Keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of college campuses is a challenge, especially in today’s foodservice world. The key, however, is to find solutions that’ll propel a university’s dining program through change and set it up for future evolutions to come. One such solution is automated pickup lockers. These lockers provide a myriad of benefits to help university foodservice directors and operators navigate the brave new world of university dining. Let’s take a look at the various advantages automated pickup lockers bring, and why every college needs them.
Convenience of pickup and delivery
Pickup and delivery services are everywhere you look. From grocery stores to fine dining, businesses of all kinds are honing in on what their customers want and delivering (quite literally). University dining is no different.
Whether you’ve offered to-go for a while now, or you’re just getting started, pickup lockers provide more convenience for both delivery providers and students on campus. They give delivery drivers a quick and easy way to grab orders in a dining hall lobby or other convenient location and deliver them directly to students. Alternatively, lockers located in student dorms and campus buildings provide students with a convenient location to grab their own breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner orders and be on their way.
Lastly, the ease of online and mobile ordering is prevalent across all age groups, but it’s especially popular with college-age individuals. Supporting digital ordering with an equally convenient pickup technology only adds to the ease and innovation that today’s students are leveraging — and have come to expect.
Safety of food
Universities are full of young people leaving home for the first time and getting a test run at adulting. And while it’s always vital to take precautions to protect customers' health, it’s even more important when families are trusting your establishment to care for their loved ones and keep them safe.
Pickup lockers are just the ticket to helping you achieve this. They come in all shapes and sizes, but in general, they contain individual, self-service compartments (or lockers) that help operators maintain proper food-holding temperatures, keep foodborne illness at bay and protect the integrity (and deliciousness) of the food. Pickup lockers are often insulated. And depending on the particular vendor and model, they can offer ambient, heat or refrigeration. For example, Hatco’s Flav-R 2-Go® Locker System provides a heated or ambient holding environment to keep food safe until it’s picked up. You can hold food between 150 °F (66 °C) and 180 °F (82 °C) for up to 45 minutes or switch the heat off for all your ambient holding needs. Either way, your students (and their families) will thank you.
Security of meals
There’s more to food safety than just maintaining proper food temperatures. Let’s be honest; random college students rummaging through various orders to find their Korean beef stir fry and potstickers doesn't sit well with other customers or say much for sanitation efforts. And what’s more, unsupervised food that’s waiting for pickup can be a target for intentional tampering or theft and makes it easy for students to accidentally walk off with the wrong order.
Thankfully, automated pickup lockers safeguard food from the above unwelcomed meddling scenarios by housing meals in lockable compartments. Now, with a pickup locker on their side, operators can simply place food in a secure cubby and walk away without worry knowing that only customers with the correct code can open the locker holding their order.
Peace of mind
The past few years brought a mountain of change to the foodservice industry. To survive, many establishments pivoted their operational styles, most incorporating contactless food pickup and delivery. And although many mandates have expired, social distancing and contactless services are still expected by many who want the convenience and/or safety that come with them.
Automated pickup lockers help by increasing the peace of mind of parents, customers and staff. As an illustration, look at Hatco's Flav-R-2-Go locker series. These locker systems allow operators to place ready-to-go foods in locked cubbies, eliminating the need for face-to-face contact. Orders are retrieved by way of code and there’s no reason for staff to be standing around dishing out orders; it’s automation at its finest.
Flow of service
Most colleges require that students living on campus purchase some type of meal plan. That’s a whole lot of mouths to feed every day, and university dining undoubtedly can benefit from a streamlined service. Now, add in off-campus students, call-in and delivery orders, mixed with staffing shortages — and it's no question, the right equipment is essential to a smooth-running operation.
Automated pickup lockers cut through the chaos by giving operators a way to set up a separate area for pickup and delivery orders that’s outside the flow of other dining traffic. Customers can easily bypass long cafeteria or café lines, go straight to the locker, punch in their code and grab their fresh food. And because these lockers don't require an attendant, staff is freed up (and out of the way) for other more pressing tasks. This optimized process creates less bottlenecking, shorter lines, better customer service and happier students on campus.
Location of lockers
Ever try to hustle from one end of a campus to the other? Depending on the university, that can be quite the feat. Campuses can span thousands of acres, which doesn’t always fare well for students that want a quick bite to eat but have to trek a great distance to access food from a student center, cafeteria or café.
Automated pickup lockers make food more accessible to students by shortening the distance they need to travel to get it and by increasing the number of locations it’s available. With pickup lockers strategically placed in dormitories or buildings throughout the university, students on north campus don’t need to trek quite as far to grab some grub. Instead, they can easily put in an order with university foodservice and pick up their to-go food at a convenient locker near them. That's a win-win situation for students and foodservice alike.
Countless benefits.
There are countless ways an automated pickup locker can benefit university dining operations. This post discusses a few, but there’s more information to gather. Interested in learning more? Check out our line of automated pickup solutions or find a Hatco representative near you to find a solution that’s right for you.
