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Insights from Chapter Nine of “The Porter Principles”: My Top 10 Keys to Selling More Meal Plans

Every semester, I watch the same frustrating cycle on college and university campuses across America. Parents purchase the largest meal plan available, hoping to ensure their freshman won’t go hungry. Halfway through the year, that same student calls home with a familiar refrain: “Get me off this meal plan, it’s not worth the money.” By sophomore year, they’ve either downgraded to the smallest option or opted out entirely, leaving dining administrators scratching their heads and scrambling to balance budgets.

Sound familiar? If you’re a dining director, auxiliary services administrator, or campus financial officer, you’ve lived this scenario countless times. But here’s what I’ve discovered after 35 years of independent strategic planning, food service operator selection, and design consulting experience: the problem isn’t your students or your prices, it’s your program.

The Great Meal Plan Misconception I Had to Unlearn

In Chapter Nine of “The Porter Principles,” I tackle the most persistent myth in campus dining, one I used to believe myself during my early Harvard University dining operations days. For years, I watched administrators respond to meal plan complaints by creating cheaper options, adding more flexibility, or reducing requirements, essentially attempting to make a less-than-desirable dining program more desirable by charging less for it. I call this the “buy high, buy down, and get off” death spiral hobbling campus dining programs nationwide.

After decades of research and hundreds of campus transformations throughout my 35 years of independent consulting, I’ve learned something that should fundamentally change how we think about meal plan participation: “The fact is, it doesn’t matter how much a meal plan costs. If the dining program does not work for the student and, in turn, the student does not feel that it is a good value, then it will always be considered a rip-off.”

This insight completely changed my approach to consulting. I stopped trying to make bad programs cheaper and started making programs so good that, at a minimum, the price became moot, and students would voluntarily buy up and pay more for them.

Discovering The Inferior Program Penalty

I identified what I call The Inferior Program Penalty, when students are forced to pay twice for food because their meal plan doesn’t actually serve their needs.

Let me paint you a picture I’ve seen countless times: Johnny arrives on campus with a 21-meal-per-week plan his parents purchased. However, the dining hall closes at 7 PM, and Johnny doesn’t eat dinner until 9 PM because of his evening classes. His meal plan becomes worthless for dinner, so he orders pizza with his own money. He’s now paying twice for the same meal.

Or consider Sarah, who discovers that her dining dollars run out three weeks before the semester ends, forcing her to spend her own money on groceries while still paying for a meal plan she can’t use.

These students aren’t complaining about price—they’re complaining about value. And once I understood this distinction, everything about my approach to meal plan design changed.

My “Starbucks Revelation”

One of my breakthrough moments came while observing student behavior during my consulting work. I realized that students don’t go to Starbucks, Whole Foods, or choose Apple products to save money. They choose these brands because they perceive exceptional value.

“There’s not a person who goes to Whole Foods or goes into an Apple store to save money,” I often tell my clients. “And yet Whole Foods and Apple are wildly successful. Why? Because people believe they’re getting a compelling value when they go there.”

This observation revolutionized my thinking: students will gladly pay premium prices for meal plans—if those plans actually work for their lifestyles and deliver perceived value through what I call SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™.

My Top 10 Keys to Meal Plan Success

After transforming hundreds of campus dining programs throughout decades of experience, I’ve developed ten proven strategies that consistently increase meal plan participation and student satisfaction:

1. Fix Your Dining Program First

This is where most universities get it backwards. They try to engineer new meal plan structures around failing programs. Drawing from both my 19 years of hands-on operations experience and 35 years of consulting, I always tell my clients: before tweaking meal plan options, fix the underlying program. If you’re not offering what students want in terms of menu variety, hours of operation, location, and social engagement opportunities, no meal plan structure will succeed.

2. Listen to What Students Actually Do (Not What They Say)

Here’s something that might surprise you: I never ask students what they want—I ask what they do. Where do they go for late-night food? When do they actually eat? What are their real patterns?

I’ve learned that what people do is the best indicator of what they will do. This behavioral data is far more valuable than survey responses about preferences, which often reflect what students think they should want rather than their actual habits.

3. Create What I Call a “Gravitational Pull”

Successful dining programs create what I call a “gravitational social pull”—an irresistible combination of great food, social energy, and convenience that makes students want to be there. Think of how Starbucks creates a “third place” between home and work, or how Apple Stores make technology shopping into an experience.

When you get this right through proper SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, students don’t eat on campus because they have to, they eat there because they want to.

4. Design for Access, Not Just Consumption

Through my consulting work, I’ve identified two types of value propositions: consumption-driven (how much you can get) versus access-driven (the ability to eat whenever you want).

I’ve found that unlimited dining programs often work better than traditional meal swipe systems because they eliminate the anxiety of “wasting” unused meals. When students know they can always eat, they actually make healthier choices and waste less food.

5. Make Payment Frictionless

In our electronic age, students shouldn’t need to carry cash or remember specific payment methods. As I tell my clients based on my decades of operations and consulting experience, the hardest part of purchasing should be choosing between the Italian sub and the tuna salad—never remembering to bring the correct form of payment.

My “Buy Up” Challenge

Here’s an exercise I give to every administrator I work with: “Take a minute, get a pencil and paper, and write down all of the establishments you have visited over the past ten years that have encouraged you to ‘buy down.’ Make the list as long as you wish, but I’m guessing you’ll only have one place on the list—your campus meal plan.”

This observation should be a wake-up call. Every successful business model encourages customers to upgrade, not downgrade. When I design dining programs around student needs and SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, students choose more expensive plans because they deliver superior value.

Connecting Meal Plans to SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™

My meal plan philosophy can’t be separated from my broader SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ methodology, Meal plans aren’t just payment methods they’re the financial foundation that enables social connection and community building on campus.

When meal plans work properly, they eliminate barriers to social interaction. Students don’t have to worry about having cash or calculating costs when friends invite them to grab food together. They can participate spontaneously in the social rituals that build lifelong friendships and campus loyalty.

This is where dining becomes transformational rather than transactional—the core principle of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™.

What I’ve Learned After 400+ Campus Transformations

My meal plan philosophy boils down to this: stop treating symptoms and start addressing causes. The problem isn’t that students don’t want to spend money on food—it’s that your program doesn’t deserve their money.

Through my Success Fee Guarantee model, I’ve staked my reputation on this principle. I only get paid when we create programs so valuable that students voluntarily participate at higher levels. And it works, every single time.

“When students are happy, they persist. They graduate, recommend your school, and come back as alumni,” I always remind my clients. “It all starts with something as simple as mozzarella sticks, as comforting as pizza, and as joyful as Belgian waffles with a scoop of ice cream.”

The Choice Is Yours

I can tell you that you have two paths: continue the race to the bottom with cheaper, more restrictive meal plans, or join what I call the value revolution by creating dining programs so compelling that students voluntarily choose to participate—and pay premium prices for the privilege.

Your meal plan participation rates—and your students’ success—depend on which path you choose.

I’ve seen both approaches in action across 400+ campuses throughout my consulting career. I know which one transforms lives and which one perpetuates problems. The question is: are you ready to make the change?

