Month: May 2025

Let’s talk about the simplest meal in the American culinary canon: a hot bowl of tomato soup and a perfectly grilled cheese sandwich.

It’s not fancy. It’s not “elevated.” But it’s everything.

It’s the meal that whispers, you’re safe. It’s what we crave on gray days when we’re feeling unmoored. It’s what we remember being made for us by someone who loved us, without asking if we were vegan, gluten-free, keto, or trending. It’s not a meal that performs. It doesn’t Instagram well. It doesn’t need garnish. It’s the culinary equivalent of a warm hug and a reassuring hand on your back that says, you’re going to be just fine.

And in my world, the world of college dining, social connection, and strategic planning, it’s a metaphor for everything that matters.

The Real Recipe for Connection

Colleges are pouring billions into new residence halls, tech upgrades, esports lounges, and AI-enhanced classrooms. Meanwhile, many are still missing what students actually need most human connection.

That’s where the grilled cheese and tomato soup come in.

This humble meal is more than comfort food it’s an archetype of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™. When served in a dining hall designed not just for food service but for community service, a meal like this becomes a conversation starter, a moment of nostalgia, a reason to sit just a little longer across from someone new.

Because let’s be honest: no one is stress-eating quinoa.

A student might grab a salad and rush off to class, earbuds in, socially invisible. But put tomato soup and a hot sandwich in front of them especially one that reminds them of home and suddenly you’ve created a moment. The smell, the steam, the satisfying crackle as the knife cuts through the crust—it slows them down. Makes them stay. Makes them open up.

Loneliness Can’t Be Cured with Delivery Apps

One of the most dangerous epidemics on college campuses isn’t drugs or alcohol it’s loneliness. It’s young men and women sitting in their rooms, eating alone from a takeout container, watching TikToks instead of making memories. It’s the quiet erosion of mental health that happens not in a moment of crisis, but over the course of 45 days—the six-week window when a freshman decides if they feel like they belong.

Dining programs, when done right, are the antidote.

But they’re only effective if they stop trying to be restaurants and start acting like relationship engines. Stop curating food courts for efficiency and start designing them for humanity. Give students spaces that invite them to linger. Offer meals that don’t just fill their stomachs, but feed their stories.

Because the grilled cheese is never just about cheese.

It’s about mom making it for you when you stayed home sick. It’s about a snow day. It’s about pajamas and reruns of “The Price is Right.” And when you sit across from someone eating that same meal, and your eyes meet, you say without saying, I get you.

That is the social currency that no tuition payment can buy.

Drop the Mic

I’ve spent my career helping colleges design better dining programs. I’ve built strategies that increase retention, improve housing occupancy, and, yes, raise GPAs. But do you want to know what works better than data dashboards and financial models?

A bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, served in a dining hall that’s built to build friendships.

When dining programs fail, it’s never just because the food wasn’t good. It’s because the space didn’t feel good. The lighting was wrong. The seating was awkward. The music was off. Or worse, the food was great, but everyone took it to go.

You can’t build community if no one stays long enough to say hello.

This is why SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ matters. Because it’s not enough to serve food. You have to serve a purpose. You have to create the conditions where students bump into each other, strike up conversations, and begin weaving together the social fabric that will define their college experience and their lives beyond it.

You want to reduce anxiety, improve student success, and retain more sophomores? Serve tomato soup and grilled cheese in a dining hall that feels like a second home.

Boom. Drop the mic.

A Challenge to Campus Leaders

To the presidents, provosts, and CFOs reading this: Your dining program is not a line item—it’s a lifeline.

If your campus dining spaces aren’t designed to nurture emotional well-being and facilitate social connection, then they are actively contributing to the problem. The solution doesn’t require a $100 million building campaign. It requires a mindset shift.

What if we stopped asking, How many students can we feed per hour? and started asking, How many lives can we impact per meal?

What if the grilled cheese and tomato soup were the centerpiece of your retention strategy?

It may sound quaint. It may even sound naïve.

But in a world that’s growing more disconnected by the day, offering students a warm, simple, familiar meal in a space that encourages face-to-face connection isn’t nostalgia, it’s strategy.

