Tutor Center to offer online food ordering

The Undergraduate Student Government and USC Hospitality are working to implement an online ordering system for USC restaurants by fall 2011.

The program, which is being tested on the Health Sciences Campus, will allow students to order food online from the Ronald Tutor Campus Center restaurants and pick it up later.

Tim Sae Koo, USG’s director of University Affairs, said this plan was initially proposed because USG saw people waiting a long time in line at the Campus Center.

“Lines were going crazy, people were taking up to 20 or 30 minutes just to get food,” Sae Koo said.

After that realization, USG conducted a survey of undergraduate students and was able to formulate a plan based on the responses.

“According to the survey, everybody really wanted an online system like the one in Chipotle so they wouldn’t have to waste so much time standing in line,” Sae Koo said.

Lauren Perez, a senior majoring in psychology, said she thinks this could help students who don’t have a lot of time to get food.

“This would be really nice because sometimes there are students who work on campus or have classes close together, and they just don’t have very much time to grab food,” Perez said. “This would be an excellent new addition.”

Kris Klinger, director of USC Hospitality, said this program would show the strengths of Hospitality.

“Hospitality already has Lemonade and CPK, which show how we are ahead and above other universities,” Klinger said. “Online ordering is just another example of how progressive Hospitality is.”

Klinger also said this would be an effort that originates right from within the school because computer science students will be the ones to create the online ordering system. Since most of the effort is student-generated, there will be minimal costs to introduce and maintain the program, according to Sae Koo.

Sae Koo said this system would be open to anybody, not just students or faculty.

“This is for anyone,” Sae Koo said. “Basically, the overall goal is to expedite lines to make everything easier and wait time shorter,”

Hannah Goodman, a sophomore majoring in vocal arts performance, said this is a great idea in response to the problem of overcrowding at the Campus Center.

“I think it’s great because there are busy hours where the restaurants at the Campus Center literally have lines out the door, and this would no doubt alleviate some of that wait time,” Goodman said.

Although the plans for system have yet to be finalized, the tentative timeline has the program starting in the fall of 2011 and begin with the restaurants withthe highest traffic.

“The program would start first where the lines are longest, which is CPK,” Sae Koo said. “They are probably not going to launch it at all the restaurants at one time, but will probably see if it works efficiently before expanding,”