David Porter, FCSI, is CEO and President of Porter Khouw Consulting, Inc., and pioneer of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™. With 19 years of hands-on food service operations experience in restaurants and self-operated higher education dining (including Harvard University) plus 35 years of independent strategic planning, food service operator selection, and design consulting experience, his book “The Porter Principles” has transformed campus dining programs across North America.

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.

In 2012, Brandon Busteed of Gallup posed a deceptively simple question to a range of education leaders: What is the ultimate outcome of an education? He received a range of expansive, thoughtful answers. But one answer—delivered by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman—has echoed through my work for years. Kahneman’s response? “To change what you believe.”

That statement, as Busteed reflects in his article A Nobel Laureate’s Mind-Blowing Perspective on the Ultimate Outcome of an Education, cuts deeper than the traditional metrics of academic success. Education is not simply about what students know, but what they come to believe about themselves, others, and their capacity to impact the world. And that belief is forged not just in classrooms or textbooks, but in human connection.

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we’ve spent the last three decades arguing that nowhere is this transformative power more present—or more overlooked—than in campus dining programs. Through the intentional design of Next Generation Dining, built on the framework of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, we’ve learned that dining is not a peripheral service. It is a mission-critical strategy for student development, emotional well-being, and lifelong success.

Belief Begins with Belonging

To believe differently, as Kahneman suggests, students must be emotionally and socially engaged in environments that challenge and support them. Busteed’s Gallup-Purdue Index reinforced this: graduates who felt cared for, mentored, and able to apply their learning in real-world settings were significantly more likely to thrive personally and professionally.

This doesn’t happen in isolation. Belief is a social construct. It requires dialogue, diversity, and relationships. Which brings us to a powerful truth: students don’t meet their lifelong friends, mentors, or future business partners in lecture halls—they meet them over meals.

Yet many campuses still treat dining as a logistical necessity rather than a strategic asset. Hours are limited. Facilities are transactional. Meal plans are confusing. The spaces are sterile. As a result, so many first-year students drift—eating alone, retreating to their rooms, or falling through the cracks of the very community they’re meant to join.

Dining as the Engine of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ is the idea that intentional design—physical, operational, and programmatic—can foster deep and lasting human connection. In the context of dining, it’s about building social ecosystems, not just food courts. It’s about crafting environments where students don’t just eat—they engage, connect, and belong.

Next Generation Dining programs are designed with this in mind. These are not traditional dining halls. They are vibrant, flexible, open spaces where food becomes the catalyst for conversation. Where cultural expression, collaboration, and community collide. Where students encounter unfamiliar worldviews, meet new friends, and build the confidence and social capital that unlock opportunity.

Through this lens, dining becomes the great integrator, cutting across demographics, majors, and identities. It fosters weak ties that often evolve into strong networks—the very kind that help students access the “hidden job market” of personal referrals and informal opportunities after graduation.

Creating Access to the Hidden Job Market

According to research, nearly 70-80% of jobs are never publicly posted. They’re filled through referrals and informal networks—what sociologists call the “hidden job market.” This is particularly important for first-generation students, those from underserved communities, or anyone without preexisting professional connections. They don’t just need information; they need access.

Access is built through relationships, and those relationships are built through shared experience. Next Gen Dining, when designed through the principles of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, levels the playing field. It gives every student—regardless of background—daily, organic access to their peers, faculty, mentors, and even future collaborators.

We’ve seen students meet their future roommates, spouses, co-founders, and employers in these environments. These are not trivial anecdotes. These are defining moments in the arc of a student’s life. And too often, institutions fail to see that the greatest “return on investment” in student success doesn’t come from granite countertops or rooftop lounges—it comes from human connection sparked over shared meals.

A Strategic Imperative for Colleges and Universities

At a time when higher education is facing declining enrollments, mental health crises, and growing public skepticism about ROI, the stakes have never been higher. Schools must find ways to not only attract students, but to retain them, engage them, and prepare them for life beyond the classroom.

Dining programs, when reimagined as vehicles for SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, address multiple pain points simultaneously:

• Increase student retention by fostering belonging in the critical first 45 days.
• Support emotional well-being through daily face-to-face engagement.
• Drive housing occupancy with compelling, community-centered living experiences.
• Fuel academic and career success through mentorship and network-building.

This is not theory—it’s strategy. And it works.

From Belief to Breakthrough

To change what you believe requires more than access to information. It requires environments that demand presence, spark empathy, and invite transformation. A well-designed dining program is one of the few daily touchpoints that reaches every student on campus. That frequency and reach give it unparalleled power to shape beliefs—and lives.

So as institutions continue to invest in student success, let’s not overlook what’s right in front of us. Let’s design dining programs not as afterthoughts, but as the heartbeat of student life. Let’s infuse every aspect—from architecture to programming—with the principles of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™.

If Kahneman is right—and I believe he is—then the ultimate outcome of education is to change what you believe. And belief is born from belonging

Let’s start there.

There’s a phrase I often say that makes people smile, pause, and then nod in total agreement “Good comfort food equals happiness, and it is best served warm and often.”

It sounds simple, because it is. But beneath that simplicity is a powerful truth that too many colleges and universities overlook good food isn’t just about calories or convenience. It’s about

human connection, comfort, and community. It’s a powerful strategy, not a service line. It knits emotional infrastructure. And when it’s done right, it changes everything for the better.

As founder of Porter Khouw Consulting and the pioneer of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, I’ve spent over 30 years working with institutions across North America to help them reimagine dining as a transformative force. When you give students access to food they crave, in spaces that invite interaction, you don’t just make them full, you make them feel at home.

Let me show you what I mean.

The Emotional Power of Comfort Food

Let’s talk chicken tenders, poppers, mozzarella sticks, and pizza.

Sure, they’re student staples. But more importantly, they’re social anchors. These foods aren’t just familiar, they’re friendly and familiar. A plate of chicken tenders and fries or jalapeño poppers with ranch dipping sauce is an invitation to stay and share. Mozzarella sticks? Golden, gooey, and practically made for late-night laughs. And pizza and bread sticks, let’s be honest, it’s the global language of togetherness. And, when done right, you are tapping into a lifetime of good memories around birthday parties, family gatherings, hanging out with friends. “It’s home” in your new home away from home.

When we work with universities to create next-generation dining programs, we don’t dismiss comfort food, we elevate it. We make it intentional. That means:

· Late-night hours with poppers and mozzarella sticks -are available when students need a break.

· Build-your-own pizza bars that spark interaction.

· Seating layouts that encourages students to sit, stay, and share instead of eating alone

Comfort food is a tool. It breaks down barriers. It turns strangers into roommates. And when it’s served fresh, hot, and well? It makes people happy.

From Sweet Cravings to Shared Experiences

Now add a make your own hot Belgian waffle with vanilla ice cream.

This isn’t just dessert—it’s celebration on a plate. It’s indulgent, unexpected, and exactly the kind of experience that lifts students out of stress and into joy.

We’ve seen schools build entire events around waffle bars: midterm morale boosters, Sunday brunch specials, or even “Waffle Wednesdays” where students line up for a warm, crispy Belgian waffle topped with a scoop of vanilla, a drizzle of chocolate, some fresh berries, or a swirl of whipped cream.

And it works. Why?

Because food like this turns routine into ritual. When students start saying “See you at waffle night,” you’ve already won. You’ve created tradition, and in our SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ framework, tradition = human connection = retention.

