Every morning, Allshine Chen wakes up with two thoughts in mind: Facebook and free food.

Luckily, he can combine the two by playing Food Friendzy -- a Facebook application allowing players to win cash for food on Campusfood.com.

"It only takes like one or two minutes to play the game because it's really simple," Chen (senior-statistics) said.

The game features a six-by-six board in which players have to flip tiles to reveal a prize. Three matches must be flipped to win the prize shown. Each board also has a "you lose" tile, which automatically ends the game.

"Every board's a winner," said Mike Saunders, creator of Campusfood.com. "Technically, if you get lucky you could win $10 every time."

The game is now catching on nationwide, Saunders said.

Three and half million users tested the original version last semester, which had some undefeatable boards, Saunders said. The game is now available at 300 schools around the country with one million games played each week, he said.

"We took lessons we learned and comments from users to build this version of Food Friendzy [which] launched about four weeks ago," he said. "We're going to run the game until the end of the semester, and we're actually hoping to get more and more advertisers to hop onto the game so we can keep it running as long as we can."

As for other online food ordering Web sites, such as Lionmenus.com, creating a game like Food Friendzy could be a success.

Justin Goldman, one of the creators of Lionmenus, said the idea has "certainly crossed our minds. Just like any other marketing idea we weigh the pros and cons."

Goldman added just because Lionmenus has not done something like this yet doesn't mean it won't in the future.

Food Friendzy has not hurt Lionmenus' business -- September was a successful month in which Lionmenus had the "most hits ever," Goldman said.

"We're on pace to beat that in October," he said. Lionmenus utilizes various marking strategies, including online advertising, he added.

"Without a question the online advertising industry is booming," he said. "We take advantage of it in a lot of ways. Every year we try new things and every year we do a lot of the same things that have worked well for us in the past."

Rotelli, 250 E. Calder Way, is one restaurant that accepts Campusfood cash earned from Food Friendzy.

"Students today don't read the paper; they don't read anything they have to pick up," Mike Hughes, Rotelli owner, said. "They're on the Internet and they love this Facebook thing, [so we've] directed all our advertising into those avenues."

Players are allotted three daily plays, but more can be earned.

"There's a 'free play' tile in every game. Basically we know nobody wants to invite their friends on any Facebook application [anymore]; if your friend downloads the game you get a free play," Saunders said. "[We're] trying to reward early players of Food Friendzy just by having the game."

For security reasons, only students in participating college networks can play the game, Saunders said.

"That's how we make sure you don't have three different accounts playing three times a day each," he said.

Since he lives near Wal-Mart, Chen likes to play in the morning so he can plan his menu for the day.

"I usually do it in the morning when I get up 'cause I don't want to forget about it later," he said.

Playing the game has boosted Chen's online ordering habits, he said.

"I've ordered more food in the past months from Campusfood.com than any of my cumulative past semesters," Chen said. "The free money is really nice as an incentive to make people order through [Campusfood.com]."

Chrissy Castellano (junior-psychology), who was unaware she was the top Food Friendzy player on Sept. 30, earned $60.50 in one month of playing the game. As of Monday, Oct. 6, she has earned $69.00 and still claims the top spot.

"It's kind of like a habit, and I have it on my toolbar so I just click on it and do it," Castellano said. "There's nothing to lose so I don't see why not."

Dan Ludwig (sophomore-computer engineering), another top winner, has been approached about his Facebook stardom, he said.

"At least one person has messaged me through Facebook asking me how I've won so much and if there's a secret," Ludwig said. "I told them it was random and I was just lucky."

Chen, who mostly orders from Belly Buster Burritos, 444 E. College Ave., is convinced there's a method to winning. He starts by clicking the corners, then continues in that area if it's "safe," he said. Then he'll choose a random area and continue in arbitrary spots.

Though Chen finds "the corners and center are pretty safe," he admits he's losing steam.

"I mean I want to stay at the top, but I haven't been doing so well lately. I think my method's giving out," he said.