"

After a short life on campus, Tapingo, a platform for campus food-ordering, was absorbed by Grubhub in September 2019.

The acquisition closed in the fourth quarter of the 2018 fiscal year and cost approximately $150 million, according to a Grubhub press release.

Tapingo was initially introduced to the Notre Dame campus in late August 2018 and, at the time, served more than 150 campuses around the U.S. and U.K. Students could download the application and choose from various food vendors available at their school. Tapingo’s platform directly integrated with its college partners’ meal plan system, allowing for easy order-ahead and pickup at all its locations and generated tens of thousands of transactions per day.

Now, the same functionality is available through Grubhub. Students can connect their Irish1Card account to the application in order to access 11 on-campus dining options through an interface similar to that of Tapingo.

Although Grubhub has an extensive network of 85,000 restaurant partners, prior to its acquisition of Tapingo, access to campus-owned restaurants was not available.

“We value the college student population, many of whom we hope become life-long Grubhub diners with their first order,” said Matt Maloney, Grubhub’s founder and chief executive officer, in a press release.

The ability to order food through a mobile application “makes students’ lives easier, allows merchants to efficiently capitalize on online ordering and enables colleges and universities to give students the technology they’ve come to expect.”

Grubhub hopes to foster brand loyalty in young college students. Their hope is that after moving off campus, students will continue to utilize Grubhub as their main delivery platform — an essential way to counter the competition of other food delivery services, such as Uber Eats.