Kensington, New South Wales: Students living in fully-catered residential communities on-campus at UNSW Sydney will have more opportunities to enjoy a hot and nutritious meal amongst their busy academic and social schedules this year, thanks to an innovative pilot of high-tech thermal food lockers launched this week.
With more than 600+ students from The Kensington Colleges, Fig Tree Hall, UNSW Hall and International House dining at Goldstein Hall each day, meal times can be a little chaotic. Thermal lockers and the technology infrastructure from Australian startup Foodifox will now enable students unable to eat at the designated lunch or dinner times to access hot and fresh meals outside of core dining hours.
Located at the entrance of the main dining hall where students enjoy more than 1000+ meals a day, the locker unit consisting of 17 individually heated cubicles is designed to keep food safe, secure, and perfectly hot.
The pilot – the first of its kind in the Australian education sector – was initiated by corporate caterer Catering Project, to help improve the dining, and overall university experience for students at UNSW. Catering Project and UNSW wanted to improve the food experience for students who would previously have to locate and reheat their allocated meals from a refrigerator, often leading to mix ups and meals not reflecting the care and effort that Catering Project Chef’s pride themselves on.
Through integration with the University’s existing online ordering and cashless payments partner My School Connect, students will now be able to place requests for late lunches and late dinners through the My School Connect app.
Once the request is made, the student will be assigned a locker cubicle where Catering Project will place the meal ready for collection. The heated cubicle will keep the meal hot until collected by the student. For added peace of mind the Foodifox lockers are fitted with UV self-cleaning technology ensuring that all lockers are hygienic ready for the next meal service.
To pick up a meal the hungry students simply scan a unique QR code on their phone and the secure cubicle will pop open to give them access to their hot meal ready to enjoy.
Luke Jones UNSW Sydney, Operations, Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education & Student Experience, said: “The main dining hall is a vibrant hub of activity and an important opportunity for our students to build social connections while refueling their minds and bodies between studies. But we understand that students have increasingly busy academic and social lives, so this pilot will provide more opportunities for those students to enjoy the wonderful nutritious food provided to all students living on campus, in an innovative and convenient way.”
Catering Project, Executive Chef Dominique Heitz, said: “As a chef I’m always looking for ways to improve the dining experience for my customers, through delicious, nutritious, and high-quality food. The Foodifox lockers give us confidence that students are enjoying their meals the way we prepared them.”
Tim Pagram, Foodifox Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder said: “The best meals are served hot, fresh and right when you’re ready to enjoy them. We’re thrilled that more UNSW students will be able to enjoy the high-quality food experience provided by UNSW through our lockers.
“The integration with My School Connect and Catering Project, is a strong demonstration of the highly-flexible and scalable ‘Self-Serve’ platform we have built at Foodifox to solve the food delivery and collection challenges at high-volume catering, residential and corporate locations around Australia.”
Rob Rossi, My SchoolConnect CEO & Founder said: “Our platform is already the hub of cashless purchases and food ordering for students around the country, so this pilot integration with Foodifox provides yet another convenient way for students to access their meals.”
The UNSW pilot marks Foodifox’s first location within NSW. With 35 corporate and residential locations already in operation across the startup’s native Melbourne, Foodifox is leveraging the global momentum of thermal lockers and domestic growth in food delivery with over 7 million Australians using a meal delivery service and 7,000 food orders made hourly across the country.
Foodifox’s mission is to ease the pain points associated with food delivery in high-rise residential buildings, education institutions and corporate workplaces through the solution that allows drivers and caterers to deliver food straight to an allocated locker, where users can simply unlock it with their phones.
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About Foodifox
Foodifox is a state-of-the-art storage solution designed to revolutionise food delivery in multi-residential apartments, corporate offices, hospitals, and educational institutions. At its core, Foodifox helps to mitigate the myriad of challenges associated with the evolution of the food delivery industry.
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