“With regards to trends, food-service vendors and campuses want to know what items are selling the most, and some of the data we accrue is more detailed than what the dining operations will have,” explains Anderson. “What students are ordering, the time of day, the type of payment tender used, and the student’s class year are all included in our reports. And that’s all data that comes through in real time.”

As a service, mobile ordering and delivery has become difficult to ignore.

Mobile ordering has created a new infrastructure to deliver goods around campus, and now that those orders are being fed into a fully delivered system, the question becomes: What else can be done with this technology? “We’re now seeing stores that don’t have a physical, walk-up store experience, but are instead able to utilize a production kitchen and run a strictly online storefront,” Anderson says.

This, in essence, brings mobile ordering full-circle. We’ve now seen Tapingo’s services evolve from an emerging technology, to a fully delivered service, to a catalyst for changing the way physical dining is conducted.

The next steps for mobile ordering and delivery will ultimately be dictated by students and how they interact with the technology. But early signs suggest that campuses will increasingly utilize the mobile infrastructure to change the physical formula of dining services.

“As a service, mobile ordering and delivery has become difficult to ignore,” says Anderson. “If universities aren’t seeing this as a reality now, then they’re missing the low-hanging fruit that can vastly improve their students’ experience.”