The right food, in the right moment, creates emotional memory and that emotional memory is what helps students connect and stay connected.

The Science of Happiness (and the Business Case Behind It)

There’s real science behind the idea that good food elevates mood. Nutrient-rich meals stabilize blood sugar, improve cognition, and boost serotonin. But more than that, the experience of eating good food, especially with others, triggers dopamine. It literally makes us feel more connected, more content, and more engaged.

Now layer that over the college experience. First-year students walk onto campus overwhelmed and unsure. The first six weeks are critical, what we call the “social integration window.” If they don’t find their people, their place, or a sense of belonging, they drift and they are isolated, but good food in a communal space becomes the emotional magnet that sparks and nutures human connection and strengthens emotional bonds.

We’ve seen this across hundreds of campus engagements: students who dine regularly on campus, in well-designed environments with crave-able food, are more likely to report higher satisfaction, better mental health, and stronger academic performance. These aren’t guesses, they’re consistent outcomes backed by research and real-world data.

And here’s the kicker: good food is good business.

When schools invest in value, quality, variety, flexibility, and environment, they make dining strategic and don’t just make students happy. They improve retention. They boost housing occupancy. They reduce medical and mental health withdrawals. And they increase net auxiliary revenue. In fact, under our no-risk success fee model, we’ve helped institutions increase their food service remuneration by hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, over a million—without spending a single extra dollar upfront.

Happiness Is a Strategy

So, what does this all mean for presidents, CFOs, and auxiliary service leaders?

It means this: stop treating dining like a background operation. Stop focusing only on margins, upfront capital and meal plans. Start focusing on how food affects the student experience. In today’s hyper-competitive, value-driven higher ed market, what students feel on campus often determines whether they stay.

If they walk into a space that smells amazing, with food that excites them, with staff who know their name, and tables filled with students laughing and connecting?

You’ve done more than serve a meal.

You’ve served a memory.

You’ve built a bond.

You’ve created happiness.

And if you have good food—it makes you happy.

When students are happy, they persist. They graduate, recommend your school, and come back as alumni. It all starts with something as simple as mozzarella sticks, as comforting as pizza, and as joyful as Belgian waffles with a scoop of ice cream.

Let’s Build the Future, One Plate at a Time

Higher education is facing seismic shifts: demographic cliffs, declining trust, rising competition. But one thing hasn’t changed, students want to feel like they belong.

When used strategically, food and campus dining is the most powerful tool , on a day-to-day basis, you can develop to deliver that feeling.

So don’t underestimate the plate. Don’t dismiss the tenders. Don’t downplay the power of a waffle bar.

Instead, lean into what we know: If you have good food, it makes you happy. And when you make students happy, everything else gets easier, retention, housing, mental health, academic performance, enrollment, and even your bottom line.

So let’s serve happiness, strategically, intentionally, and one delicious bite at a time.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education virtual panel discussion, Scott Carlson hosted a thought-provoking session titled “Designing a Campus for Student Engagement.” I found myself deeply resonating with the conversation, not just because of the incredible insight from leaders like Shari Bax (University of Central Missouri), Lauren Koppel (MSU Denver), and Cooper Melton (Ayers Saint Gross), but because it reaffirmed what we’ve been advocating at Porter Khouw Consulting for decades: the physical and social architecture of a campus must intentionally foster connection—not just convenience.

The panelists confirmed what we already know but must keep repeating: the pandemic didn’t just disrupt learning—it disrupted belonging. The student experience, once defined by informal face-to-face interactions, communal living, and chance encounters, has shifted. In its place, we’ve seen a transactional, tech-driven, and often isolating reality emerge for today’s students.

But what comes next? And how can we design campuses—both physically and programmatically—to pull students back from the edge of disengagement and loneliness?

Let me share my takeaways and build upon them with the SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ lens that’s driven our work across more than 400 campuses in North America.

1. The Isolation Generation Is Real—and They’re Not Coming Back the Same

Shari Bax shared how first-year students entered the University of Central Missouri post-pandemic more isolated than ever. Many had spent their senior year in high school alone, only to arrive on campus to live in single dorm rooms, masked and distanced, in a world that barely resembled the “college experience” they had imagined.

She wisely noted that this is not a temporary blip—it’s a generational shift. Today’s students have been shaped by trauma, by isolation, and by technology that offers the illusion of connection without its substance. I’ve long said that loneliness is the silent epidemic on college campuses—and COVID merely unmasked it.

This isn’t a gap that can be bridged with another app or platform. It requires the kind of intentional, human-first design we call SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™: programming and spaces that aren’t just functional, but deeply relational.

2. Commuter Students Need Social Infrastructure More Than Ever

Lauren Koppel of MSU Denver made a critical point that cannot be overstated: many students, especially those from lower-income backgrounds, are making rational decisions not to engage.

Think about it—when a student has to take two buses and spend $8 on parking for a one-hour event, the ROI must be clear and compelling. What am I getting out of this? How does this serve my academic or professional journey?

This is not apathy. It’s discernment. And it means institutions must earn students’ time and presence.

The solution is twofold:

• Make the value proposition of engagement undeniable.
• Bring the community to them—through tailored, purpose-driven programming embedded in their daily rhythms, and through smart campus planning that reduces barriers to entry (physically and psychologically).

3. Design Spaces That Remove the Option to Opt Out

Cooper Melton’s architectural perspective struck a chord. He described how outdated campus buildings often “sap the energy out” of community simply by allowing students to bypass each other entirely—six entrances to a dorm, corridors that funnel students straight to their rooms, gathering spaces hidden in back corners.

This is where design must become strategic empathy.

At PKC, we’ve long advocated for the reimagining of dining halls, student unions, and residence halls not just as facilities—but as social engines. The goal is not to force interaction, but to remove friction. Or as Cooper put it, to reduce the opportunities for students to avoid each other.

The best campus designs we’ve developed feature clear arrival sequences, central communal zones, inviting furniture arrangements, varied sensory zones for neurodiverse comfort, and unprogrammed open space that still subtly “nudges” interaction.

4. The Most Powerful Day-to-Day and First-Year Strategy: Dining Designed for SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™

Here’s what we’ve found over 30+ years of work on campuses nationwide:

Dining—when designed through the lens of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™—is the single most powerful tool on a day-to-day basis for driving student engagement, connection, and emotional well-being.

But even more significantly, it is the single most effective first-year strategy for helping students:

• Establish and nurture new friendship networks
• Experience meaningful face-to-face interaction
• Build emotional security and a sense of belonging
• And ultimately persist through their college journey

This isn’t about transactional dining halls serving reheated meals under harsh lighting.

We’re talking about Next Generation Residential and Retail Anytime Dining, where extended hours, flexible seating, culinary variety, and dynamic programming come together to foster authentic, repeated, unforced social contact.

When done properly, we’ve seen measurable results:

• Retention increases as students find community
• Housing occupancy rises as students choose to stay
• Enrollment improves as persistence grows
• And most importantly, students’ emotional well-being strengthens, driven by the simple but powerful increase in human connection

Dining—when treated as the social infrastructure it truly is—can shift the entire student experience.

5. Start With First-Year Students, and Start Before They Arrive

Both Shari and Lauren emphasized pre-enrollment programming and structured welcome weeks. That’s a great start—but it must go deeper.

