A friend approached Adrian Fang three years ago asking if there was an easier way to manage a food order for a luncheon for his sales team. Fang, whose background is in IT, began to think of ways to create an online platform to streamline orders. Then last year, another friend told Fang about the newly opened Millersville University Software Productization Center.
That’s what friends are for.
Not only did Fang help solve his friend’s original food-ordering quandary, but he partnered with Millersville to introduce CruzCourt, an online food ordering software, to roll out the product more than a year ahead of schedule. On Oct. 15, Fang and Millersville will celebrate the launch and partnership with a party at the Murata Business Center in Carlisle.
Fang’s CruzStar is the first company to work with the SPC, which provides students and faculty who work in the areas of computer science, design, business marketing, and public relations, and he thinks other entrepreneurs can also benefit from the center’s services.
“When we started up, we didn’t have the financial resources to develop a prototype and go into R&D,” says Fang, a 2003 graduate of Lafayette College in Easton who previously developed eLearning tools for 65,000 employees of the Social Security Administration. “Millersville was very dedicated and we built a pretty strong relationship with them.”
CruzCourt is essentially a virtual cafeteria, allowing corporations who have more than 100 employees and don’t have the resources to build and manage a cafeteria or want to eliminate the costs of running one to provide employees with a customized and easy way to order meals. CruzStar is still signing up caterers and food providers for the service, who will also utilize the software to manage order fulfillment.
Fang also has an ROI calculator that estimates how much productivity is lost (sometimes a half hour or more) on ordering and retrieving meals during the workday. He hopes to develop a market in the Harrisburg area and then expand into the King of Prussia area outside of Philadelphia.
Source: Adrian Fang, CruzStar
Writer: Joe Petrucci