It’s hard to dispute the fact that waiting in line for food is an enormous waste of time. With packed schedules and big appetites, college students are inclined to favor instant gratification whenever mealtime rolls around. And thankfully, the winners of the 2014 Wesleyan Hackathon are here to help give us what we want, exactly when we want it.
After 48 hours of tireless programming during the weekend of Sept. 5, Kevin Ault ’17, Allison Cronan ’17, Mia Deng ’17, Tyler Harden ’17, Cumhur Korkut ’17, and Max Trifunovski ’17 launched FoodyCall, an online destination that caters to the hectic lifestyles of Wesleyan students by allowing users to text their orders to Summerfields or Late Night at the Usdan Marketplace.
Unlike Zingle (the preexisting iPhone app equipped with its own Summerfields text-to-order system), FoodyCall makes ordering food as simple as pushing a button by listing all of the available menu items online. The site also has a user evaluation feature, which gives students the ability to rate the menu items at each of the two pickup locations.
Trifunovski, who was responsible for the development of the rating system, gave The Argus some insight into the FoodyCall production process.
“We came up with [the idea] a week before the Hackathon,” Trifunovski said. “We wanted an easy way to order food from Summies and Late Night, plus having the whole menu at your disposal with user ratings helps a lot when deciding what you want to eat.”
The team encountered only one major obstacle during the coding process: a design issue with the site’s messaging feature. However, they were able to resolve the problem halfway through the Hackathon, giving them plenty of time to make adjustments to their code before the end of the competition.
Though the site has only been live for a week, the FoodyCall team has been receiving a largely positive response from the Wesleyan community.
“People love it,” Trifunovski said. “I think they are all looking forward to us releasing a stable 1.0 version of FoodyCall and they want us to take it to the App Store so that they can get FoodyCall as an app for their smartphones.”
As far as plans for the future are concerned, the team hopes to keep maintaining the site in an effort to make it as user-friendly as possible. However, further upkeep of the website would involve receiving funding from the Wesleyan student council, which the members of the FoodyCall team are working to obtain.
“Right now, we are just focused on making sure everything clicks,” Trifunovski said. “We are open to suggestions from everyone, as the main goal of FoodyCall is to please the customers.”
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