**e-Runner: Campus Food Runner Application**

\*\*This is a Double-blind review, please do not include authors information in this version \*\*

Received Date: \*date

Accepted Date: \*date

Published Date: \*date

**HIGHLIGHTS**

  - The life of a student is hectic with academic and non-academic activities that need a systematic time management.

  - Convenience is the prime factor for the students as the orders can be made as simple as few clicks on any mobile devices and the food and beverages are delivered to their doorstep.

  - This application has many benefits such as save time, convenient, all-in-one platform, can enhance student’s lifestyle and can improve customer experience.

ABSTRACT

*Life as a student is challenging due to high academic load, tight assignments deadlines, bounce back and forth to class, extra-curricular activities and etc. This is a common daily scenario in campus that require a good time management. In preliminary investigation of this study, students are prefer to take away their food and dine in their rooms so that they will not waste their time by spending too much time at the cafeteria. Nowadays, technology has played a key role in revolutionizing the food delivery service and benefits the students, runners and food outlets in many ways. Convenience is the prime factor for the students as the orders can be made as simple as few clicks on any mobile devices and the food and beverages are delivered to their doorstep. Additionally, this way can avoid them from spending too much or wasting time when buying food. Since food delivery becoming popular and preferable recently, thus, this application named e-Runner has been developed for campus food delivery system. Students can make food order, check the order status and view variety of food and beverages from several food outlets. The modified Waterfall Model has been used as the methodology of this study that consists of 4 phases namely Requirement Analysis, Design, Implementation and Testing. The application has been tested using 2 types of testing; Functionality and Usability Testing. The testing results show that this application has many benefits such as save time, convenient and act as all-in-one platform. Furthermore, it can enhance student’s lifestyle and can improve customer experience.*

*Keywords: Campus food runner, mobile application*

# INTRODUCTION

Life as a student is challenging due to high academic load, tight assignments deadlines, bounce back and forth to class, extra-curricular activities and etc. This is a common daily scenario in campus that require a good time management.

For students who are busy with daily routines or have no transportation in campus, they faced problems to buy food. In some campuses, the existing food runner services such as Grab Food, Food Panda or any other public food delivery services are not allowed to operate in campus. Thus, students need to allocate some times to buy food and postpone their tasks.

Unfortunately, when they buy food, a lot of time is wasted due to long queues, slow food preparation or the remote location of food outlets. Thus, there is a need to develop a mobile application that allow students to have easy access to buy their food and deliver at their door step. Furthermore, this study is also aimed to provide online food delivering system among food outlets in campus. Hence, this application can ease the students to enjoy their food while doing their work without interruption. In the food outlets side, they can easily manage food orders and delivery.

# LITERATURE REVIEW

**Food Delivery Services**

Food ordering and delivery applications have influenced the current development of the food business and modified restaurant opinions (Muller, 2020). Customers may browse the various restaurants in their neighborhood as well as their willingness to deliver meals to their homes (Zhao & Bacao, 2020). During inclement weather, people may opt to order food online instead of going out to eat. Customers generally prefer to sit indoors to avoid severe weather, and as a result, eateries are frequently more vacant than usual.

Because of the growth of online food delivery services, restaurants and customers can now communicate even when the weather is bad. Restaurants should sustain a steady stream of sales while providing excellent service to their customers. Food online distribution solutions are an evolving online-to-offline mobile technology that integrates online order and offline delivery systems to create a channel between catering businesses and consumers.

**Existing Food Delivery Systems**

There are many food delivery systems available in Malaysia. This section briefly describe some of the popular food delivery systems and their logo are shown in Figure 1.

| ![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image1.emf) | ![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image2.emf) | ![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image3.emf) |
| ----------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| Grab                                      | Foodpanda                                 | Lalamove                                  |

**Figure 1:** Food Delivery Systems

***GrabFood***

The most popular super-app in Southeast Asia is Grab with over 670 million people rely on essential services in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar. GrabFood is a new food delivery service that allows users to order tasty cuisine from famous restaurants in their area. GrabFood aims to connect everyone with local restaurants and cafes (Balakrishnan, 2021. Customers can easily place an order using the GrabFood, and their orders will be delivered directly to their door.

The application functions by displaying all of the menus and promotions available on the homepage. To allow the application to display the 24 restaurant or dish menu within their territories, users must type or choose their location automatically. In addition, the app makes use of its Grab Pay digital payment service. Users can pay by adding money to their Grab Pay e-wallet or utilizing the cash-on-delivery (COD) method. In addition, the app allows the user to select a pickup location, making it easier for the user and the driver to meet and deliver the food.

***Foodpanda***

Foodpanda is a food and grocery delivery network that provides a wide range of delicious meals with real local flavours to tempt local taste buds. Customers may enjoy lip-smacking Malaysian comfort food thanks to the company's partnerships with several local eateries.

Foodpanda processes orders and sends them to partners, who subsequently deliver the food to customers via delivery riders. Websites and mobile apps are used to access the service. It connects consumers with restaurants that deliver food in their neighbourhood, allowing them to choose, order, and pay online or offline.

Customers order food by searching for meals from a list of restaurants on the website using their postcodes. They can order food from restaurants by browsing menus and selecting items to order before inputting a location and checking out. Food Panda sends out an SMS to confirm orders and their estimated delivery time. Foodpanda also has a review option on restaurant pages where customers can submit input on the sales process, delivery, taste, and overall impression of the restaurant.

