Longtime campus eatery and Claremont McKenna College fixture The Hub installed two self-service kiosks and a mobile ordering system this semester, aiming to speed up service and reduce congestion. Some student customers and Hub employees, however, said the change has already begun to reshape how they interact with one another.
This change comes after the same system was installed at DayBreak Café in the Robert Day Science Center last fall, where it was received well by students and staff.
Phil Herrera is an assistant general manager for Bon Appétit at CMC, which manages the college’s food services. He said the system was introduced with the goal of “streamlining ordering and reducing wait times during busy meal periods.”
“We’ve heard very positive feedback from students and staff at The Hub, who note the convenience of the new ordering system,” Herrera said.
Emre Kocer CM ’27 is one of those students. He explained how ordering food ahead of time allows him to grab and go.
“It is definitely more efficient, ” Kocer said. “I can just pre-order it, come, pick it up, done.”
Some students have voiced different experiences from Kocer, especially if their orders are more complicated.
Lucy Jaffee CM ’26 said that the kiosks restrict how students can combine items.
“For some reason, on the kiosk you can’t order both a coffee and also get something from the grill at the same time,” Jaffee said. “Often I use my meal swipe to combine both of those, so I usually still order in person if I can.”
Even if students like Jaffee choose to order in person at the counter, the employee taking the order still has to input it into a kiosk at the counter. According to some Hub employees, this hybrid form of ordering at the counter can also create inconvenient slowdowns.
Hub employee Dorien Randell thinks the system still needs adjustments.
“There used to be a lot more customization. I feel like they took a lot of that way,” Randell said. “I feel like we’re slower. I feel like we can’t keep up with the amount of students we’re getting because of the [new] system.”
More significant to Randell than efficiency, however, is the decline in face-to-face interaction.
“I do miss talking to [students] and getting to know them,” Randell said. “I used to call you by your name, now you’re just numbers.”
Ananya Mahtani CM ’27 said she used to personally know the baristas at The Hub, and she misses interacting with them since the new system was implemented.
“The whole interaction of talking to the baristas I knew and them knowing my order was kind of awesome,” Mahtani said. “Now we don’t have that anymore.”
Kocer echoed Mahtani’s sentiment.
“Before you would walk into The Hub and then there’d be somebody waiting at the cashier line,” Kocer said. “It was more interactive. Now I just go on my phone.”
Kocer also said that before these changes were made, he would describe The Hub as a social spot. But now, he said that students are more focused on getting their food and using the space to do work.
“I think it made everything just run and go a little bit more,” Kocer said. “Just doing work and using this more like a replenishing place, rather than the social area.”
Mahtani said that although a great sense of community between students is maintained, she worries how the Hub’s atmosphere might shift with less interaction between students and workers.
For Jaffee, she’s mostly concerned for The Hub staff.
“I’m personally of the mind of whatever the employees think works best for them,” Jaffee said. “If they prefer having student interaction and find that’s a good way to manage the cafe, then I think that’s what we should do. If they’ve called for an online system because they just get overwhelmed and it’s hard to manage them, I think that’s what we should do.”
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