In Closing

There’s a reason we return to this meal again and again, even in adulthood. It’s not just about flavor. It’s about feeling. It’s about connection. It’s about belonging.

That’s what students want. That’s what they need.

So here’s my call to action: Start designing your dining program not as a food factory, but as the heart of your campus culture. Serve more grilled cheese. Ladle out the soup. Build spaces that bring people together. If you do, I promise you’ll see results—retention, engagement, happiness, academic success.

And if you’re not sure where to start?

Let’s talk.

Because sometimes, the solution to a very big problem starts with something very small.

A bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Drop the mic.

Let’s talk honestly about college dining today, and let’s start with a simple question that nearly every student across North America is asking:

Is it too much to ask for consistent, craveable, inclusive food options every single day, especially when I’m paying between $5,000 and $9,000 a year for a mandatory meal plan?

The short answer? No. It’s not too much to ask. In fact, it’s the bare minimum.

I’ve spent over 35 years walking college campuses, eating in dining halls, listening to students, and studying what works and what doesn’t. And here’s what I’ve learned: Students aren’t asking for Michelin-starred meals. They’re asking for dependable favorites, done well, served with pride and consistency.

French fries. Mac and cheese. A great burger. A grilled sub. A plant-forward entrée. And a legitimate allergen-free platform that doesn’t feel like a second-class experience.
Every. Single. Day.

Why These Foods Matter More Than You Think

Let’s be clear—this isn’t a childish or indulgent wish list. These menu items are emotional anchors. They offer comfort, familiarity, and accessibility in an unfamiliar environment where students are dealing with academic pressure, social transition, and, for many, being away from home for the first time.

They also serve as social lubricants. What food is more universally loved than a basket of hot fries or a burger hot off the grill? They foster connection, casual conversation, and community. If you’re committed to reducing loneliness and increasing retention, this is where you start—not with more programming, but with food that draws students in and keeps them coming back.

The Price Tag Demands It

Let’s talk dollars and expectations.
Mandatory meal plans in the $5,000 to $9,000 range are now the norm. Students and families are mandated to pay this. That’s almost more than many people spend on groceries in a year. So why is it okay to remove core favorites from the menu entirely on certain days? Or serve them inconsistently depending on which dining hall you walk into?

If an off-campus restaurant refused to serve fries or burgers on Tuesdays, or stopped offering mac ‘n cheese on weekends, would anyone go back? Of course not. Yet on campus, we’ve trained students to lower their expectations and accept inconsistency as the norm.

Dining programs must meet the promise that their price tags imply: everyday access to the foods students crave, with enough variety and balance to meet every lifestyle and dietary need.

Craveable and Inclusive Are Not Opposites

There’s a false narrative floating around some campuses that to be progressive, dining must move “beyond burgers and fries.” I understand the spirit of that sentiment. We do need to push toward sustainability. We must reduce food waste. And yes, plant-forward, allergen-conscious, and nutritionally balanced options are more important than ever.

But here’s the trap: somewhere along the line, we began interpreting progress as subtraction.

Removing the foods students love isn’t progress. It’s exclusion.

Real leadership in campus dining means adding value—not subtracting. It means expanding options so that the vegan student and the burger lover can both eat side by side, feel satisfied, and have no reason to leave campus to eat.

It means having both Impossible and Angus patties on the grill. It means a plant-forward mac and cheese made with oat milk and cashew cheese right alongside the classic cheddar version your mom used to make. And yes, it means fries, crispy, golden, real—not some soggy, oven-baked compromise that no one wants to finish.

Consistency Is the Real Innovation

Innovation isn’t about creating the most obscure menu cycle or rotating in exotic ingredients no one can pronounce. The most powerful innovation in college dining right now is predictable, high-quality consistency.

Students don’t want surprises when it comes to core favorites. They want to know that if they had a long night of studying, or didn’t eat breakfast, they can walk into any dining hall and find something that hits the spot.

That’s not lazy or outdated thinking. It’s strategic design.

Because when students know they can rely on campus dining to satisfy them, morning, noon, and late night, they stop leaving campus to eat. They engage. They linger. They bring friends. And that translates to better retention, higher occupancy, stronger social capital, and a more vibrant community.

