The Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill. was in need of a way to serve patients and employees efficiently, on their terms, in a high-paced environment. In episode three of our Technology and the Evolution of Campus Dining series with Grubhub, we speak with Kevin Steffes, Food and Nutrition Director at the Carle Foundation Hospital about how the hospital is using the ghost kitchen model and the Grubhub platform to process and deliver meals across its campus.

Washington State University has announced a new Mini Meal Plan designed for faculty, staff, and off campus students and those living in university apartments. The Mini Meal Plans offer the same access to on campus dining as a standard meal plan, but carries a smaller price tag and discounts on purchases.

Mobile food ordering and delivery platform Grubhub, has partnered with Yandex Self-Driving Group (SDG), an autonomous vehicle developer, for a multi-year partnership that will see Yandex become Grubhub’s robot delivery provider on college campuses. The partnership will enable Grubhub university clients to deploy Yandex robots on campus for faster, more cost-effective deliveries that complement Grubhub’s existing delivery capabilities for colleges and universities.

The deployment of automated smart lockers at Westminster College coincided with a reported 1,000% increase in mobile food orders thanks to the self-service pickup option. The feat was repeated when Maryville University followed suit with its own deployment of the smart locker system in a ghost kitchen format at an on-campus dining venue.

Beginning this fall, the University of Florida will enable its students to receive mobile orders from a student-staffed food delivery service. The service is called Byppo, a Gainesville-based online food delivery company, that staffs students as delivery drivers. Together, the service will offer delivery from up to ten dining locations across UF’s Gainesville campus.

Starting with the 2021-2022 academic year, the University of Georgia Dining Services will offer custom dining plans enabling students to choose the number of meal swipes and declining balance funds they receive. The parameters of the customizable dining plan will be based on students’ housing status, academic year, and how often they plan to eat in campus dining commons and retail dining locations.

In the second installment of the CR80Chats series with Grubhub Campus, we discuss the dining environment at the University of Rochester with the university’s Director of Campus Dining and Auxiliary Operations, Cam Schauff. The University of Rochester was one of the earliest adopters of mobile ordering technology, but what quickly followed was a realization that the university could could use mobile ordering as a tool to help students in a number of other ways.