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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