Food as SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we’ve pioneered the concept of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, the idea that dining is the most powerful platform to foster friendships, build networks, and drive emotional well-being in students. And guess what: French fries are part of that architecture. So is the mac and cheese. And the grilled sub, the plant-forward grain bowl, and the allergen-free risotto.

Why? Because when students eat what they love, where they love, with people they like, it changes their trajectory. It transforms dining from a transaction to a connection. And connection is what retains students.

The Real Question: Why Wouldn’t You Offer These Every Day?

It’s time to flip the script. Instead of asking whether it’s too much to offer all of this every day, let’s ask why we ever stopped doing it in the first place.
We know the answer: budget cuts, staffing issues, cost of goods, supply chain disruptions. We’ve heard them all.

But at the end of the day, those aren’t reasons, they’re excuses.

The schools that win, the ones who thrive in spite of the enrollment cliff, are those who reject mediocrity and deliver on their value promise every day. They know that food isn’t the student experience. It creates the student experience.

A Call to Action

Whether your current dining agreement expires June 30, 2025 or June 30, 2026, or you’re just tired of broken promises and low expectations, it’s time to act.

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we don’t just write reports. We reinvent dining experiences using our industry-only performance-based, success fee guarantee. That means if we don’t increase your bottom line, you don’t pay us. Period.

Let’s talk about how to deliver the consistency, variety, and value your students deserve, every single day.

Schedule a call with me today and find out if your institution qualifies for our no-risk, results-driven approach.

Because your students deserve more than lukewarm excuses.
They deserve fries—and mac and cheese, with a side of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™. Every day.

There’s something delightfully rebellious—almost poetic—about the idea of having a milkshake for breakfast. It flips convention on its head and dares us to rethink the rules that no longer serve us. It invites us to break from the mechanical, institutionalized routines of dining that dominate college campuses. And more importantly, it speaks to a deeper truth about the student experience: college isn’t just about class schedules and credit hours. It’s about identity, independence, and belonging. That journey should start, quite literally, with breakfast.

In my work as a social architect, I often talk about dining not as a transactional function, but as a transformational tool. When you walk into a campus dining hall, what do you see? A utilitarian food line? Or a vibrant community hub? If it’s the former, something is broken. And perhaps, the first step in fixing it starts with handing students the freedom to choose their experience—whether that means scrambled tofu or a double-chocolate milkshake at 8:00 a.m.

Institutional Dining is Outdated—Students Deserve Options

College students today live in a different universe than their predecessors. They are global, multicultural, digitally native, and wellness-conscious. But they’re also anxious, sleep-deprived, and, increasingly, isolated. A meal is not just sustenance—it’s social capital. Every tray, every table, every time someone eats with someone else, that meal becomes a vehicle for friendship, empathy, and connection.

Yet many institutions still operate under rigid dining rules: breakfast ends at 9:30 a.m. sharp. Lunch starts at 11:00. Dinner closes by 7:00 p.m. No substitutions. No shakes before noon. And no room for personalization. We are asking our students to live according to 1950s norms in a 21st-century world. If they want a milkshake for breakfast—or a grain bowl for dinner—why are we telling them no?

Milkshakes Aren’t Just Treats—They’re Symbols

Now let’s be clear: this blog isn’t about promoting sugar. It’s about promoting autonomy, joy, and emotional well-being. When a student grabs a milkshake at 9:00 a.m., it’s not a nutritional statement—it’s an emotional one. They’re saying, “I get to decide how I start my day. I’m in control.” That’s empowering.

Think of it this way: a milkshake can be packed with protein, dairy or plant-based nutrition, and fresh fruit. With the right ingredients, it becomes both a comfort food and a wellness food. And it doesn’t need to exist on the margins of a dessert menu. It can live front and center—just like the students it serves.

The Dining Hall as a Third Place (and First Place)

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe the social spaces outside of home (first place) and work (second place) where community is built, but for residential students, the dining hall is their new first place. Their dorm room may be where they sleep, but the dining venue is where they come alive. It’s where they find their people.

