In an Instagram post from Stevens Dining, it was announced that items ordered from the UCC Marketplace can now be delivered throughout campus. Delivery is offered only for dinner from 5 to 8 p.m. seven days a week. All students have to do is select the delivery option through the GrubHub app. However, an additional $3 fee will be charged for delivery.
As of right now, there has not been an official email sent out by Stevens to provide more details about the delivery program. This has led to questions about how it will work. One big question is: how does this fit in with the Stevens meal plans? As many are aware, GrubHub links to student meal plans if they have one so items at UCC marketplace cost “1M,” meaning one meal swipe, rather than a dollar amount. So, how will this delivery fee be charged? Will it be the equivalent of a snack swipe added onto the meal swipe or will students with a meal plan need to use their DuckBills or own money to pay for this delivery fee?
Another question is who will be delivering the food. How will they gain access to residence halls? Every residence hall requires residents to swipe in with their DuckCards and the UCC towers in particular require residents to swipe in twice. If these orders are being delivered straight to a resident’s room, how will that impact security within these residence halls?
Also, many question how beneficial this addition is to students. After all, a majority of on-campus residents live in the UCC towers and are simply an elevator ride away from the UCC Marketplace. Moreover, Stevens is a very small campus so who would want to spend an additional $3 to get food they could easily pick up themselves? It also does not help that this delivery service is only available for three hours of the day. As both Pierce Dining Hall and UCC Marketplace are open until midnight, many students eat later in the night, so this delivery service could be viewed as pointless.
Still, this is a very new offering and could be beneficial to students who may be feeling too unwell to get their food or for students who may not have a lot of time to pick up their orders. It could also help reduce the crowd of orders on the shelves within UCC Marketplace.
Only time will tell how effective this service will be. Hopefully more information will be provided to campus residents so they can maximize their use of their meal plans and be more aware of how exactly this delivery service will operate.
