App Provides Convenience

Published August 30, 2016

At some point in their career, every busy college student has faced the decision whether to skip a meal or be 10 minutes late to class. Don’t have time to wait in line to grab a bite at Cal State Long Beach? No worries, because the Tapingo app is here.

Tapingo is a food app that gives students and staff on the go the convenience of skipping food lines at campus restaurants.

Tapingo is considered unique from other food services since the apps focus is for mobile devices.

Currently, Tapingo is in 33 states and on a variety of campuses including University of Arizona, Trinity College and NYU. 

Melody Morales, a senior Journalism student, said she already has benefitted from the app in previous semesters.

“I really love this app,” Morales said. “Usually once I get on campus I’m always running late to my classes, so to know I can order food on my phone and have it ready to pick up once I arrive is a big relief.”

The process of using the mobile ordering system is simple: select a campus and sign in with the student’s campus ID. Next, the student or staff member can add in their credit card information. All that is left for the user to do is search for campus food places that offer the service, select menu choices and confirm the order. Tapingo also gives a notification when the order is ready. 

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A phone screen shows the Tapingo app in action

Tapingo can be used at five locations on campus: Beachwalk, the Nugget Grill & Pub, Outpost Grill, and Starbucks at the UDP and Library.

Abraham De La Torre, lead cook at Outpost Grill, said that while the app isn’t available at every campus restaurant, students could likely see Tapingo expanding to another Beach hot spot.

“I know the app has recently been tried out at the Pyramid for sporting events,” De la Torre said. “Last I heard using the app as a long-term plan wasn’t final, but I think the deciding factor of keeping it at the Pyramid would be seeing how many students use the app.”

While Tapingo has been widely popular with students, De La Torre did give one piece of advice for students using the app.

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Students enjoying a meal at The Nugget.

“While Tapingo does act like an extra register for us here at the Outpost, it still can get pretty hectic sometimes when students place their orders in the middle of the day when we are the busiest,” De La Torre said.

“I would just recommend that students who want success with the app try to remember to place their orders ahead of time and unfortunately orders can still get backed up sometimes, no matter how great the app is.”

Tapingo can be used on Apple iPhone and Android devices and downloaded either through Apple or Google Play.