The information comes directly from your website which makes it super-easy to keep your website and your app in sync so that there isn’t a mismatch in communications to your customers.
The Campus Dining App relies on a WordPress website. If your website currently uses WordPress, you simply install a plugin like you have probably done many times before. Once activated, The Campus Dining App WordPress plugin will create the necessary Location, Restaurant, and C-Store templates that the app will need. It will also create a variety of other settings and special features that you can choose to use or ignore.
Once you configure your information, The Campus Dining App will look for a JSON feed which is a simple way of communicating information to apps. The app will read this information and just work. It’s that simple.
Yes. While The Campus Dining App won’t talk directly to your non-WordPress website, you can spin-up a WordPress installation on your existing server that can power the feeds for the app. You can run multiple content management systems, and they should not conflict with one another.
If you don’t run your website on WordPress and your information technology department doesn’t like the idea of spinning up a WordPress site for you, we can host it. Creative Minds, Inc. (the app’s creator) can generate you an account that will give you the ability to configure your information and power the app. Additionally, you’ll be able to create as many user accounts as you need to delegate data input or to allow others to make updates when needed.
An iPad version will be developed at some point in the future. The price of The Campus Dining App will not go up when app updates are released, rather clients that sign on early will automatically receive the functionality for other platforms.
While certain aspects of The Campus Dining App are fixed (i.e., fonts, sizes, functionality), there are plenty of areas for you to customize the app with images of your facilities, your cuisines, your culture, etc. Each Restaurant, C-Store, and Off-Campus Partner has space for a featured photo of your choosing. Additionally, you set which social media sites are appropriate for your customers. And the More Tab is customizable with any number of pages for information you may need to disseminate.
That feature is available.
For clients who use our Nutrition Addition Menu Manager and/or the Nutrition Addition Menus App, your accounts will talk to each other and allow you to connect a Restaurant in The Campus Dining App to a Restaurant in the Menu Manager. Through a set of APIs, this will let The Campus Dining App pull menu information from the Nutrition Addition Menu Manager.
For other clients, we offer the ability to program a static menu in each restaurant within the WordPress control panel. While this option will not allow for the flexibility that the Nutrition Addition Menu Manager offers, it may be an appropriate solution for operations with simple or non-rotating menus.
It certainly can. Our screenshots try to show as many features as we can without overwhelming you. And while the Off-Campus Partners feature is powerful, it won’t be utilized by every food service operation, so we can remove that tab.
Certainly. Depending on the complexity and ability to scale for other clients, there may or may not be a charge for a new feature. But as times change and your program changes, the goal should always be to keep your brand fresh, and that means keeping The Campus Dining App up to date with the latest features you want and need.
The Campus Dining App is reasonably priced for small-, medium-, and large-sized schools. The cost is based on your school’s enrollment figures. One nickel per student per month (minimum of $100 per month) is all it costs to license The Campus Dining App. Check out our Pricing Calculator to get a feel for the base cost and any additional plugins you may require. For more information, please contact us.
Think of it this way: you are marketing to a customer for 60 cents per year. Facebook, Twitter, and Google AdWords could cost you several hundred dollars per month on each platform. What other form of marketing can reach as many customers for such a small investment?
We work with almost any type of organization whether you are a self-op run by your college/university or whether you are an out-sourced group at a school.
However, we do not work with Sodexo. Past experience has proven that Sodexo is not the right fit with our organization, as their vendor requirements require us to secure arbitrary and unnecessary insurance which will cost us over $10,000 per year. We would then have to pass that cost on to you which usually puts the price of the product out of reach. This impasse has never been overcome, as Sodexo has never budged from their demands.
If you are a Sodexo organization, we will work with your college/university and license a product to them, but not to you, the dining program at that school.
(Why would you bad-mouth a potential client or group of clients?)
It’s not that we are trying to sully anyone’s reputation. We just want to be upfront that if you are a Sodexo client, we don’t want to waste your time or ours going through a process that is designed to fail. If you have done your due diligence and can get your college/university to license the product, then we’ll talk.