For commuter students, faculty, and staff, it may very well be their most vital third place—a place to gather, share ideas, and feel part of something greater. The question is: are we designing dining environments with this in mind? Or are we designing for throughput, compliance, and cost control?

If a milkshake for breakfast seems like a small gesture, you’re missing the point. That small gesture says: You are seen. Your preferences matter. You belong.

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and the Cure for Loneliness

College is the proving ground for adulthood, but it can also be painfully lonely. Especially for young men, who increasingly lack close friendships, meaningful connections, and coping tools. We’ve seen it across campuses from coast to coast: isolation, anxiety, and a quiet desperation hiding behind earbuds and hoodies.

What if we could change that through the dining experience?

This is the heartbeat of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™—our signature approach that sees food not as a line item, but as a lifeline. When students are given agency over their dining, when they feel welcome at the table, when the environment sparks interaction instead of inhibition, they start to connect. With others. With themselves. With their campus. With life.

Every Day, Every Student, Every Palate

We believe in what I call the Universal Platform Promise—that every day, a student should be able to find all of the following available, without exception:

• Classic comfort foods: fries, burgers, mac & cheese
• Allergen-free and plant-forward options
• Global cuisines and customizable stations
• Protein-packed smoothies and yes, milkshakes—any time of day

This isn’t about indulgence. It’s about inclusivity. The diversity of our student body demands a diversity of offerings. Anything less is failure.

How Much Are You Charging for This Meal Plan?

Here’s the kicker: most institutions are charging students between $5,000 and $9,000 per year for a mandatory meal plan. That’s a massive investment. Would you pay $8,000 to eat at a restaurant that doesn’t let you choose what you want, when you want it?

Students aren’t unreasonable. They know how much they’re paying. They want value. They want flexibility. They want food that fits their lifestyle and fuels their goals.

And you know what? They want to have fun. Sometimes that fun comes in the form of a cold milkshake on a hot morning before an exam. Why should we say no?

The Call to Action: Start the Conversation

Whether you’re a college president, CFO, auxiliary services director, or student life leader—it’s time to ask: are we creating a dining experience that honors who our students are today? Or are we still operating under legacy assumptions?

The milkshake is a metaphor. It represents a break from old models. A shift toward human-centered dining. And a recognition that joy and choice matter just as much as nutrition and schedules.

Start with breakfast. Rethink your platform. Consider your hours. Your menu. Your staff’s engagement. Reimagine your dining spaces as social launchpads, not feeding troughs.

And maybe—just maybe—start serving milkshakes in the morning.

Because when you give students freedom, flavor, and friendship, you give them something even greater: a sense of home.

Every year, colleges and universities lose millions of dollars, not just in meal plan revenue, but in lost student satisfaction, diminished housing occupancy, and weakened retention rates. The culprit? What we at Porter Khouw Consulting call the Inferior Program Penalty.

What Is the Inferior Program Penalty?

The Inferior Program Penalty occurs when students are required to purchase a mandatory meal plan but feel the dining program “is not worth it.”   When dining programs don’t meet students’ expectations for flexibility, access, predictability, consistency, or quality, students respond by voting with their feet, and their phones.

They head off campus, they open DoorDash or another delivery app. The Inferior Program Penalty is when a student spends their own or their parents’ money on top of the money they’re already required to spend on a mandatory meal plan to meet their basic needs.  It’s a double payment: once to the institution, once to DoorDash to satisfy their actual needs.

This behavior doesn’t just hurt your dining program, it signals deeper cracks in your residential life value proposition and the dilution of the richness of your on-campus social scene.  It undermines your institution’s credibility, erodes trust, and weakens one of the most powerful tools you have to support retention, engagement, and student well-being: the residential dining experience.

Spoiler Alert: It’s Not About Price

Contrary to popular belief, students don’t flee campus dining because meal plans are too expensive. In our research and across more than 400 campus engagements nationwide, students consistently tell us that price is an issue when the dining program “is not worth it.”

When students perceive value, when they have choice, variety, predictability, consistency, convenience, and high-quality food, and access, price sensitivity fades. What they want is what every modern consumer wants: a dining experience that gives them, what they want, when they want it, how they want it and where they want it.

