Anish Lakkapragada, a freshman at Yale University majoring in computer science and mathematics, was enjoying a meal with friends in one of Yale’s 14 dining halls when he came up with Yale Hospitality Wrapped, a Chrome extension allowing students to track their dining hall habits.

Although initially created for Yale students, Lakkapragada discovered his extension could easily be expanded to other institutions because it tracks students’ meal swipes through Transact Campus, a platform used by numerous universities, including USC.

Developed by Lakkapragada and designed by USC freshman Jeslyn Mi, majoring in business administration, the USC Hospitality Wrapped extension provides insights into how often students have swiped into dining halls, which ones they have visited the most and their average daily meal swipes. He saw potential in the tool, believing that other college students would have a similar interest in identifying their dining habits.

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“I think for college students, where they eat and their eating habits are a point of discussion, and every single dining hall has a different personality,” Lakkapragada said. “So I think the reason why a lot of people are interested in seeing what their Wrapped looks like for food and hospitality is because it’s a statement and shows whether you’re the kind of person who eats here or here.”

The layout of USC Hospitality Wrapped was inspired by Spotify Wrapped, with students’ dining information organized in a way that can be shared on social media, particularly Instagram stories. Mi used USC’s signature colors, cardinal and gold, in the website visuals and the logo.

“Anish reached out to me and was like, ‘Does USC also use Transact Campus?’” said Mi. “And then I was like, ‘Yeah, it does.’ And he thought it’d be cool to start one at USC. He was the one that did all the coding and I was mostly designing the logo or helping him with how the website should look.”

Natalie Khine, a USC freshman majoring in business administration, described her first impression of the extension as “super cool.”

“It reminded me a lot of Spotify Wrapped and, every year I always look forward to that,” Khine said. “I thought it was really cool that [Lakkapragada] did one for dining halls.”

Since its launch USC Hospitality Wrapped has had over 215 installations and 1800 viewers. Kaili Mendoza, an early adopter, shared her results provided from the extension on her Instagram story, contributing to its spread among students.

“I immediately told my friends to install it and I posted on my story too. And then a bunch of people started installing it. I was told that the first night I posted it, the website got maybe 1000 hits,” said Mendoza, a freshman majoring in astronautical engineering.

USC Hospitality Wrapped also gives students insight into how effectively they are using their meal plans, since they can see how often they use their meal swipes.

“What we have found for people using USC Hospitality Wrapped is that a lot of people are underutilizing their swipes and not maximizing their meals, so this can be informative for students as they move through sophomore, junior and senior years to figure out what meal plan works best for them,” Lakkapragada said.

Moving forward, Lakkapragada plans to add new features that will allow students to see their total money spent on dining hall meals, as well as sync daily menus with the extension, so students can see exactly which meals they keep going back for.

Mendoza has found the information provided by the extension “really helpful,” especially for students who have a limited amount of meal swipes per semester.

“I definitely would recommend it,” Mendoza said. “I do see myself checking it at the end of every semester. I think it’d be a little fun thing to do, because I do think my dining hall choices have definitely mixed up this semester compared to last semester.”

Lakkapragada hopes USC Hospitality Wrapped will bring students together through fun conversations about where and what they are eating and is happy his passion project turned into something useful for students.

“I like fun and useful projects for other students and other people to use,” Lakkapragada said. “I‘m happy to see that people are enjoying this and putting it on Sidechat.”