The University of Florida doesn’t require students to live on campus or purchase a meal plan. That makes voluntary participation one of the program’s defining challenges, and one of its most telling metrics.

In this conversation, recorded February 6, 2026, Matt Mueller joins Ann Roebuck to share how UF has grown that participation from around 3,500 annual meal plans to over 7,300 in the five and a half years since he joined the program. The growth didn’t happen by accident. It happened because the team built a program worth choosing, one that meets students where they are, adapts as they move through their academic careers, and extends beyond campus borders through a GrubHub partnership that lets students spend dining dollars across the Gainesville community.

Matt walks through the strategy behind that growth and the partnerships that made it possible: from the agricultural school collaboration that brought experimental crops into the dining halls, to the KPI framework that turned supplier accountability into a shared goal rather than a judgment. His frame for all of it is the three Rs: recruitment, retention, and reputation. Dining, he argues, plays a direct role in all three.

Matt’s takeaway = A dining program at a large public university has to earn its place in students’ lives every single day. Build it around how they actually move, eat, and belong… and the participation follows.