So, how do you eliminate the Inferior Program Penalty? Let’s explore the key strategies for restoring your campus meal plans’ full value and appeal.

1. Stop Programming Dining Halls Around Operational Convenience

Too many dining programs are built around what works best for the food service provider, not what works best for the student. Meal periods are not crafted with the realities of the daily lives and demands of students in mind.  Menus are predictably unpredictable, Locations close too early, or they remain open and curtail menu offerings. Late-night options can be nonexistent, or at best, anemic.

When students can rely on campus dining to fit their real schedule, they stop looking elsewhere.

2. Deliver Meaningful Menu Variety

We call this challenge The Variety Paradox—when dining programs technically offer “variety”  by cycling through a myriad of ever-changing menu items, but students still feel underwhelmed or uninspired and complain about a lack of variety. The issue isn’t quantity. It’s relevance. Explore The Variety Paradox in our Social Architect Digest blog to understand why most campuses get this wrong, and how to get it right.

Students want food that excites them, nourishes them, and reflects who they are. Your menus can celebrate that.

3. Fix the Access Problem

One of the biggest drivers of dissatisfaction is the lack of access to food when students need it most. I often chuckle when we review a dining program and the operator crows about the value of the unlimited meal plans, they offer students, but when reviewing the hours of operations the hours can be very limited restricting access to food throughout the day and evening and on weekends, or, the hours are more generous, however the access to a broad selection of menu items is reduced or restricted.  Mandatory meal plans touting all access that can’t be used outside a specific hall or only during certain hours or are forced to be used as meal exchange or meal equivalency (restricting options and value) can feel like a bait-and-switch to some students.

When students can access the food they want, when they want it, they can use their mandatory meal plan on their terms.  That’s when their value perception skyrockets.

4. Reclaim Off-Campus Spending with Campus-Driven Convenience

The rise of delivery apps and off-campus dining isn’t a trend. It’s a flashing red light: Students are willing to pay for predictability, convenience, customization, and consistency, which they may not be getting on campus. If your campus program doesn’t deliver on those four things, they will look elsewhere.

When students feel their needs are being met where they live, study, and socialize, on campus, they’re less likely to want to leave campus and pay out of pocket for a better option.

5. Design Dining as a Social Experience, Not Just a Transaction

At its best, campus dining isn’t about calories, it’s about connection. Students are craving community. Dining halls are one of the few remaining places on campus where unstructured, organic social interaction still happens.

If your dining spaces feel sterile, crowded, or disconnected, students will not linger and will certainly not return.

When Next-Gen Residential Dining is crafted through the lens of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, it can transform the social landscape of a campus, and your entire campus culture benefits.

6. Put Students at the Center of Dining Strategy

Finally, involve students directly in the evolution of your dining program. Use focus groups, surveys, taste panels, and real-time feedback mechanisms. Let them co-create the experience, not just consume it.

When students feel heard, respected, and involved, they take ownership of the program. And that’s the fastest way to restore trust and loyalty.

The Bottom Line

The Inferior Program Penalty is not an unavoidable cost of doing business. It is a solvable problem, and the institutions willing to confront it head-on will gain a powerful competitive advantage.

Students don’t expect luxury; they expect relevance, value, and connection. Eliminate the inferior program penalty by delivering:

• Flexibility of access
• Meaningful variety
• Operational alignment with student lifestyles
• Social experiences that enrich campus life

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we’ve spent more than three decades helping colleges and universities eliminate this penalty and unlock the full potential of campus dining as a driver of student engagement, well-being, and retention.

Want to find out if your campus is paying the price for an inferior program? Contact us for a free consultation and let’s start designing a better student experience, together.

We’ve all heard the line before, sometimes from students, sometimes from administrators, sometimes even from seasoned operators:

No matter how good the residential dining program is, it can become monotonous, and students want more variety after three or four weeks.