At PKC, we’re guided by a powerful data point: the first six weeks of the freshman year are the most critical period in shaping long-term retention, housing occupancy, and emotional wellbeing.

We recommend institutions not just offer early move-in and orientation—but build a multi-week social integration strategy. One that blends:

• First-year exclusive events in key campus spaces
• Peer mentor dining programs
• Involvement fairs integrated into meal hours
• Faculty dinners in residence halls
• And creative micro-events that consistently expose students to each other, not just the campus

6. Inclusion Means More Than Messaging—It’s Environmental

The conversation also highlighted the growing awareness of neurodiversity and the need for inclusive spaces. Design matters. Lighting, acoustics, layout, even restroom privacy—all play a role in signaling who “belongs” in a space.

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ is inherently inclusive when done right. It creates opportunities for all students to find their comfort zone and a path to growth, engagement, and human connection.

Final Thought: What’s the ROI of Belonging?

If you take one idea from this panel and from this blog, let it be this:

Belonging isn’t just a feeling—it’s a strategic imperative.

Students who feel seen, supported, and socially embedded stay enrolled. They thrive academically. They persist. And they become alumni who look back on college not just as a degree, but as a life-defining chapter.

In this era of declining enrollment and deep disconnection, the solution won’t come from gadgets or gimmicks.

It will come from human-centered design, from programming that sparks relationships, and from a commitment to turning every square foot of campus into an opportunity to connect.

That’s SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™.
That’s our mission.
And that’s the future of higher education.

 

Interested in how your campus can foster stronger engagement, build social capital, and improve student retention?Let’s talk about your dining strategy—and how we can help you turn it into a social engine.

Federal funding and grants are being frozen, hiring on some campuses is at a standstill, the economy is uncertain, and higher education is under assault. Once again, college and university leaders, especially those responsible for dining, auxiliary services, and business operations, are being asked to do the impossible: maintain excellence, preserve enrollment, and improve outcomes with shrinking resources.

We’ve seen this before at Porter Khouw Consulting (PKC).  Over the past 30 years, we’ve guided hundreds of college and university clients across North America through economic storms, demographic cliffs, and black swan events. And if there’s one truth we’ve learned through decades of crisis-tested strategy, it’s this:

When everything else feels uncertain, your dining program can and must be a stable engine of student success, community connection, and financial strength.

Today’s challenges are real, but so are the opportunities. The colleges and universities that make smart, student-focused, value-driven dining investments now will emerge stronger—not just surviving but flourishing.

The Post-COVID Playbook: Resilience Through Social Infrastructure

COVID-19 didn’t just disrupt dining. It reshaped how we understand its value.

At the height of the pandemic, campuses across the country closed dining halls, reduced hours, and lost critical connection points for students. The impact was swift and severe: declines in student engagement, mental health challenges, retention drops, and increased transfer activity.

But at campuses where dining had already been reimagined as more than just meal delivery, where it was part of the social infrastructure, coming out of COVID, we saw a different story unfold. These institutions were better positioned to adapt. Why? Because they had already built community-centric environments that fostered belonging, conversation, and face-to-face interaction.

That’s not just anecdotal. It’s strategic.

Dining, when designed and operated intentionally, becomes the most powerful tool for addressing what’s really keeping administrators up at night: low retention, housing vacancies, disengaged students, and budget gaps.

The Crisis from Washington: And Why It’s a Wake-Up Call

The ripple effects of fiscal gridlock in Washington are now crashing into college campuses. Federal grants and funding pipelines have stalled, economic forecasts are shaky, most institutions are facing hiring freezes, and every division is being told to “do more with less.”

If you’re a VP of Business & Finance, Auxiliary Services Director, or Dining Executive Director, you already know the drill:

• Operating costs are up.
• Student expectations are higher than ever.
• And your staff is being stretched thin.

The natural instinct during times like these is to cut, pause, or delay.

But cutting services or deferring upgrades in dining is a short-term response that leads to long-term pain, especially when dining plays such a crucial role in shaping students’ first-year experience, social connection, and overall sense of belonging.

This is the moment to invest, not in expenses, but in value.

How PKC Helps You Thrive: Independent. Proven. Risk-Free.

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we don’t just offer recommendations. We deliver results and put our compensation on the line to prove it.

Our industry-first Success Fee Guarantee eliminates financial risk to your institution. Our strategic planning or food service operator selection phases have no fixed professional fees. We’re only compensated if we improve your bottom line. If we don’t, you owe us nothing.

This uniquely positions us as your zealous advocate, not an agent for a food vendor, not a commission-based operator broker, and not a firm that parachutes in and disappears. We’re here to create transformational, actionable, measurable, and sustainable improvements to your dining and auxiliary programs.

The Solution: Next-Generation Residential & Retail Dining Strategies

To navigate and win in today’s turbulent environment, institutions need more than “operational efficiency.” They need a philosophy, a system, and a strategy that drives outcomes from day one.

That’s why we built Next Generation Residential & Retail Dining Strategies rooted in our proprietary framework: SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™.

This model views dining as a dynamic social ecosystem, including food and labor, but also students’ emotional well-being, friendship networks, and success trajectories.

Here’s what sets our approach apart:

1. We Design Dining Programs That Drive Retention

We focus on the first 45 days of the student journey, an essential window determining whether students stay, transfer, or disengage. Dining environments designed to support meaningful interaction and community-building can dramatically increase the likelihood that students feel connected, stay enrolled, and succeed academically. Students don’t leave college; they leave the community.

2. We Optimize Contracts and Reduce Overhead

Our team has successfully renegotiated and restructured hundreds of food service operator contracts to deliver increased remuneration, higher service quality, and reduced risk. Many clients have achieved six- and seven-figure gains without raising costs or eliminating services.

3. We Reinvest in What Matters

It’s not about cutting; it’s about reallocating. We help campuses reinvest in high-impact, low-cost improvements, transforming underperforming dining spaces into engagement engines. From flexible layouts and mobile ordering to destination dining zones and evening and late-night programs, we build dining programs students actually use and love.

4. We Future-Proof Your Auxiliary Revenue

Dining isn’t just about feeding students; it’s about funding your institution. Our strategies align dining with housing, residential life, and retention, directly boosting auxiliary performance and creating consistent, renewable sources of non-tuition revenue.

A Real Path to Real Results

We’ve seen institutions go from multi-million-dollar losses to net-positive positions in under 18 months. We’ve helped campuses turn outdated dining halls into modern, high-traffic social hubs by rethinking how dining can be the heartbeat of the campus.

You don’t need more reports. You need a partner who understands how to transform dining from a cost center into a strategic advantage.

The Bottom Line: Invest in Value, It’s What Creates Belonging

Students don’t just leave because classes are hard or finances are tight. They leave because they don’t feel like they belong. Dining is your most effective, accessible, visible, and frequent opportunity, on a day-to-day basis, to create and nurture friendship networks, community, and meaningful human face-to-face connections.

And connection isn’t just about student success; it’s about institutional resilience.

In chaotic and uncertain times, human connection is your competitive edge.

Let’s stop managing scarcity and start reimagining your dining program by investing in value, emotional abundance, and community.

