College dining is returning to normal after the disruptions of the pandemic, and this 2023 edition of FM’s annual College Power Players listing takes a look at some of the prominent programs in the country with four geographical listings (East, South, Midwest, West) for the sake of convenience. FM had sent solicitation for information to about a hundred schools from around the country and received responses from a majority, which are all reflected in this and the other three geographically themed galleries.
We asked each school to provide an update primarily in three areas: what remnants of COVID era policies were still in place in their dining program, what was the status of pre/remote ordering on their campus and what recent additions have they made to their program in terms of new concepts, venues, technologies, services, etc.
From the responses generally, it seems clear that the college dining community is pretty much back to pre-COVID normal except for one factor: the pandemic has accelerated the trend to remote ordering to the point where even schools that had planned to cut back on this service were forced to backtrack in the face of customer demand. In fact, a fair number of schools report that the remote order option even extends to traditional residential dining halls, often with some takeout component—another pandemic legacy.
Here are the schools in this listing with links to their respective profile page in the following gallery…
University of California Berkeley
University of California Irvine
University of California San Diego
University of California Santa Barbara
