Winning The Fall: Driving Student Success + Loyalty on Campus
- Tony Johnson
- 10 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Higher Education is in flux, especially in the auxiliary services that serve as the more student (guest) facing aspects of campus. This could be the dining services, parking, bookstores, retail shops, or merchandise outlets.
The area that often has the most student interaction is the dining program – and with that comes a chance to bring people together and foster relationships that last a lifetime.
I spent many years working in higher education and during those years summer became less and less about catching your breath and more about preparing for the upcoming fall semester. In many ways, summer can be more stressful than the academic year, because intentional planning now has exponential impact when the students return.
I have been seeing so many of the same issues across so many campuses this past year that I wanted to share out for everyone to learn from. It is important to note that this does not represent the findings on one campus – it is what I have seen as I’ve visited 36 campuses this past year. Yes, there are some generalities, and not every campus has every bugaboo, but this is a fairly representative sample. Some colleges are crushing it and others have a lot of work to do.
You are likely going to read this and think, well, this is so basic. These are just fundamental blocking and tackling items.
That is absolutely correct – and I challenge you to go look at your operations with this lens because you probably have 75% of these happening in your business. The other challenge I make is to DMs, RVPs, Directors of Auxiliary Services, Campus Dining Directors, and VPs of Student Affairs – get into your operations and look at this stuff for yourself. Many of you have become too hands off and aren’t spending enough time staring at the fundamentals.
Strategy never served a guest – go dig into your tactics.
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Why Dining Matters
The dining locations on campus represent places where people come together, find their tribe, and build community. So much of the higher ed experience is about meeting new people and experiencing new things – and this is a place where that can happen through social interactions and new cuisine.
This remains a place where people gather and there is a big responsibility for dining programs to find inspiring ways to create that sense of belonging.
87% of students see on-campus dining as the primary way to connect and build community - University Business (2026)
The Current State
Now as a Gen Xer, my lens is a bit different, as I went to college as the internet was being born – and now through social media and unlimited AI + online resources, information has been democratized for many. That means that students are coming to universities with more of a world view than students did back before the turn of the century. Now if that doesn’t make my cohort buddies feel old, I don’t know what will.
But that said, there is still a need for campus programs such as dining to be the glue that holds the student experience together.
In the coming years there will be a downturn in the number of students attending college – due to population shifts and the increasing pull of community colleges and trade schools. College age students are questioning the costs of post-secondary education and considering the ROI and time investment as a part of their decision calculus. That means that there will be a war for the best students and a push to fill beds and dining rooms on campuses across the world.
The demographic cliff, driven by a 17% birth rate decline, will eliminate 576,000 students from 2025 to 2029, with a second contraction extending through 2039. – RC Strategies
The only way to win this war is through experience – and that will require a more retail mindset from higher education in the competition for share of student. That battle will be won through student experience and that starts with a hospitality mindset.
What better place to start than inside of food, retail, and coffee.
But what we discuss within this article has applicability to the entire student experience.
What I'm Seeing Out There in the Universe
I spend a lot of time on higher education campuses helping them understand how they are executing in the moment, how they can improve, and delivering hospitality skills training and leadership development sessions. This comes after a decade of working directly in the college and university space.
What I am seeing is not unique to any one model. What I share here, i see at self-operated schools, schools that have a food service partner, and those that have a hybrid approach. This is not indicative of one model – most contractors and self-operated dining programs have many of these same issues. There are pockets of amazing execution out there and obviously there are always exceptions to every generalization – but having spent time on so many campuses this past year, these are the themes that can’t be ignored.
Food safety is an afterthought on many campuses. I only visited 3 campuses this year where food safety was on lock down. All the others had significant issues with food logs, temperatures, labeling, hand washing, and properly stored towels.
Lack of fundamental hospitality – there is a floundering culture of service on campuses starting with the basics of greeting, body language, and attentive service.
Food quality is at an all-time low (in general). There is a lack of attention to the basics of cookery, including the simple pieces such as following recipes and tasting food.
Food presentation and personalization are complete afterthoughts. Often food is cooked too far ahead, served in too-large pans, ungarnished, or not available with any type of customization or personalization.
There is little product differentiation as the push for cost controls brings most programs to the same purveyors and the same products.
Innovation is floundering. Most programs look very much like all the others as the programs become more vanilla and homogenized.
PM + weekend service periods are being ignored. And is shows in poor execution. On many campuses the dinner periods and weekends are staffed by the least experienced team members and do not receive the same level of attention as 9-5, Monday - Friday.
Kitchens are dirty and lines of site on serving lines are cluttered. There is a general lack of attention to detail when it comes to cleanliness and back counters in almost every operation are catch-alls for items guests shouldn’t be seeing.
