Dive Brief:
- Grubhub and Amazon have opened a Just-Walk-Out-powered frictionless convenience store at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, according to a Tuesday press release.
- Students can enter the store after scanning a QR code from Grubhub’s app. They pick whatever items they want and leave, with charges made to their meal plan or other payment method saved in the app.
- Autonomous c-stores continue to spread on campuses, as frictionless checkout technology allows students to grab something and get on to class quickly.
Dive Insight:
Loyola is the first Grubhub-partnered campus to create a store using Amazon’s autonomous technology, Just Walk Out. Partnered schools allow students to place orders for pickup at campus eateries through Grubhub’s app and connect their meal plan as a form of payment. They can also use it to order from off campus with no delivery fees.
“Our installation with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology is another example of how we are strengthening our relationship with our campus partners with cost-saving technology and driving student adoption,” said Eric Ferguson, chief operations officer at Grubhub. “The services and products we provide for our campus partners are designed to enhance and improve the dining experience, and we’re excited to offer this innovative and frictionless technology to our campus partners.”
Roughly 300 higher education institutions use Grubhub Campus for ordering and payments, according to the announcement.
Installing frictionless checkout options for college students caters to younger shoppers’ tastes. Members of Generation Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — largely prefer to buy items like groceries and household items in brick-and-mortar stores and want their shopping experiences to be as convenient as possible, according to data from financial services company Synchrony.
Amazon has already been making inroads in this space, with its first campus c-store opening at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia in March, followed by locations at the University of Dayton and the University of Pittsburgh. Loyola is the first one to integrate with Grubhub.
AiFi and Standard have also opened automated-checkout campus stores.