At this year’s “RFP Anatomy” session, I had the opportunity to challenge a room full of higher education leaders to rethink everything they’ve been told about how to run a food service Request for Proposal (RFP) process. For too long, colleges and universities have treated food service management companies like consultants—asking them what the program should be, when in fact, those companies have a financial interest in minimizing service, reducing labor, and maximizing profit. That’s not partnership. That’s abdication.

We’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. At Porter Khouw Consulting, we’ve worked with over 400 institutions across North America. We are fiercely independent, fee-based, and committed to one thing: advocating for the student experience and helping institutions regain control of their food service strategy.

This RFP session wasn’t just another overview of timelines and paperwork—it was a call to arms. It was a challenge to universities to own their food service destiny and stop outsourcing the vision to those who profit from the status quo.

Stop Asking the Fox How to Run the Henhouse

Early in the session, I asked attendees a simple question: Would you put Dracula in charge of the blood bank? Or the fox in charge of the henhouse? Predictably, the room laughed and said no. But isn’t that what happens every time a school asks a management company to “help them design the dining program”?

It’s not that contractors are evil. It’s that their goals may not be aligned with yours. They make more money when fewer students participate because they reduce labor and food cost. You, on the other hand, need students to stay on campus, feel connected, succeed academically, and renew housing contracts year after year.

That’s why the most critical mistake schools make is asking contractors to tell them what their program should be. Our philosophy flips that entirely: You define the program. You set the expectations. They tell you how they’ll deliver it.

Ownership = Value = Student Engagement

Let’s talk about value.

It’s not the price of meal plans that makes students bolt to DoorDash. It’s the lack of value. When students are required to buy a mandatory meal plan and feel like it’s a poor deal because of limited hours, menu variety and selection, and/or access, they vote with their feet, and their phones. When students go off campus or use delivery apps to spend their own or their parent’s money on food in addition to the mandatory meal plan they’re already paying for, this is what we call the inferior program penalty.

You can’t fix this with discounts or more branding. You fix it by designing a program students actually want. That means:

• Locations that match student traffic patterns and habits
• Hours that support the rhythm of student life
• Menus with variety, cultural relevance, and inclusivity
• Service models that support community-building and reduce friction

And guess what? Only the university can define that. Not the contractor. Because only you know your students.

Contractors Respond to Risk & Reward

Let me be blunt: Contractors don’t change unless their revenue is on the line.

We’ve seen it time and time again. Contractors only get innovative when they face the possibility of losing business or gaining new business. That’s why our approach is to show them the program vision and say: Here’s what we want. Show us how you’ll deliver it. Or don’t.

We also encourage alternate proposals. If they truly have a better idea, great—put it on the table. But the key is, we’re no longer asking them what we should want. That era is over.

The RFP Process: A Blueprint for Fairness & Clarity

The RFP process we lead isn’t just paperwork. It’s a precision instrument to create transparency, fairness, and ultimately, great outcomes.

Here’s the anatomy of our typical process:

1. Issue the RFP with detailed specifications
2. Host a pre-bid conference to clarify expectations
3. Allow for Q&A so all bidders are informed
4. Receive and evaluate bids
5. Interview finalists
6. Select the provider and negotiate the agreement
7. Sign the contract before beginning transition

The secret sauce? Precision.

We build a financial workbook that includes labor analysis, commissions, capital investments, and buyout language. Every item is transparent and comparable. There’s no hiding behind vague proposals.

And let me say this clearly: The most important factor in a successful operation is not the company. It’s the person they put on your campus. That account manager is the make-or-break difference in your program. You need to know who they are, what their experience is, and how empowered they are to act.

The Land of Yes—and the Contract That Brings Them Back to Earth

During the bidding phase, contractors live in the “Land of Yes.” Almost anything you ask for, they’ll say yes to—until it’s time to sign the contract.

That’s where the rubber meets the road. And that’s why we never recommend a transition to begin before the agreement is finalized and signed. We’ve seen schools burned too many times by promises made in proposals that don’t survive contract negotiations.

What You Can Do Right Now

I didn’t want the session to end without giving people tools. So I offered two things:

1. A free downloadable RFP blueprint that outlines every step of our process. It’s a roadmap you can use immediately to improve your approach.
2. A free book offer that goes deeper into these principles—because food service can and should be a tool for transformation, not just transaction.

Ready to Take Back Control?

If you’re ready to stop letting vendors dictate your campus dining experience and start building a program that fuels connection, retention, and real student success, we should talk.

At Porter Khouw Consulting, we offer a no-risk Success Fee Guarantee for qualified institutions. That means no upfront fees; you only pay if we deliver results. It’s a performance-based partnership designed to eliminate your financial risk and maximize student success and your financial return.

Whether you want the free RFP Blueprint, a copy of the book, or a confidential conversation about your options, we’re here to help you lead with a vision that reflects the unique culture, philosophy, and strategic goals of your campus.

Email us at mporter@porterkhouwconsulting.com Or call 410-451-3617 Let’s schedule a 30-minute strategy call—on us.

It’s your campus. It’s your students. It’s your move. Let’s make sure your dining program reflects that.

There’s an old saying often attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” This phrase has echoed in my mind for decades—not as a quaint aphorism, but as a lived truth that continues to shape my professional journey, our consulting firm’s mission, and the life-changing results we’ve seen for campuses and students nationwide.

At first glance, “luck” might sound like something outside of our control—something random or serendipitous. But in my experience, luck has a direct correlation to effort. Not just any effort—but consistent, strategic, purpose-driven work with an unwavering commitment to innovation, client success, and human connection. That’s where the real magic happens.

And frankly, it’s not magic at all. It’s architecture.

Designing Outcomes Through Relentless Effort

Over 50 years ago, I began my career in food service operations and strategic planning. Back then, I didn’t have the language to describe what I now call SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ – NEXT GEN ANYTIME DINING. But even in those early days, I sensed that dining programs could be far more than just about food—they could be catalysts for relationships, retention, emotional well-being, and academic success.

Of course, creating those kinds of outcomes didn’t happen by accident. It required working harder than the competition. It meant getting up early and staying up late writing proposals and developing strategic plans, flying cross-country to visit campuses most consultants ignored, and listening—really listening—to the unspoken frustrations of students, CFOs, directors of dining, auxiliary service directors, housing and residential life directors, and directors of admissions. And most importantly, it meant attracting and developing a team of seasoned professionals who have become the foundation of our success at Porter Khouw Consulting, Inc.

In hindsight, that “hard work” was the seed of all the opportunities that followed. The more we invested in creating transformative strategies—strategies that focused not on transactional metrics but on curing loneliness, strengthening friendship networks, and elevating the student experience—the more our clients thrived. And the more they thrived, the more “lucky” we seemed.

The Luck of Creating Something That Didn’t Exist—Yet

Back in the early 2000s, no one was talking about curing loneliness and increasing student retention, establishing and strengthening friendship networks, or improving emotional well-being and academic success with next-gen residential and retail 24/7 Anytime Dining programs.

But we were. That’s when SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ – NEXT GEN ANYTIME DINING was born.

It was a disruptive idea: that dining could be a deliberate tool for student success. That how, when, and where students eat could influence whether they find friends, feel connected, and persist in college. We envisioned dining spaces as platforms for social capital—a term few in higher education were even using at the time.