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What you can do right now during the summer
The summer months seem to get shorter each year but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t enough time to implement substantial change. In fact, transformative change is best tackled in the summer – and to some extent during the winter break.
Your key focus needs to be hospitality, personalization, and food safety.
So, what can you do now to drive change for the fall?
Adopt a true restaurant mindset. The more you consider yourself an institutional food service the more you’ll behave that way.
Taste everything. One of the biggest failings I see in dining today is that no one is tasting anything. That is cooking 101 – cooks, chefs, leaders, and clients should all have their faces in the food all day long. Taste more, coach more, win more.
Look at your guest journey – and this should be done as a holistic university journey. How easy or hard is it to sign up for meal plans? Are the plans right for your student personae? Do you have the right mix of retail, national brands, coffee, vending, convenience stores, and traditional dining rooms. And, within your dining spaces have you balanced made to order, finished to order, ready to serve, and grab and go?
Spend time with your team and train them in the art of hospitality. Don’t just lecture them at welcome back, create development events complete with interactive role play, social learning, and fun to make it sticky. Schedule ongoing micro training throughout the year.
Coach the fundamentals of service – ensure uniform standards, greetings, body language, and friendly welcomes.
Look at your menus and plot out where the action + personalization happens. Where can you give your guests an option to customize, build their own, or at least see something carved or finished to order.
Stop letting your team put so much food in hot boxes so early. This is a problem that every program has been fighting since 1980. Consider reducing how many hot holding boxes you have in your operations as a starting point.
Pick your food safety hot list. Hand washing, temperature control, sanitizer buckets, and cooler organization are great places to start.
Look for ways to create individual portions. This inspires the “just for me” feeling from guests and will drive their loyalty. The way they do things at the Wicked Spoon + Bacchanal in Las Vegas and on Virgin + Royal Caribbean cruises have applicability here. These are good places to look for ideas you can adapt to your campus.
Get your leaders out of the office and on the floor – train them to tour with intentionality and also to conduct meaningful table touches with guests. How they interact with the team and the customers will drive success.
Find your flexibility. It is so easy to lean into the way you have always done things or your larger company vision. One size fits no one. Remember no one cares about your company policy, vendor contracts, specified purchasing, or your internal politics. If it isn’t good for the guest, then change it.
Bring the WOW! Once you have your fundamentals in place, then it’s time to swing for the fences. Interactive dining, community engagement, surprise and delight moments, and pop ups can really bring home the special differences your program offers – but only if you are getting lunch out on time and your food tastes really good.
Learn what variety, wellness, and flexibility mean to your students. These are constant complaints from campus students and guests. That said, it means something different to everyone. As I spoke to students across the country, wellness meant everything from lean protein to allergens to vegetarian offerings. Variety to some was a huge menu of choices, for others intentionally curated selections, and still others pop ups and made to order options. Start by understanding what your guests want and then work to deliver it.
Create opportunities for students: This one may seem like a wildcard but AI has eliminated a portion of internships and entry level positions in the workforce. Dining and hospitality are great places for students to gain leadership experience, service skills, and work history. Find ways to help your students gain experience that will lead to post-graduation opportunities.
I share all of this because I have a soft spot in my heart for University Dining Service. I spent a lot of years in that space – and even after I left operations, it has remained one of my favorite industries to work with.
I remember the excitement (and stress) of every new academic year. The pressure to make a good first impression with the incoming students. I remember how everyone mobs the salad bar for the first few weeks and the power of soft serve ice cream and pizza when a test doesn’t go quite right.
I remember, most of all, the impact that we had on students every day. The power of building community and bringing people together – it looks a little different now but the mission hasn’t changed.
The bottom line is that the war for students will be won and lost on experience – competition is up and your pool of guests is declining. There are more choices than ever, students know what is happening not just on college campuses but within food and beverage in general, and they are looking for campuses that will create that sense of belonging they seek.
You still have time to act on everything we discussed here – the real question is: will you do anything about it?
The schools that win the next decade won’t be the ones with the flashiest campuses, they will be the ones that create community and connect people to opportunities for the future.
Start by understanding your students, dialing in the basics, then finding ways to wrap memorable experiences around great food. That will help you keep your campus community at the center of everything you do.
Tony
(Crafted by a human, not AI.)
Meet Tony Johnson
Tony is the Co-Managing Partner, Co-Owner, and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for 4xi Global Consulting. He is an internationally recognized thought leader and influencer in Customer and Employee Experience. Tony hosts the wildly successful Customer Service Academy podcast and is the author of two books on leadership and CX.
Tony has worked with some of the top organizations across the globe, including Delta, 3M, Baylor Scott and White Health, University of Virginia, Siemens, SHRM, and more.
Tony is available to help your organization with:
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(C) 2026. May not be used to train A.I.