Students say Ghost Kitchen's Grubhub is "a hassle"
The Pennsylvania Western University Edinboro’s Celtic Court’s Ghost Kitchen has implemented new changes to how it offers their dining options, and Edinboro students are not pleased.
“This change has been a negative one overall,” said Connor Hamby, a senior student at Pennwest Edinboro. “It’s too much of a hassle to figure out.”
On Monday, Oct. 14, the Ghost Kitchen, located in the Frank G. Pogue Student Center, had made changes to their ordering process, requiring students to use Grubhub to order food.
“They could have chosen literally anything else other than Grubhub,” said Anthony Pepe, a senior student at Pennwest Edinboro.
The new process requires students to download the Grubhub app, make a Grubhub account, connect their account with their school email, and then order through the app, according to the informational fliers listed in the Celtic Court.
“It’s nice that you can order stuff ahead of time and then just pick it up,” said Pepe. “But people have been reporting problems from the first day.”
Students have had a negative reaction to the Ghost Kitchen’s changes. Pennwest Edinboro juniors Alex Lisotto and Mackenzie Burkey stated that the changes have made ordering inconvenient and overly complex.
“They still have the same food from before, but now it’s just kind of inconvenient,” said Lisotto. “It makes me wonder if they are going to gut it all together.”
Some students have avoided dining at the Ghost Kitchen entirely due to the changes, while those that have eaten at the Ghost Kitchen after the changes were implemented expressed their annoyances with the new process.
“I preferred it better when we just walked up and wrote on the tickets what we needed instead of having to go through this whole process on a third-party app,” said Hamby.
Pennwest Edinboro sophomore John Nash, who is majoring in Computer Science, was concerned about previous hacking incidents on GrubHub apps, stating that this change could pose “a major security risk.”
Representatives and employees for the Ghost Kitchen declined to comment.
These recent changes to the Celtic Court’s dining experience follow previous changes from the start of the Fall 2024 academic semester. The new Pennwest Edinboro campus dining service provider, AVI, had made previous changes to the Celtic Court, which were also met with a negative reaction from students.
“I prefer how it was in previous years,” said Hamby. “They used to have stuff like sushi and an ice cream place where we could get pints of ice cream, and it was amazing. But now, we don’t have that, and I find it actively more difficult to spend my Dine Dollars on food as a result.”
Joseph Graves, a Pennwest Edinboro junior who transferred over from one of Pennwest Edinboro’s sister campuses, Pennwest California, said that the Ghost Kitchen was a downgrade from his previous dining experiences.
“I think that Edinboro would be able to learn from Cal U’s dining program,” said Graves. “They use a separate app, and it was well done before Edinboro. They also have more variety of food.”
Despite the negative reactions, some students have mentioned the positive results of the changes. Pepe said that it is convenient that students can order ahead of time and then pick it up, while Burkey mentioned how the changes can impact employees positively.
“It could be better for them as it eliminates more social interactions,” said Burkey. “They can make whatever is on the screen and that is it, which I could see how that is a positive.”
“It kind of feels like I’m wasting money more than anything,” said Hamby. “It was so much more convenient before, and I wish we could go back to how it originally was.”