And we did the hard work to validate it: crafting strategic plans, analyzing financials, designing environments, and coaching leadership teams to see dining as an engine for community, belonging, and lifetime success.

Take our Success Fee Guarantee model. Most consultants scoffed at the idea. “Why would you work for free unless you’re desperate?” they’d ask. But we weren’t desperate—we were confident. We had done the homework. We knew our planning strategies worked. And we believed in putting our money where our mouth was.

The result? Hundreds of successful engagements with institutions across North America. And perhaps most importantly, thousands of students who stayed on campus, made friends, and flourished—in large part because we helped make their first six weeks in college count.

Call that luck if you want. I call it vision, grit, and architecture in motion.

Luck Favors the Value Creator

The universe rewards those who create true value. And in higher education today, value isn’t measured solely in retention statistics or financial reports. It’s measured in how students feel, how connected they are, and whether they see a future at your institution.

Our mission has never been just to “improve food.” That’s the baseline. Our true mission—through SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ – NEXT GEN ANYTIME DINING—is to elevate the human experience on campus. We design programs that intentionally create community, fuel face-to-face interaction, and forge the social bonds that carry students through college and beyond.

To build this kind of value, you can’t cut corners. You can’t recycle solutions. You must immerse yourself in each campus, understand its culture, and engineer a plan that links dining to purpose, belonging, and well-being.

That’s hard work. But when you do it right? Doors open. Referrals come. A CFO says, “You helped us solve a student success problem we thought was unsolvable.” Another president says, “You showed us how food could literally change lives.”

And just like that, we get “lucky” again.

Persistence Is Luck in Motion

There have been moments in my career when walking away would’ve been easier—messy campus politics, tight budgets, skeptical stakeholders. But I’ve never seen transformation happen without friction.

And so we stay in it. We don’t just write the plan. We help build the reality—a dining program that doesn’t just feed students, but helps them thrive emotionally, socially, and academically. We design experiences that give students their first chance to belong—and schools a chance to stabilize enrollment and retention through deep, human-centered change.

The results speak for themselves: higher GPAs, full residence halls, and campuses where students say things like, “I made my first real friend at lunch in the dining hall.” You can’t fake that kind of luck.

Hard Work Is the Architect of Legacy

When I look back on more than three decades leading Porter Khouw Consulting, I’m so grateful—not just for the client wins, but even more so for the tens of thousands of students whose lives were touched. I think about the lifelong friendships formed, and the arcs of those lives that were quietly, profoundly, and positively shaped by the subtle yet transformative daily experiences we helped design—experiences rooted in our guiding principle, SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™. We’ve helped institutions reshape their identity through something as seemingly simple—and yet as powerfully human—as food.

But we’re not done. We’re still innovating. Still studying. Still advocating for the full embrace of SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ – NEXT GEN ANYTIME DINING as a proven framework to cure loneliness, increase retention, strengthen friendship networks, and boost student success through next-gen residential and retail 24/7 dining programs.

We’re also empowering families and students to choose schools where this experience is prioritized—through tools like ratemyfreshmanexperience.com, which helps measure what truly matters in that critical first year.

And when it comes to luck, I hit the jackpot. Twenty-seven years ago, Cezanne Grawehr arrived from London—our very own version of Mary Poppins—and to this day, she is the glue that holds us all together. I also couldn’t be luckier in life than to work alongside my daughters, Alex and Madison. I started this company when Alex was just one year old, and Madison had not yet been born. Today, Alex is a Vice President at PKC and a Ph.D. candidate at Wayne State University, while Madison recently graduated from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and now serves as a Sales and Marketing Associate with us at PKC. And my granddaughter? She’s an amazing ray of sunshine. Lucky in business—and even luckier in life.

We are not waiting for luck. We are building it, brick by brick.

Be the Luck You Seek

To anyone facing uncertainty—whether in higher education, business, or life—remember this: Luck isn’t something you find. It’s something you build.

It begins with showing up. Doing the work. Being relentless in your mission. Refusing to settle for “good enough” when you know transformation is possible.

In our case, it meant reimagining dining not as a cost center, but as a strategic asset for curing loneliness and increasing student retention, establishing and strengthening friendship networks, and improving emotional well-being and academic success with next-gen residential and retail 24/7 Anytime Dining programs.

So yes, the harder we work, the luckier we get.
Because we’re not just chasing results. We’re building a legacy.

And that’s the kind of luck that lasts.

In the ever-evolving world of higher education, student success hinges on more than academic performance. Today, colleges must actively nurture environments that help students build social connections, form friendships, and feel a deep sense of belonging. This web of human connection — a student’s Social Biome — is now recognized as one of the most critical, yet often overlooked, contributors to student well-being, retention, and academic success.

 

At the heart of cultivating a healthy Social Biome is SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ — the intentional design of environments that spark human connection. When paired with Next-Generation residential and retail dining programs, SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ creates campus ecosystems where students thrive emotionally, socially, and academically.

What Is a “Social Biome”?

Much like a biological ecosystem, a Social Biome is the network of interactions and relationships that shape a student’s emotional and psychological well-being. It includes:

• Peer networks
• Dorm interactions
• Conversations in dining halls
• Group projects
• Chance meetings at the campus café

Social Biome requires variety (not just depth or frequency) of connection. When students experience different forms of human engagement — casual chats, group bonding, deep friendships — their social ecosystem flourishes. When those interactions are missing, shallow, or siloed, students become socially malnourished, leading to anxiety, loneliness, and attrition.

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™: Designing Connection Into Campus Life

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ is a strategic framework that uses physical space, behavioral science, and emotional design to strengthen students’ ability to connect with one another. It’s the opposite of letting friendships happen by accident. Colleges that embrace SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ create environments where face-to-face connection isn’t just possible — it’s inevitable.

Intentional Design of Spaces

Dorms, dining halls, and study lounges aren’t just utilitarian spaces — they’re community-building tools. SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ promotes:

• Shared kitchens in residence halls
• Communal tables in dining areas
• Multi-use lounges that invite lingering
• “Third places” (not home, not classroom) where casual interaction flourishes

Emotionally Intelligent Environments

Students engage more when they feel emotionally safe and seen. SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ uses lighting, color, furniture layout, and ambiance to lower anxiety and encourage social behavior — especially during the critical first 6 weeks of college when the risk of isolation is highest.

Structured Peer Interactions

Spontaneous connection needs structure. SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ integrates programming like:

• “Floor dinners” in dining halls
• Game nights in common areas
• Late-night breakfast socials during finals
• Dining events that bring together micro-communities (clubs, teams, classes)

These tactics aren’t random. They’re strategic. They engineer the conditions that feed the Social Biome — early and often.

The Role of Next-Gen Dining in the Social Biome

Dining is one of the few guaranteed social rituals on campus. Every student needs to eat — which makes dining venues prime real estate for social connection.

Next-Generation Dining Programs go beyond food quality. They transform mealtime into a social catalyst by focusing on five key principles:

Extended, Flexible Hours

Traditional dining programs typically operate on fixed meal periods, limiting how long students can spend in the space. In contrast, Next-Gen dining programs offer continuous access, aligning with the rhythms of your campus and the unique schedules of today’s students. This supports spontaneity: the unplanned coffee run, the late-night snack with friends, the mid-morning regroup after class. These micro-interactions build friendship networks.

