For those on campus who would rather stay on Facebook than leave their buildings and experience daylight, there’s a new way to satisfy their appetites without moving from the computer. The Campus Special, the company known for its signature ‘100 dollar bill’ coupon books, has launched a new virtual ‘Food Court’ on its website.

Joe Jacobs, co-founder of The Campus Special, said simply listening to his customers helped his company come up with the idea for the new site.

“When you print three and a half million coupon books, you start to get feedback from your customers, and the students have all been saying we’ve made it easier and we’ve been helping them save money with the coupons, but they wanted to be able to order online,” Jacobs said. “On (the University of Illinois) campus, there are some companies you can order online from, but they charge you 75 cents. We saw this as an opportunity to basically stick with our guideline of helping students save money. We provide the luxury of being able to order food online as completely free for students.”

The company has also developed a Facebook application, allowing students to place their orders directly through the social networking site. Jacobs said that The Campus Special is currently working on a mobile site that will allow customers to place orders on their smartphones.

“The mobile site should be rolling out here by mid-October, probably even by the end of September,” Jacobs said.

Students are generally in favor of the online-order concept. Tim Roth, freshman in LAS, said the college lifestyle makes ideas like the virtual ‘Food Court’ very appealing.

“A lot of college students are lazy, and they have a lot of homework,” Roth said. “They have a lot of priorities during the day, and it helps them avoid a half-hour trip to go get some food.”

But ordering delivery food isn’t the only appeal of Food Court. Andrew Tamasauskas, senior in Media, is working as an account executive for The Campus Special this year. He described the different range of restaurants available on the page.

“With our new Food Court, we have a lot of restaurants that aren’t traditionally delivery; we have a lot of carry out places as well that are just downtown,” Tamasauskas said. “We’re really breaking out and expanding to restaurants that are more than just delivery: very popular places like Guido’s, Jupiter’s, and especially Mia Za’s.”

The concept of ‘Food Court’ is not entirely new. EatCU.com launched in 2007, and advertises itself as “Champaign-Urbana’s #1 Restaurant Guide!” Former Illinois undergraduates Dan Glazer and Justin Gorrell started their page in an effort to expose students to more food opportunities.

“We knew that C-U had plenty of dining options to offer, but we had no idea where to find them,” reads the EatCu.com page. “Naturally, we turned our search to the Internet. With a lack of options, even on the World Wide Web, we decided to take action.”

The two digital destinations share many key traits, featuring online orders and e-mail notification of deals. But Tamasauskas argues that The Campus Special page is different.

“We not only have the online website where students can order, as soon as they order they can use virtual coupons that are on the site,” Tamasauskas said.

While discussing the new website, Jacobs compared the experience to a typical telephone order.

“Anytime that I’ve ordered over the phone there might be people in the background,” Jacobs said. “You have to repeat what you said. I’ve ordered before, then I have to go pick it up, wait a half hour in line, then my order didn’t have everything I wanted.”

Jacobs argues that, with his website, students can get exactly what they want everytime.