I was at CMU '83 to '87. It saved us time to check if there was the proper kind of coke in the machine and if it was cold before we walked down to the room with the machine. It was cheaper than the University's vending machines. And it was in classy glass bottles.

Trivia: It was (I was told) using experimental 3Mbps Ethernet, the predecessor to the 10Mbps Ethernet that has grown to 10Gpbs+ now.