Frisbee team uses free food website promotion

Students who register at CampusFood.com within the next week have the opportunity to receive free food and delivery from local restaurants while also helping out the Women's Ultimate Frisbee team.

The promotion offers certain food items for free at select local restaurants to students who register at CampusFood.com. Registered students then receive a printed flyer with a Tufts-specific password for the promotion. The campaign, which ends Nov. 25, features free food and delivery available each day from Rose's Chinese Restaurant, Pasta Pisa, Caf?© de Crepe, Domino's Pizza, and Espresso's.

The restaurants that provide the services are completely reimbursed by CampusFood.com. The company allows students to order food online, providing a network of restaurants in college areas.

The Women's Ultimate Frisbee team receives fifty cents for each new student who registers at CampusFood.com.

The goal of the fund raiser is to finance tournaments in the spring semester, as tournaments run at least $300 per game, said team captain and organizer Gabrielle Eklund. The team plays six to seven tournaments per year.

The team also travels long distances and is hoping to return to a tournament at Stanford in California. "This has been an ideal fundraiser. You get free food, we get some money," Eklund said.

"Everybody likes free food, you can't argue with that. It gets everyone's attention, which is also great for the restaurants," said company representative Ismael Archbold. "We invest our time and effort to get new people, especially freshmen who might not have heard of all of the restaurants or of our service, to register on the site. That way people will know and remember CampusFood and come back in the future."

Students have the added incentive to order through the website because it is efficient and reliable, in addition to providing added discounts and bonuses.

"We work with restaurants year round to provide online specials and discounts that aren't available if you go straight through the restaurants," said Archbold. "This way there are no language barriers, no busy signals, no mistakes in your order."

The two week free food promotion is currently happening in the majority of the schools registered with CampusFoods.com. In the Boston area, this includes Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Boston University, and Boston College. CampusFood.com encourages students groups like the Women's Ultimate Frisbee team, to sign up.

CampusFood.com provides "an online, web-based server that is faster and easier for students to use." While four restaurants are involved in the current free food promotion, 14 other businesses are also available for service on a regular basis. The site currently serves 125 schools nationwide.

Sophomore Jason Bauer was confused by the promotion. "I don't really understand it, it doesn't seem like they could be reimbursed for the free food that they're paying for," he said. "I probably won't order from them again since they don't take points."

"The students benefit, the restaurants benefit. This free food is the best way of creating a buzz on campus," said CampusFood.com VP of sales John Stieler. "We are student friendly, and we try to make every order faster than the phone call might have been."

Espresso Pizza manager Anthony Salvato points to an increase in orders since the promotion began. "Even with the free food promotion, we're still getting quite a few orders that aren't for the free food. There is going to be an increase in orders anytime there's something free."

He explained that the system does not involve a change in the restaurant's function in an order. "The student sends the order to CampusFood.com, they fax it to us, and we send it out. It makes no difference to us if the student makes the order there or through us."

Sophomore Micah Kuntz said that it was easy to order online, but a phone order would accomplish the same thing. "Now that I know about Campus Food, it would be an easy way to order if I didn't have my phone on me, but otherwise I would probably just call," he said. Kuntz added that regardless of who delivered the food or whether it was free, he still would tip the person delivering it.