Mobile commerce app, Tapingo, has grown its install base to more than 200 college campuses nationwide. Now, the latest campus to join the company’s mobile ordering ranks is Texas Christian University.
As at other campuses, Tapingo’s services will represent a great value to students, faculty and staff by enabling them to place food orders remotely and skip the line when picking up.
According to a report from TCU360, the university’s food-service provider, Sodexo, first considered bringing Tapingo to the TCU campus a year-and-a-half ago but experienced a bug in the point of sale system, according to Michael Dahl, general manager of Sodexo. Tapingo has since fixed the problem, leading a university dining committee and Sodexo to revisit the conversation.
“We do believe that Tapingo will add even more flexibility to the dining experience on campus,” Dahl said in a TCU360 interview.
One of the primary reasons for deploying Tapingo at TCU is a clear need to shorten wait times and queues at popular campus dining locations like Chick-fil-A. The dining committee believes that bringing Tapingo to campus would revive the original purpose of these vital campus locations as quick-stop dining options between classes.
TCU’s dining committee has set a delivery date for the first phase of the Tapingo rollout by the end of the current semester. There are also plans for a soft rollout during the summer break.
The second phase will consist primarily of Tapingo’s delivery feature, which eliminates the need to pick up orders and offers job opportunities for students interested in delivering orders. University officials expect to fully launch the delivery service provided the initial pick-up option is popular with students.
The roadmap will include off-campus vendors in the future, but in the near term delivery will only include on-campus venues. Delivery orders through Tapingo will carry a $4 delivery fee.
“We are working with both the TCU campus and Sodexo to firm up the list of available venues,” said Vivek Wagle, head of brand and culture with Tapingo. “Our goal is for every retail location to offer Tapingo’s service as an option. Our data backs up the fact that users benefit the most when they can use Tapingo to order from anywhere on campus.”
“The whole reason for bringing Tapingo to campus is that it coordinates with our dining plan,” Sutton said. “If you are living off campus and you happen to have a dining plan, you should be able to use it.”
Tapingo will integrate fully with TCU’s dining plan, and Wagle said that goal is to provide services to all TCU students, both on and off campus.
“We are working with the university and our partners at Sodexo to have Tapingo launched and available for the start of next semester,” Wagle said. “This will require implementing and testing our systems as well as beginning awareness and marketing over the spring and summer so that we’re all ready to go for fall.”
