After nearly a week, Duke Dining’s mobile ordering service is back online.
The service initially went offline on Aug. 31, when students were faced with a blank screen on the service’s mobile application and a description citing “technical issues” with the app.
Duke Dining sent a Wednesday email to students notifying them that “[the vendor] reinstated our mobile ordering service with the hope of no further difficulties.”
Kirsten Richards, director of communications at Duke Dining, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that the outage stemmed from "an unforeseen circumstance resulting from an error in the processing code." She also identified the service's vendors, Transact and Trove, who "worked tirelessly" in coordination with Duke's IT office to fix the issues.
"We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding while our vendor worked to resolve the technical challenges affecting our mobile ordering service," she wrote.
For some students on campus, the brief suspension of the service made finding the time to eat more difficult. Sophomore Diane Lin called the outage “inconvenient” for her due to her packed class schedule.
“On Tuesdays, I’ve got four classes stacked back to back, so not having mobile order available meant that I really couldn’t grab lunch any time of the day because I didn’t have the time to wait in lines of WU,” Lin said. She added that having the service back was “awesome.”
Not only is mobile order a valuable service for students, it is also a convenience for Duke Dining employees. Locations throughout campus experience a surge in the volume of orders at different times throughout the day.
According to Pitchfork’s cashier Tony Hernandez, the restaurant is usually “packed” on late nights, especially game nights.
“[Mobile order’s outage] has costed us, especially late nights. Everyone comes in all at once, especially like the hour before we close,” Hernandez said. “Mobile order helps us more because one of us can just focus on taking mobile orders or on taking orders.”
As a result of the outage, Hernandez said the restaurant was forced to stop taking orders early after the kitchen fell behind the number of orders, which would have otherwise been evened out by the service.
Jothi Gupta contributed reporting.
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Michelle Brown is a Trinity junior and an editor-at-large of The Chronicle's 120th volume.