University of Pennsylvania Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering ESE Senior Design Food Trucks have been a landmark at the University of Pennsylvania for many years. There are 59 food trucks on Penn’s Campus today, all of which are well known for breakfast or lunch. However, almost anyone who has ever eaten at a food truck has experienced a substantial wait time. Since most students do not have much time for lunch in between classes, they usually cannot eat at food carts with long lines. Although some truck vendors have allowed for different ways to order, such as phoning in or texting an order, this only applies to a select group of food trucks. PennTrucks.com is taking an approach to reduce this disconnect between customers and vendors It is an online application that facilitates ordering from food trucks on Penn’s campus. It is made available on smartphones and computers. The overall purpose of this project is to develop an application that streamlines food ordering from food trucks on Penn’s campus, minimizes the waiting time for customers and provides added benefits to food trucks. After identifying the needs of the stakeholders, a website was created that allows customers to place orders and vendors to receive them. A market test of selected customers revealed that the average waiting time decreased from 8.6 minutes to 4.8 minutes and 90% of the respondents said they would definitely use PennTrucks.com PennTrucks.com An application that facilitates online food truck ordering Abstract Goals Decrease average waiting time for consumers by 25% Increase average food cart revenue by 10% Increase visibility of remote food carts on campus Motivation: The idea for this project arose from our personal experience of waiting in line at food trucks, the convenience of using CampusFood.com for restaurants. Benefits Customers Ability to order food on-the-go Increased convenience Decreased wait time Loyalty points Vendors Process orders faster Increased revenue Increased visibility for less known trucks Update menus in real time Increased customer satisfaction Team 18 Karan Dhruve (ESE’12) Aditya Khosla (ESE’12) Advisor: Dr. John Pourdehnad University of Pennsylvania Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering ESE Senior Design Demo Times 10:00-10:30am; 11:00-11:30am; 1:30-2:00pm; 2:30-3:00pm Systems OverviewResults What is important to potential customers? Facts about PennTrucks.com HTML website available on smartphones and computers Penn smartphone market fragmented – hence, not a smartphone specific application Incentive for Vendors: 50 cent convenience charge Vendors receive on smartphone 30 customers, 2 food truck vendors 10 weekdays: 42 total orders Feedback collected from customers and vendors Average wait time reduced to 4.8 minutes 90% respondents will use fully developed website Beta Test Conclusions Based on the feedback received after the beta test, PennTrucks.com has successfully been implemented as a convenient online ordering system. By designing the interface to be function with all smartphone and computer platforms, we have the made the system convenient and easy-to-use. The additional revenue from the service charge and the ability to track order history will help attract vendors to the system. The results from the beta test show that we have accomplished our goals of decreasing average wait time by 25% and increasing food truck revenue by 10%. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr. Ken Laker and Dr. Peter Scott for their continual advice and support. We would also like to thank our advisor Dr. John Pourdehnad and our freshman mentee, Daniel Rifkin (ESE’15)