NRV Starbucks added to Tapingo

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NRV Starbucks on the Tapingo app

Tapingo is a Case Western Reserve University student necessity. The campus restaurant ordering app just became more vital as students can now use it to order from the North Residential Village (NRV) Starbucks. The Starbucks is located in NRV House 3A facing E 115th Street and is open from 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.

Tapingo is an app that was created in 2012 and, according to their website, was established with the purpose of creating a “better way to eat.” It is an app designed for college campuses that allows students to view menus and order food for delivery or pickup. CWRU students can also use CaseCash and meal swipes in the app to pay for their orders to further streamline the experience. Over the seven years that it has been a company, Tapingo has expanded to 150 campuses and processes tens of thousands of orders per day.

Students who use Tapingo to order from NRV Starbucks have a variety of orders to choose from. This includes coffee, tea, espresso, frappuccinos, breakfast and lunch items, as well as baked goods.

On top of that, there are various layers of customization to go through when ordering many menu items. However, that customization might not be ideal for the customer according to NRV Starbucks barista Ian Oddo. Baristas are able to provide assistance that an app can’t, “if [someone] order[s] in person, we have a much more immediate and in-depth knowledge of what [ingredients] we have and what the customer actually wants,” Oddo said.

 

With the dozens of customization options and thousands of combinations, it can be easy for a customer to get lost. Oddo advises that “we can help guide [the customer] to make sure [they]’re getting what [they] actually want as opposed to a bunch of stuff that looks cool.”  

 

However, if a customer already knows their order, then Tapingo might be a little easier, as Oddo notes, “[with Tapingo,] it’s a little easier for [customers] to get in and out.”  Another benefit to Tapingo is that it displays all the options so a customer can get creative with their order; this results in many “interesting” orders for Oddo and other baristas.

 

Anyone who visits The Den by Denny’s on a weekend night can attest to the fact that Tapingo is a popular service. Students praise the app for its convenience. Lani Fagbemi, a second-year student, says “without [Tapingo] I wouldn’t order from half the places that are around campus simply because it wouldn’t be as convenient.”

 

Fagbemi has ordered Starbucks from the chain’s app before at locations around campus, but NRV Starbucks does not use the Starbucks app. Oddo explained that NRV Starbucks “is a franchise store, owned by Bon Appétit, [so] we have a different computer system than a regular Starbucks.”

 

Tapingo has been successful enough in recent years that they were bought by Grubhub. Grubhub is a takeout delivery service worth more than $1.5 billion. In a Grubhub press release, Daniel Almog, the CEO and co-founder of Tapingo, said, “By joining forces with Grubhub’s network of over 85,000 restaurant partners that offer online delivery and pickup, we’ll continue to serve our loyal diners long after they graduate from college, which has always been our aspiration.”

 

Tapingo may never replace a real person, but it does offer the benefits of convenience and is a great way for customers to get their food.

 

Oddo said that “it’s a good thing that people get to try out all their favorite drinks and get whatever they want, especially through Tapingo.”