In this episode of CampusIDNews Chats, Dave McQuillin, co-founder and VP of Sales and Marketing for Atrium Campus, shares how new technologies are reshaping campus dining and retail operations.

Meeting student expectations and staffing challenges

McQuillin says colleges are turning to semi-autonomous and fully autonomous solutions to meet evolving student needs and overcome staffing shortages. “Students these days really expect to have great food options available 24-7 because that’s how they live,” he explains. Traditional hours no longer meet expectations, and it’s increasingly difficult to staff late-night or off-hour locations.

At UGA, Atrium worked with AiFi to deliver a fully autonomous retail store that doubled sales and reduced shrinkage from high double digits to less than 2%.

Atrium’s partner ecosystem includes semi-autonomous solutions like Mashgin, which uses AI and computer vision to scan items instantly. “You grab what you want, you put it on a tray, you hit pay, and it uses AI algorithms and cameras to ring that check up very quickly,” McQuillin says. Average transaction times are just 12.5 seconds—significantly faster than manual self-checkout—and shrinkage is reduced.

Fully autonomous stores drive results

Atrium also supports fully autonomous retail, integrating with technologies like Zippin and AiFi. The University of Georgia’s AiFi store, for example, “doubled sales, reduced shrinkage from high double digits to less than 2%, and students are super happy,” McQuillin reports.

To watch the full interview, click the image at the top of this page.

TRANSCRIPT

Atrium is an a la carte, cloud-native campus card program that supports mobile credentials, meal plan management, and the full suite of one-card offerings.

One of the trends we're definitely seeing in higher ed is a shift to semi-autonomous and fully-autonomous dining in retail.

Why is that important?

Students these days really expect to have great food options available 24-7 because that's how they live.

Locations that are just staffed from 8 to 5 p.m. just don't cut it. Staffing shortages also have been a driver for this. It's increasingly hard to find staff that will work the hours that are required. But more than anything, it's about improving the student experience.

Some of the solutions that we have been bringing to market through our partner program include Mashgin, which is a semi-autonomous solution.

You grab what you want, you put it on a tray, you hit pay, and it uses AI algorithms and cameras to ring that check up very quickly.

In fact, Mashgin talks about an average transaction time of 12 and a half seconds, much faster than self-barcoding items.

The other advantage of that technology is it reduces shrinkage. A lot of universities are struggling with this when they have unattended self-serve checkouts, which rely on the integrity of the students to barcode every item.

In addition to Mashgin, we have integrated with services like Farmer's Fridge, Just Baked, Costa Coffee, Vicky the AI-powered vending machine, and Robo Burger. It seems like almost every other week there's a new robot-driven vending machine that's coming to market, and we are able to onboard those services very, very quickly.

Now, the other category in that area is fully autonomous.

Our first foray into that was to integrate with Zippin at Towson University. In addition to Towson, we have UNLV that also has a Zippin store.

But true to our roots, we want to give clients lots of options, so we just recently integrated with AiFi, which is another leader in the fully autonomous store space. We had a very successful opening of the AiFi store at University of Georgia.

They report that sales doubled, shrinkage dropped from high double digits to less than 2%, and students are super happy.

They're so happy with the results that they've already released a PO to Atrium to open a second AiFi, fully-autonomous store in their student center.

As we've discussed, there's a lot of change in the air.

Clients are looking at end-of-life with their campus card system, or their point of sale, or their access control.

They're looking to elevate the student experience.

What we would like is to have a conversation with those clients. Give us a call. Give us an opportunity to talk with you. I think you'll find that Atrium could be a very good fit for your campus.