Micro-Restaurants & Decentralized Layouts

Multiple dining venues across campus mimic a city’s food scene. This encourages students to explore different social zones, encounter new people, and form micro-communities around favorite spots.

Design for Social Behavior

Design features such as farmhouse tables, lounge seating, and study pods near dining areas in combination with music, lighting, and atmosphere can signal to students: “stay and connect.” SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ principles come to life in Next-Gen dining environments.

Inclusive, Culture-Forward Experiences

Dining programs now host themed nights, international food festivals, and student-led pop-ups that double as social and cultural touch points. These events create moments of shared identity and bridge social silos.

Residential Requirement + Mandatory Meal Plan = The Most Powerful Social Engine

The most powerful combination on a college campus is a residential life “live-on” requirement paired with a mandatory meal plan. This structure creates the single most potent opportunity, on a day-to-day basis, to cultivate and strengthen healthy student Social Biomes and support student success — more so than any other aspect of campus life.

When organized correctly, this system guarantees daily social exposure, shared mealtimes, and built-in community rituals that reinforce emotional well-being, peer connection, and sense of belonging.

However, if the dining program is not properly organized, it can have the opposite effect — reinforcing isolation, frustration, and dissatisfaction. Poor hours, uninspired food, uninviting spaces, or underwhelming customer service can degrade a student’s Social Biome and become a source of emotional disconnection rather than nourishment.

That’s why designing Next-Gen Dining programs with SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ in mind isn’t optional — it’s mission-critical.

Why It Works: Dining + SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ = A Thriving Social Biome

The synergy between SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and dining isn’t theoretical — it’s practical, measurable, and transformative. Together, they create a 24/7 infrastructure for human connection. Here’s what that means:

• A student who feels homesick finds belonging in a community meal
• A first-year student meets their best friend at a “Midnight Pancake Night”
• A commuter student stays on campus longer because the café is a hub for peers
• A shy international student connects during a cultural food event

Every one of these moments strengthens the Social Biome — and by extension, the student’s well-being and academic performance.

Results That Matter: Retention, Mental Health, and Student Success

Colleges that adopt SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and invest in Next-Gen Dining report:

• Higher student retention rates
• Increased housing occupancy
• Improved student GPAs
• Reduced loneliness, anxiety, and attrition

That’s because connection isn’t a luxury — it’s a survival strategy. SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and dining together form a campus-wide social safety net, ensuring no student falls through the cracks.

Don’t Leave the Social Biome to Chance

Every campus has a Social Biome — the question is whether it’s being cultivated intentionally or left to evolve on its own.

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and Next-Gen Dining are powerful tools to help institutions take control of that narrative — transforming dining halls, residence areas, and student commons into platforms for lifelong friendships, emotional resilience, and academic achievement.

Call to Action

Ready to transform your campus dining into a catalyst for student success?

Contact Porter Khouw Consulting today to schedule a free strategic planning consultation. Learn how our SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ framework and Next-Gen Dining strategies can strengthen your students’ Social Biome — and your institution’s future.

 

 

The crisis in higher education is not just financial—it’s emotional, social, and deeply personal. Today, more than ever, students are showing up on campus anxious, disconnected, and uncertain about their place in the world. According to The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being in Higher Education by Tay and McCuskey, nearly 44% of students report symptoms of depression, 37% report anxiety, and 15% have seriously considered suicide in the past year. These are not just numbers—they’re signals that the traditional models of student engagement are failing.

David Porter, president of Porter Khouw Consulting (PKC), believes colleges and universities have an opportunity and an obligation to act. Fortunately, a powerful tool is already present on every campus: the dining program. When reimagined through David’s SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ framework and implemented as a Next Generation Dining Program, campus dining becomes more than a place to eat. It becomes a platform for belonging, resilience, empathy, academic success, and emotional security and well-being.

Let me show you how.

The Case for a Holistic Approach

Tay and McCuskey define well-being as “achieving positive, optimal functioning across all levels of analysis, populations, and contexts.” In other words, student success is not only academic—it’s emotional, social, physical, and psychological. It exists at multiple layers: individual, relational, institutional, and societal. The handbook urges institutions to build ecosystems of support that integrate both research and practice in ways that are culturally responsive and equitable.

What the handbook doesn’t explicitly say—but what David Porter has been demonstrating for over three decades—is that dining is the only recurring, non-classroom-based touchpoint that reaches virtually every student every day. That makes it the perfect lever for building what the Oxford authors call a “culture of care and connection.”

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™: From Meal to Meaning

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ is our proprietary framework for transforming dining into a catalyst for enriching levels of student engagement, purposeful connections and accidental collisions, transforming campus culture “The College Experience”. It’s built on a simple but powerful insight: the programmed and built environment and human behavior are deeply intertwined. When you create and invest in the student value proposition by organizing space, hours of operation, menu variety and selection, and meal plans intentionally, you can promote the face-to-face human interactions students are craving—and missing and results in students increasing the frequency that they come and go from the dining halls every day.  Thus making the campus more “Sticky.”

Every element of a PKC Next Generation Dining Program is designed to spark human connection and conversation, build friendships, and support identity formation. From strategically designed communal seating and customizable food stations to student programming that celebrates cultural diversity and peer-to-peer mentorship, every detail is curated to encourage social capital building.

Why is that important? Because research from the Oxford Handbook shows that well-being is relational. Students who report strong friendship networks, a sense of belonging, and opportunities for emotional expression are more likely to persist through challenges, maintain higher GPAs, and graduate.

The First 45 Days: The Critical Window for Social Integration

SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ shines during what we call the “First 45 Days” of the academic year. This is a crucial period when students are forming their identities, routines, and relationships. If they haven’t made at least one friend and one place of belonging by the end of that window, the likelihood they’ll return for sophomore year plummets.

In a well-run Next Gen dining program, this window becomes a launchpad. We help our campus clients program daily and weekly events in their dining halls that bring people together: small-group dinners, chef’s tables, community storytelling nights, and even collaborative cooking classes. We curate the “architecture of time and space” so that dining doesn’t feel like a chore—it feels like coming home.

Food as a Foundation for the Whole Student

The Oxford Handbook emphasizes that well-being isn’t just the absence of illness—it’s about flourishing. That includes having access to basic needs (like nutrition), as well as the opportunity to develop socially, emotionally, and ethically.

Next Gen dining addresses this head-on:

• Nutritional Access: Our strategic planning ensures that dining halls serve inclusive, nutrient-dense meals that reflect a diversity of dietary needs—halal, kosher, vegan, allergen-friendly.
• Equity & Inclusion: We empower schools to break down cultural barriers through food storytelling, where students share their identities via cuisine.
• Emotional Support: Our environments are trauma-informed, acoustically mindful, and emotionally safe—important features for neurodiverse or anxious students.
• Community Co-Creation: We invite students into the planning process, allowing them to shape the experience. This autonomy fuels intrinsic motivation and a sense of purpose.

Bridging Research & Practice: The Implementation Science of Social Dining

The Oxford Handbook calls for a stronger bridge between research and real-world application, a challenge they note is often neglected. This is where PKC’s evidence-based methodology and success-fee model provide distinct value.