We believe that the strategy of shrinking residential dining halls to expand retail is a backward fix, synonymous with employing the “killing connection to cure monotony” strategy. This myth has become a subtle but powerful defense for mediocrity. It’s used to justify limited menus, cut operating hours, and pad the bottom line by quietly nudging students away from core dining experiences and toward a patchwork of retail outlets, some on campus, some off. All under the guise of giving them “more variety.” But the real effect? It erodes the core value of the student dining experience.

And when that happens, the student stops seeing your residential dining program and meal plan as the unrivaled benefit it can and should be and starts seeing it as a burden or a rip off.

The Truth: Students Don’t Want Out—They Want Belonging

The logic doesn’t hold up. If students always want out after three or four weeks, then explain this: how many college kids want out of mom’s cooking after three weeks at home?
Answer: none. In fact, they come home for it. They crave it. Because it’s not just about the food, it’s about the love.

A well-designed residential dining program isn’t just a food source. It’s the focal point of the students home away from home. A safe space. A place of laughter, routine, and renewal for their new family. It’s where friendships form, stress melts, and the day’s weight lifts, even for just 30 minutes. And if it’s done right, it becomes the most emotionally sticky part of a student’s life on campus.

The Real Problem? We Design for Efficiency, Not Emotion.

Too often, institutions design residential dining programs like supply chains: efficiently, predictably, transactionally. The idea of dynamic programming, emotional resonance, and SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ is left out of the conversation entirely.

Instead, we see:

• Shortened dining hall hours to “save costs”
• Reduced menus under the false logic that too much choice creates burnout
• Forced migration of students to scattered retail outlets, where they burn declining balance or exchanges, often with fewer healthy options, less community, and no sense of belonging

And then we wonder why students want out.

The dining hall wasn’t too monotonous. It was just never built to evolve with them in the first place.

Myth Busted: Monotony Isn’t Inevitable—It’s Engineered

Let’s destroy this myth once and for all:

“Even if the food is amazing, students get tired of it.”

False.
What they get tired of is repetition without reinvention. Predictability without personalization. Good food delivered in the same, unchanging transactional wrapper.

Do you want students to want to stay on the meal plan?
Then stop designing for scarcity and start designing for desire and abundance.

What Happens When You Get It Right

We’ve seen it across hundreds of campuses:
When a residential dining program delivers real value, when the food is outstanding, the customer service is personal, the program is dynamic, and the experience is emotionally satisfying, students don’t leave. They don’t “burn out.” In fact, they don’t even look around.

They eat. They stay. They invite friends. They linger. They come back.
It becomes the social vortex of their new home away from home… Get it?

So Why Does the Fallacy Persist?

Because it’s profitable.

Cutting menu diversity reduces labor. Shortening hours cuts costs. Pushing students to a la carte retail shifts volume away from operations that requires the hard work of thoughtful programming and hospitality. It’s easier and “more efficient,” yes, but it comes at the expense of everything that matters:

• Emotional well-being
• Social connection
• Student satisfaction
• And ultimately, retention

When we push students to “grab and go,” we hobble their ability to slow down and connect face to face, to share a meal and forge and nurture their friendship networks that carry them through the cocoons of some of the toughest and most transformational periods of their young lives.

That’s not just a missed opportunity.
It’s operator ignorance, disguised as operational efficiency.

The Solution: Stop Buying the Myth. Start Building for Belonging.

Let’s retire the excuse. Let’s put a stake through the heart of this outdated idea that student interest in dining rapidly fades. It doesn’t fade—it responds.

It responds to investment in value. To programming. To people who care.
And when we build dining with SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ as our foundation, what we create is not just food service. It’s the infrastructure fostering the social ecosystems unique to a once-in-a-lifetime student life experience, that quite literally can last an entire lifetime.

It becomes the daily heartbeat of the campus.
And students don’t run from that.
They stay rooted in it.

Final Word:

If you’ve been led to believe that no matter how good a residential dining hall/commons is, students will always want out or a lot more “retail options” after a few weeks,
You are receiving some ill-informed, or worse, just bad advice/guidance.
You’re describing a failure of imagination.

Let’s do better.
Let’s build Next-Gen dining experiences that will boost student emotional well-being and academic success and remain in their hearts and souls for the rest of their lives.