Austin Peay State University is enabling its students to use their phones to order food from campus venues via Transact Mobile Ordering. This month, Austin Peay’s Dining Services, alongside food-service provider, Chartwells, launched its “Govs To Go” program backed by Mobile Ordering from Transact.

Engaged staff at Rochester are pushing some of the limits of the Grubhub platform, using the system in unique ways beyond just mobile ordering. This healthy partnership between campus and vendor has led to a cooperative pushing of boundaries and valuable problem solving both before and after a global pandemic.

Bridgewater State University was one of the first institutions in the northeast region to deploy autonomous robot delivery from Starship Technologies, offering students and faculty a valuable dining alternative. Now, the university is plotting to expand its fleet of delivery robots following early successes on campus.

Rice University has brought back its Guest Meal Swipe Donation Program after halting the initiative during the Fall 2020 semester. The meal swipe donation program was designed to help address food insecurity for Rice students by enabling on-campus undergrads on 20 meals-per-week plans to donate any unused meal swipes to off-campus peers.

Food service provider Chartwells Higher Ed is experimenting with a new approach to on-campus dining with virtual or delivery-only kitchens that the company calls “ghost kitchens.” Despite the virtual or delivery only model being implemented prior to the pandemic, the new normal has more universities than ever before exploring the ghost kitchen formula.

Dining facilities on the Homewood and Peabody Institute campuses of Johns Hopkins University will move to a self-op dining model beginning next year. The move to self operation is expected to provide the university with greater flexibility and oversight of its campus dining experience.

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has launched a new reusable to-go container program with OZZI. Coordinated by the university’s Office of Sustainability and Campus Dining Services, the “Good to Geaux” program has replaced disposable plastic containers across campus dining.

Mercyhurst University is the latest campus to join the student food insecurity non-profit, Swipe Out Hunger, enabling students to donate unused meal swipes. Spearheading the initiative at Mercyhurst, is a partnership between the university’s Community Engagement and OneCard offices alongside food-service provider Parkhurst Dining.

Card system vendor, TouchNet, discusses some of the measures and solutions that universities can deploy to move to a more contactless campus environment. Contactless solutions have taken on new importance this past year, and with new protocols and guidelines being implemented to limit physical contact between students, the solutions outlined in this video will be great additions.

Card system vendor TouchNet has developed an extensive network of third-party vendors with its Ready Partner Program, designed to provide TouchNet customers with a catalog of third-party providers that are validated to integrate into TouchNet solutions. Among the ever-growing list of TouchNet Ready Partners is Starship Technologies – the company now renowned for its fleet of autonomous delivery robots. Robot delivery was already proving its viability before the arrival of a global pandemic, but it seems that this service has only grown in importance.