Students scrambled on Monday as usual dining snacks and meals, like 8:15 lattes and FlavUR smoothies, were unavailable because GrubHub — a food ordering site that services retail locations on campus — was down.
This outage, which has since been repaired, was a part of a broader issue with Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing platform that hosts and stores the data of many websites. According to NBC News, AWS first reported an “operational issue” at 3 a.m. Among those affected were the Medicare website, Snapchat and the Starbucks app, along with many others.
UR Dining Services posted an Instagram story with the news of a GrubHub outage on Campus Neither the Grubhub app nor the in-person kiosks at the dining locations were available for use.
“UR Dining Services uses GrubHub as a mobile ordering system…in most of our retail locations,” Dining Services said in an email to the Collegian. “When GrubHub goes down, we must close our operations.”
The Instagram account continued to post updates about which locations were open. According to Dining Services, GrubHub was continually updating the department.
Students struggled with ordering throughout the day. Retail locations made efforts to adapt to the situation. At various times, Tyler’s, Lou’s and 8:15 were taking walk-in orders.
“I first realized there was a problem when my roommate tried to order a coffee and it took her three tries to do it,” senior Brigid Flanagan said. “When I came to Tyler’s later, GrubHub was completely out and I had to order my food from a cashier.”
Students living in residence halls are required to purchase Spider Unlimited meal plan, which includes unlimited swipes into Heilman Dining Center meals and $895 dining dollars to use at the eight other retail dining locations. The outage had a widespread effect on all those who use meal plans and could not access most dining options.
At 5 p.m. on Oct. 20, Grubhub resumed its mobile ordering. The Cellar and 8:15 were able to resume regular hours.
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Weekly Round-up | Week of Oct. 20
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