Website Offers Free Food, ‘Freshman 15’

There’s no dough in this pizza—at least not the green kind.

Knowing full well that food and free things are the way to college students’ hearts, campusfood.com is offering free cheese pizzas or buffalo wings to students who order either of those items through its website. The site boasts the motto, “Freshman fifteen. Faster,” and offers students an online platform to order takeout food from local merchants.

“I ordered a small cheese pizza from Dial-A-Pizza and it really was free,” said Thea A. Daniels ’05. “I just paid a $2 tip to the delivery man.”

Dial-A-Pizza’s 10-inch cheese pie normally costs $6.04, with tax.

Daniels is co-captain of the Crimson Dance Team, which is partnering with campusfood.com to promote the two-week-long giveaway.

“I have no idea how they learned about us but they e-mailed me,” she said. “Essentially they gave us a big box with flyers and t-shirts. Fifty cents of every order goes to us.”

Campusfood.com Marketing Coordinator Ismael Archbold said that 100 to 150 orders were placed from Harvard on the site Wednesday, the first day of the promotion.

He said that on a typical day 15 to 50 orders are placed on the site from Harvard.

Campusfood.com allows Harvard students to order take-out from 16 local restaurants.

For the promotion, Subs Express and Pizza, Top Speed Pizzeria, Dial-A-Pizza and Cinderella’s Italian Cuisine are all offering free small cheese pizzas, while Wing Works is offering free six-piece buffalo wings. The offer is good for one order per customer.

The minimum delivery charge is waived, Archbold said, and campusfood.com picks up the tab for the free food.

“Though we’ve been in Boston for a while, we’ve just signed up a few new restaurants. We just want to tell people we’re out here and to check us out,” he added.

Mark M. Higgins ’07 said he was pleased with the free food he ordered on Wednesday—as well as the service.

“I got a small cheese pizza from Top Speed Pizzeria. It took about 20 minutes,” said Higgins, who learned about the promotion from the Matthews open-list.

The Crimson ordered a small six-slice cheese pizza from Cinderella’s Italian Cuisine through the site. It was delivered 45 minutes later by a green-clad delivery man who described the response to the promotion as “crazy.”

Students Tufts, Boston College, Northeastern, MIT and Boston University have also had a chance to take advantage of the promotion, which will end Nov. 24.

Campusfood.com was founded by a University of Pennsylvania student in 1997.

“If you don’t like free food you’re either dead or don’t like to eat,” Archbold said.