After less than a week in operation, significant changes have been made to increase efficiency in Food Court's new late night delivery service.
The program, which began Apr. 10, offers delivery Sundays through Thursdays from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. There is a $1 service charge added to all orders and students can charge their purchases to College accounts with their identification cards.
When the delivery service started, students placed orders by sending BlitzMail messages to "Food Court," but that service is no longer available.
"With BlitzMail there was no way to control the influx of orders," Food Court Manager Beth Jones said. "One night we got about 15 orders in 20 seconds and realized BlitzMail was not the way to go."
Orders must now be placed by calling 646-1234.
There is also now a minimum order of $3.50.
"It just doesn't make sense for us to deliver an iced tea or a bagel when other people are ordering whole pizzas," Jones said. "This is a reasonable minimum charge."
Jones hopes these changes will make the delivery service more efficient, she said.
"We are working to get the kinks out of the system," she said.
Almost 300 orders were placed in the first three nights, according to Jones.
"The first night we had about 63 orders and things went pretty well," Jones said. "The next night we had 130 orders and the printer broke so we couldn't print the BlitzMail orders."
Some students had problems getting their orders quickly or even receiving them at all.
"My bagelwich took so long to get here that when I bit into it I almost broke my teeth because it was so cold," said Scott Baker '97, who ordered last Monday night.
"Because of the large amount of orders Monday night and the mechanical problems, we couldn't fill them all," Jones said.
"People who didn't receive their orders were blitzed and were given their original deliveries free of charge," she added.
Jones said Food Court did not hire additional staff for delivery but rather changed schedules of existing staff. Food Court employs 120 students.
An additional bicycle with an attached cart was just purchased for Food Court delivery staff, Jones said. There are now three delivery bicycles equipped with thermal packs, she said. The bikes are stored in a garage-style area at the entrance to Home Plate.
Food Court employees said they think the changes in the delivery program will make it better.
"I think it's going to work out well," said Food Court's late night operations assistant Brenda Rangel '95. "Now that we are taking orders by phone, we are able to better regulate the orders and there is less pressure."
Tony Fields '97, the first Food Court employee to make a delivery, agreed with Rangel.
"There has been a positive response to the delivery program," Fields said. "I worked [the first] Sunday when we were using BlitzMail and Tuesday when we started phone delivery and people are now getting their orders on time."
According to Fields, orders have been taking anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes to be delivered, depending on the size of the order and the delivery locations.
"If we keep delivery times steady we will be doing well," Fields said.
