When Judd Rosenblatt attended Yale University, he sold over $200,000 worth of a single sandwich to his fellow students.
“It was called a Wenzel sandwich. It’s this Buffalo chicken grinder that we ordered from a restaurant off campus,” Rosenblatt said.
He sold the sandwich through an app he developed called One Button Wenzel. Students at Yale opened the app, filled in their payment info, pushed a button and had the sandwich delivered to them by drivers who worked for the app.
Crunchbutton, of which Rosenblatt is the CEO, is an expanded version of One Button Wenzel. Crunchbutton delivers food from restaurants that don’t usually deliver like Chipotle, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and Chili’s straight to student’s apartments or dorms for a fee of $3 per order, plus the cost of the food.
And it’s coming to Buffalo.
“We focus on colleges because they’re a great jumping off place to focus on cities and towns,” Rosenblatt said. “Buffalo is a great example of that.”
The application is brought to campus through student representatives. Mitch Featherstone, a senior business major, took the first step. He was looking for a job last semester and over the summer when he stumbled upon a post online about Crunchbutton looking for representatives.
“I thought it would be good to bring to UB because food delivery is a great concept for a college campus,” Featherstone said. “There are a lot of students who don’t have cars who live on campus, and it’s great for students on meal plans who want to switch things up.”
Not only did Featherstone decide then to help launch the app, he got many others involved, including Danielle Michaels, a sophomore media study major.
“It’s a marketing and brand ambassador position,” Michaels said. “It’s cool and freelance based.”
Rosenblatt said that the app might one day serve places outside of college areas, since the company is expanding at about a rate of 30 percent per month.
The app is brand-new to the area, so most students haven’t heard of it before. Crunchbutton’s campus representatives are set to start launching the app on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. This means that the app will become activated and students can begin ordering from their favorite local places.
But students still have opinions about the concept of Crunchbutton.
Justin Jaracz, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, said that he liked the idea behind Crunchbutton and might consider using it – but only for Chipotle.
Jaracz wasn’t the only one open to the idea of having food delivered to him.
“I would use it, I like the idea,” said Katie Perison, a freshman undecided major. “But $3 still seems a little much.”
Perison said that she might use the app despite the price because she likes the restaurants that it has to offer.
The application was set to launch sooner at UB but had issues with drivers and staff.
“We wanted to wait until we had more drivers and brand representatives so we could spread the word about Crunchbutton more and make sure that the service was dependable,” Featherstone said.
Some students were not as open to Crunchbutton as Perison and Jaracz.
“I probably wouldn’t use the app because I have a car and I could just drive there,” said Ben Genco, a senior civil engineering major.
Genco then continued on to say that he would be more likely to use Crunchbutton if he didn’t have a car. He also said that it depends on the restaurants that the app has to offer – if the app offers deliver services from restaurants he really likes, he might consider using it.
Student representatives, like Featherstone, reached out to local food places and worked with them to create a connection between the restaurants and students through the application. He also had to make sure students would be interested in using the application.
“During the first couple weeks of the semester, I did market research for Crunchbutton to gauge the interest level for a delivery service like this at UB,” Featherstone said.
According to Rosenblatt, the restaurants available to order from at UB are based on the feedback the app gets from students – if students don’t see a restaurant they’d like to see on the app, they can request the restaurant. The more requests they get for a restaurant, the more likely it is to be added to Crunchbutton.
John Jacobs is a features staff writer. Features desk can be reached at features@ubspectrum.com.
