Campusfood.com
SITE DESCRIPTION
For anyone who attends college or lives near one, Campusfood.com is your saving grace. Listing hundreds of colleges nationwide, Campusfood provides a directory of restaurants and bars in each school’s surrounding area.
Not only does the site give each restaurant’s address and phone number, but it offers menus, maps, whether it’s currently opened or closed, payment options, hours of operation, and pretty much anything else you’ll want to know about the restaurant you’re doing business with.
Most importantly, Campusfood has eliminated the food-ordering middleman, adding ease to the process. When you’ve decided where you’d like to order from, click on the restaurant name and then select ‘View Menu’. From the menu page simply click on the price of whatever menu item you’d like to order and, if necessary, Campusfood will prompt you to choose how you’d like your food cooked. Adding or subtracting extras on your sandwich or pizza is a breeze.
Once you’ve got your order selected, proceed to checkout, choose whether you’d like it for pickup or delivery, and that’s that. You can choose to pay either online or when your food is picked up or delivered.
The navigation menu at the top of the page is extremely comprehensive. Visitors are able to search restaurants based on whether or not they deliver, have a waitstaff, and if they’re offering any specials or coupons. There is also a listing of local bars/nightclubs available, which includes all the same information the restaurants present, including any drink specials they may offer.
Sub-menus include details of the style of restaurant or bar and different amenities available. For instance if you would like to know the Friday night specials for a local sports bar, Campusfood can provide that for you with only three clicks of the mouse.
Because Campusfood is free for the user, and they have to eat too (no pun intended), they take a 6% commission from the subtotal of each order. According to Julie Shimshack, director of marketing for Campusfood.com, using Campusfood.com has increased order sizes by 10-15% because “the customer is not put on hold, and aren’t rushed off the phone because there are other calls coming and can therefore spend time browsing the menu and adding to their order.”
Sounds like a win-win-win to us.
ABOUT CAMPUSFOOD.COM
Campusfood was started in 1997, by University of Penn student Michael Saunders, in an effort to ease the take-out process. Eleven years later the site brings the menus of more than 1,500 restaurants right to your computer screen. More than 300 campuses are catalogued and more are added all the time.
WHAT WE LIKED
The entire concept is a winner. Students these days don’t want to be bothered with making a phone call (though every single one of them has a cell phone). And who can blame them. If they can log onto Campusfood and have their order placed within minutes, without having to find a phone, phone number and menu, why wouldn’t they?
Orders are processed quickly and with little difficulty. The menus are fully interactive and categorized. It’s as though you’re standing in the restaurant reading their menu board, except it’s easier to place an order. And you no longer have to speak to the crabby phone person who could rattle off 150 places they’d rather be on a Friday night than sitting there listening to what you feel like eating.
Even if you’d rather call and place your order by phone, you can still reference menus for all the restaurants Campusfood lists. This way you can have your order ready and know the prices before you call.
The site navigation and ease of use is top-notch, and the design is functional. Campusfood does a great job of knowing itself and sticking to what it does best, without trying to be too much.
For a cool look at how expansive Campusfood is, check out the chains page. This list doesn’t include the mom and pop shops, just the franchises.
WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE
Campusfood only lists restaurants that are in close proximity to the colleges. For someone who lives in the suburbs, or away from any schools, finding your local pizza joint listed may not be possible. We understand that the site is called CAMPUSfood for a reason, but expanding on the listing radius would probably increase their revenue.
Also, we’d like to see Campusfood increase the number of colleges they list, which, of course, means they have to actively recruit restaurants in those areas. For us, the only real issue with the site is although they already do represent a large number of schools and restaurants, there is still much left uncovered.
THE FINAL WORD
At the very least an account in Campusfood should be in your food-ordering repertoire. If the eatery you’re looking for isn’t there, then you can resort to the stone age and reach for the yellow pages.
