who are physically waiting in line in dining locations and still serve those ordering through the app in a quick and efficient manner,” Wheeler said. “This is a necessary step to ensure that we are delivering the best quality and experience to all students who are dining.”

While this app currently only partners with a few on-campus locations, Einstein Bros. Bagels and the Commons I Dunkin’ Donuts will be added in the fall. At this time, they intend to keep it at a smaller amount to ensure accuracy. 

“I think Grubhub is very convenient and will save a large amount of time for students to not wait in line,” said Jeffrey Brown, an avid on-campus eater and fan of Chick-fil-A . “However, it may disrupt community as people might not eat together as much.”

Liberty Dining continues to listen to students’ concerns and requests regarding their eating habits around campus. Wheeler encourages all students to take the dining survey emailed to the student body each semester. In addition to these surveys, Liberty Dining meets with resident assistants, the Student Government Association and runs polls on social media to continually improve the dining program. 

“At the end of the day though, we want students and staff to always feel like they can come to us with feedback,” Wheeler said. “We’ve made so many amazing changes to our program based off of feedback, so we want (students) to know that we’re here for them and always willing to listen.”

Kara Edmonds is a News reporter. Follow her on Twitter @edmonds_kara