Engineering college dishes out food app for hostel dwellers

BENGALURU: With many hostel students missing food every day, Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Bengaluru, has created an app for them. They need to download it and order their favourite food from the pre-loaded menu.
The app, introduced in August, is the brainchild of a product development team comprising students and faculty members. It was developed after nearly 100 of the 500 hostel students complained of missing their food every day.
As soon as one goes to the app, the menu will pop up. Given by three vendors hired by the college, it has North and South Indian cuisines. Students can book meals one day in advance and have it at the mess next day. Since the food is freshly prepared, more are opting for it and there is also less wastage.
“We would give away a minimum of 1,500 litres of waste before the app was launched, now we get less than 200 litres of waste,” said Nageswara Guptha, vice-principal, SVCE.
Akruti Raj, a third-year student from the electronics stream, said, “Earlier, we had to be satisfied with the menu given to us, and, on some days, we would avoid going to the mess. Now, we have a range of choices to pick and choose.”
Neha Rani, another third-year student, said, “Options like juices, ice creams and four varieties of breakfast have been added. We have to book lunch by 4pm the day before.”
“We are relieved to have more options; we no longer depend on outside food,” said Tahakanti Bharadwaz, a third-year computer science student.