Students ordering from the Late Nite Café at Warren Towers have reported increasingly long wait times for their food to be prepared this semester — far longer than in the Fall.
Owen Taylor, a freshman in the College of Communication, said the time it takes for him to receive his order has risen sharply.
“I’d say it’s probably twice as long,” he said.
In the Fall, Taylor said the wait times were reasonable and his order would usually be prepared by the time he went to collect it.
“It would be about ten minutes,” he said, “so by the time you came down, it would be pretty much ready, maybe give or take five minutes.”
Taylor added the extended waiting period has now forced him to adjust when he places his orders.
“I have to order right when it opens or else there’s going to be 100 people in line,” Taylor said.
Marketing Director of BU Dining James Boushka wrote in an email the delays were caused by a sharp increase in demand this semester.
“Late Nite Café experienced twice as many transactions during the first week of Spring semester over the Fall semester,” Boushka wrote. “The delay in students receiving their order is directly due to the sheer volume of transactions.”
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Amanda Christodoulou said placing orders immediately once Late Nite opens has become a necessity.
“Within a minute of opening, it’s usually already 40 people online,” she said. “Last semester it was absolutely not like that.”
Christodoulou added her longest wait time so far this semester was upward of 40 minutes.
Warren Towers Resident Assistant Saahil Adusumilli, a junior in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said the wait times have become progressively longer throughout his years at BU, regardless of the pandemic.
“Comparing it to my freshman year, they used to be five to ten minutes but now it can be almost an hour long,” Adusumilli said. “I don’t know what the app has done, but doing it on Grubhub has just made the lines a lot longer.”
Since the beginning of the Fall semester, BU Dining has used the Grubhub app for ordering at on-campus restaurants to minimize contact between patrons and servers.
For this Spring specifically, Adusumilli said the increase in Warren residents is the cause of these extended waits.
“The building is 25 percent more occupied than it was in the Fall,” he said.
CAS freshman Maddie Matonti said she attributes the increased demand to new on-campus arrivals such as those in the College of General Studies, and said she sympathizes with Late Nite employees.
“There are a lot more new students like the CGS kids,” Matonti said. “I feel really bad for the workers too because it’s just like they get so many orders within five minutes.”
Boushka noted BU Dining was working hard to implement new measures that reduce the time it takes for students to get their food.
“Without sacrificing quality or variety of menu items, students will find average wait times reduced,” he wrote, “as we’ve streamlined the mobile ordering experience, preparation of ingredients, and delivery notifications.”
Regardless of the wait times, Matonti said she isn’t deterred from returning to Late Nite.
“I’ll still order,” she said. “I’ll wait, it’s okay.”
