FILE PHOTO – Hamburger to go. Photo by Quin Engle on Unsplash
LOGAN — Utah State University could be getting another delivery service for food, textbooks and other grocery items, primarily for those already on the campus.
Paranoid Fan, which is already in place at USU, works by having students type in their on-campus location and providing students with options for food and other deliveries. Students may also see scannable QR codes around campus and can scan those on their smartphones for a list of campus delivery options, including all USU retail dining locations, USU coffee shops and cafes, the USU Campus Store and The Aggie Marketplace.
Paranoid Fan kicked off with USU and the University of Oregon, but hopes to expand to other campuses with large populations of on-campus students.
“We’re kind of like a Door Dash but just for your campus,” said Augistin Gonzales, founder and CEO of Paranoid Fan. “We think we have a lot of potential here and there’s a market fit.”
Gonzales said he is not worried about competing with other food delivery services such as Door Dash, UberEats and Postmates because Paranoid Fan is focused entirely on campus delivery with campus resources, while other delivery services work within the entire community and may take longer to deliver goods because of it.
“A lot of these big national providers just don’t do hyper-local delivery, that is just not in their wheelhouse,” Gonzales said. “There’s a lot of teamwork and friendships that have evolved from this.”
Gonzales said he had been developing the program for a while, but COVID-19 felt like an appropriate time to unveil such a market, as many students are staying in more, getting tired of cooking and unable to eat our and socialize as they would in a normal year.
“It’s a good way for the student deliverers to stay on campus, make some money on the side and get some experience,” Gonzales said. “One of the biggest challenges a lot of these dining programs have is trying to get food to everyone without being able to have people sit down in a normal dining hall.”
For additional details about the service, go here: https://paranoidfan.com/.