***Lalamove***

Lalamove promises to deliver the most cost-effective logistics solution for food vendors operating an online food business. It welcomes anyone who owns or operates a restaurant, food stall, cafe, or food and beveranges (F\&B) chain store to join them in providing the most reliable meal delivery service.

The Lalamove team places a premium on providing trustworthy transportation service and charges no compensation on any deliveries. Food vendors can choose which cars they want to use to deliver their food, and Lalamove will locate compatible drivers in seconds. Additional Lalabags will be used to keep the food safe, fresh, and hygienic, in addition to the original food packaging provided by the vendors. Inside Scoop, Salad Atelier, and CakeTogether are just a few of the food brands that have cooperated with Lalamove.

All of these food delivery services are available for public users. However, in certain campuses, these services are not allowed to be operated. Thus, the needs of having such services for campus coverage is important to assist students in getting their food and drinks in an effective manner.

# METHODOLOGY 

The Modified Waterfall Model was chosen as the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) model to design the e-Runner prototype. It serves as a framework for the activities carried out during the software development phase. According to Eason (2016), this model from the engineering and construction sectors was customized for software development because there were no defined software development processes at the time of the industry's start.

The phases of the modified waterfall as illustrated in Figure 2 are the same as with the original waterfall. Modified waterfalls have been introduced in response to the perceived problems with the waterfall model (Govardhan & Mohammad, 2010). The modified waterfall is an improved version of the waterfall model that can produce faster results in less time while also being more versatile than the waterfall. In each phase, the redesigned waterfall also collects feedback from end-users.

![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image4.emf)

**Figure 2:** Modified Waterfall model

Figure 2 shows that each stage can return to the previous stage to enable changes in user requirement and prototype design. The developer can amend the requirements before moving on to the design phase if there are any comments or input from the end-users. As a result of the required revisions, iteration may occurs in the each phase. The developer might provide the system design to the project's end-users for input or comments. They must interact during this phase to guarantee that there are no modifications during the implementation phase. End-users can provide design suggestions based on their experiences.

The testing phase is the most crucial step of development where the application is examined its usability towards users. The testing is carried out by distributing questionnaire to determine how simple and user-friendly the application is.

**THE PROTOTYPE**

This section shows some of the application’s interface samples. The application has been developed using Android Studio, Canva and Firebase as the database. Figure 3 shows the Splash Screen and Login page.

![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image5.png)

**Figure 3:** Splash Screen and Login page

The Customer Application features are shown in Figure 4 that consists of Menu page, Cart page and Payment page.

![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image6.png)![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image7.png)![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image8.png)

**Figure 4:** Menu, Cart and Payment page

This application also provides features for food outlets to manage orders and delivery as shown in Figure 5 such as Pending Order page and Post Dish page.

![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image9.png)![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image10.png)

**Figure 5:** Food Outlets features

The features for Runner’s include Delivery page and how to contact customer page as illustrated in Figure 6.

![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image11.png)![](630f7f1d0e220_media/media/image12.png)

**Figure 6:** Runner’s features

**FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS**

This application has been tested for its usability on 30 respondents that include the students, runners and owner of the food outlets. The result is shown in Table 1.

**Table 1:** Usability Testing Results

| No | Question                                                                     | Strongly Agree (%) | Agree (%) | Disagree (%) | Strongly Disagree (%) |
| -- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------ | --------- | ------------ | --------------------- |
| 1  | Overall, I am satisfied with how easy it is to use this system.              | 70                 | 20        | 3.3          | 6.7                   |
| 2  | It was simple to use this eRunner: Campus Food Runner Application.           | 60                 | 33.3      | 3.3          | 3.3                   |
| 3  | It was easy to learn to use this eRunner: Campus Food Runner Application.    | 70                 | 26.7      | 0            | 3.3                   |
| 4  | It was easy to find the information I needed.                                | 60                 | 33.3      | 6.7          | 0                     |
| 5  | The interface of this application was pleasant                               | 76.7               | 16.7      | 3.3          | 3.3                   |
| 6  | This application has all the functions and capabilities I expect it to have. | 60                 | 36.7      | 0            | 3.3                   |
| 7  | Overall, I am satisfied with this application.                               | 60                 | 36.7      | 0            | 3.3                   |

Based on the results, majority of the users are strongly agreed with each of the element that is tested in this testing. Some of the users response Disgree or Strongly Disagree because they are not familiar with mobile application.

**CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS**

Feedback from the respondents indicate that this application has the potential to be used in any campus and shows its ability to make the food ordering and delivery process easier. Furthermore, the application helps the students to get their food without long queue and waste their time. This application can benefits not only for the students but also for the staff or visitors in the campus.

**REFERENCES**

Balakrishnan, R. (2021). *Partner content: How grabfood is harnessing technology to overcome the challenge of food delivery in Southeast Asia*. DealStreetAsia.

Eason, O. K. (2016). Information Systems Development Methodologies Transitions: An Analysis of Waterfall to Agile Methodology. University of New Hampshire, 1–23.

Müller, J. (2021). Malaysia: food delivery apps usage increase reasons COVID-19 by age group 2020. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1143454/malaysia-reasons-using-food-delivery-apps-more-during-covid-19-by-age-group/

Zhao, Y., Bacao, F. (2020). What factors determining customer continuingly using food delivery apps during 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic period? International journal of hospitality management.