We do not deliver cookie-cutter plans. We deliver tailored strategies grounded in behavioral science, operational metrics, and our decades of experience. And we don’t just hand off the strategy—we partner with the institution to select and onboard food service operators who align with these transformative goals. Our compensation is tied to outcomes, meaning we only succeed when our clients succeed.

This is implementation science in action: translating the theory of well-being into the practice of transformation.

Dining as the Epicenter of Student Success

Let’s stop pretending dining is just an auxiliary service. It is a mission-critical component of student success. When designed and managed correctly, dining is:

• A social incubator for building lifelong friendships.
• A behavioral intervention to combat loneliness and depression.
• A resilience laboratory where students develop interpersonal skills and empathy.
• An equity engine that ensures every student—regardless of background—has a seat at the table, both literally and figuratively.

This is not hypothetical. Institutions that implement our Next Gen Dining strategies have seen measurable gains in retention, housing occupancy, emotional well-being, elimination of food and nutrition insecurity, and, yes, academic performance.

Final Thoughts: Beyond Surviving, Toward Thriving

As the Oxford Handbook so eloquently states, “Higher education institutions have a unique opportunity and responsibility to go beyond mitigating ill-being and actually cultivate well-being.” This is not a slogan—it’s a call to action. The stakes have never been higher, and the solutions have never been clearer.

Dining is not just about feeding students—it’s about nourishing their futures. Through SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™ and Next Generation Dining Programs, we are helping institutions turn their campuses into ecosystems of connection, compassion, and community.

If we reimagine the purpose of dining, we reimagine the purpose of education.

Let’s serve more than food. Let’s serve belonging.

“If you don’t tell your story, someone else will—and they won’t get it right.”

That’s the realization that continues to echo in my mind as I reflect on the robust conversations I’ve been having with campus dining leaders across the country. Whether I’m sitting in on a NACUFS roundtable, helping a university reimagine their entire dining ecosystem, or rolling up my sleeves with a team struggling with declining meal plan participation, the thread remains the same: our programs have incredible value—but we’re not always telling that story clearly, intentionally, or powerfully enough.

And when we don’t, we leave students, parents, administrators—and even our own staff—guessing about our purpose, our potential, and our impact.

Today’s dining programs are at a crossroads. The pressures are real: weaponized meal plan complaints, shifting labor dynamics, authenticity in marketing, and the need to demonstrate ROI to administrators. But if we approach this moment with creativity and courage, it can become our finest hour. I believe the path forward is rooted in something I’ve spent my career developing: SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™—the intentional design of spaces, systems, and stories that forge emotional bonds, social capital, and long-term value in campus dining.

Here’s how we write our story—and why we must.

1. Start from the Inside: Your Story Lives in Your Staff

In a breakout session I attended recently, someone posed a provocative question: “Does your catering team know how good your retail team is? Does anyone on your staff know the bigger picture of what your program is doing well?” That hit home.

Too often, we underestimate the internal narrative. The truth is, your staff are your first storytellers. They need to be fluent in your mission—not just the menu. They need to know how your scratch cooking, your cultural food celebrations, your sourcing strategies, and your student engagement efforts all connect to something bigger: helping students feel seen, supported, and successful.

Building internal storytelling means celebrating wins at shift meetings. It means spotlighting staff accomplishments on campus communications. It means connecting the dots between culinary excellence and student emotional well-being. When your team understands the “why,” their performance and pride follow.

2. Build Social Capital Through Intentional Programming

Dining is not just about nutrition; it’s about connection. That’s why I created SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™—because the dining table is still the most effective place to combat loneliness, spark friendships, and strengthen retention.

Let me tell you a story.

At one university, dining leaders collaborated with student cultural groups to host a Diwali event featuring a student Bhangra dance group. What happened? Meal counts jumped 45% over the daily average. But more importantly, 1,400 students showed up—not for the food alone, but because they felt represented and included. That’s social architecture in motion.

We need to build programs with students, not just for them. Cultural dinners. Late-night breakfast during finals. DIY hot cocoa bars recommended by students themselves. These aren’t “special events”—they are connection strategies. And they drive results in meal plan participation, satisfaction, and student stories that go viral—for all the right reasons.

3. Define and Deliver Value—Then Promote It Relentlessly

When a student (or a parent, or a VP) asks, “Why should I buy a meal plan?” we should have an answer that’s not just rational—it should be emotional.

Let’s stop hiding our magic. One campus featured in a roundtable discussion made a brilliant point: they were serving 15-hour smoked pulled pork sourced from their on-campus processing facility, paired with cheese from their own dairy. But no one knew. “Who is actually celebrating this?” the chef asked.

This is where strategic storytelling becomes indispensable. Use your digital menus to showcase sourcing. Create short videos showing behind-the-scenes culinary craftsmanship. Compare the real-world value: for $7.42, a student can access a variety of fresh, balanced meals vs. a $9 fast food combo with limited nutrition. That’s not just a better price—it’s a better life.

If we want students to stop weaponizing the meal plan, we have to stop hiding the value behind it. Show them where their dollars are going—and more importantly, what that investment is giving back.

4. Leverage Student Voices to Build Authentic Trust

Trust doesn’t come from a banner ad. It comes from relationship.

One of the best ideas I’ve heard recently came from a young operator who created a student “Dining Ambassador” program. These weren’t focus groups—they were storytelling allies. Students who shared why the dining program mattered to them. Why a certain dish made them feel at home. Why they trust the people behind the food.

In one instance, a student-led promotion of a smoothie tasting resulted in a line out the door—and the CFO stopped by to sample. That moment got posted to social media. It was fun, yes—but it was also strategy.

As leaders, we must connect with student media, align with influencers on campus, and provide the experience that makes them want to share our story organically. Real voices, real people, real food—that’s the content strategy we need.

5. Craft Your Story for Every Audience

One of the most insightful exercises I’ve seen involved breaking down your story into concentric circles: internal, campus, local, national. It’s a solar system of storytelling. And you need a communication plan for each orbit.

• To students: “We see you. This food is for you. Let’s build it together.”
• To parents: “Your child’s meal plan is an investment in health, happiness, and academic success.”
• To administrators: “Our program increases retention, enhances the freshman experience, and generates revenue.”
• To staff: “You are ambassadors of culture, comfort, and connection.”

When your storytelling aligns with each audience’s values and concerns, your message doesn’t just inform—it inspires action.

6. Close the Loop: Measure and Share Impact

Finally, track your wins. Use social engagement metrics, dining participation spikes, meal swipe data, and even short student testimonials. Share the anecdotal evidence with the hard numbers. For example:

“Our Hispanic Heritage Month event increased dining hall traffic by 47%, generated 12K impressions on Instagram, and got featured in the local paper.”

This isn’t fluff—it’s ROI. It’s why your program matters.

Writing the Next Chapter—Together

As someone who has spent decades helping colleges and universities unlock the power of dining, I believe this is the moment we’ve been preparing for. The enrollment cliff. The retention crisis. The loneliness epidemic.

Dining can solve all of these—when it’s grounded in SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE™, driven by strategic storytelling, and amplified through value-focused programming.

So write your story. Tell your story. Live your story.

Because when we do, we don’t just feed students.

We fuel futures.