by Cindy Heilman | Attract Residents, Build Communities of Belonging, Leadership, Regulations and Standards, Resident Centered Dining Service
The latest trend towards cooking to order is setting assisted living community chefs and food serving teams on fire!
Spring changes in the kitchen in food preparation and in the dining room in serving food have awakened creative culinary minds. The focus on utilizing local, fresh, and seasonal foods results in fresh food prepared without increasing the food budget. Chefs use their talent to create additional innovative ways to present healthy selections of food.
Residents with a waning desire to cook for themselves still want to dine on meals that tempt their taste buds. Cooking with fresh herbs and seasonings instead of sodium pairs healthcare with hospitality. Eye appeal is important and can easily be achieved by creative cooks in the kitchen. Staff who serve timely meals with pleasant, positive comportment and are neatly attired carry food service to a higher standard.
With many older adults entering the community companionless, mealtimes are even more important as social hours that will keep them from feeling isolated and lonely. Food has always been a key factor in bringing people together to form friendships and share stories. Mealtimes are the highlights of the day; a time to experience, savor, and enjoy.
Today’s senior living residents have been introduced to multiple cultures in their lifetimes and wish to continue the wide knowledge of taste they have acquired. This fine dining experience that satisfied them in their favorite restaurants is sought in the community they chose to call home. Grabbing a candy bar or bag of chips for a snack may no longer be satisfactory. Interesting, healthful refreshment options are desired at snack time they want. These goals are attainable for your community. Consider salad or sandwich bars and cooking stations that have become popular.
Kind Dining® training modules are a proven turnkey curriculum for assisted living communities that realize resident-centered care is good for business.
Our modules include:
- Can we Make a House a Home-(creating community);
- WHO are you Serving?-(respecting the aging process);
- What do YOU bring to the Table?- (how to be successful);
- Making it Personal- (knowing how to be ready to serve);
- The Symphony of Service- (applying what you know correctly);
- If Only I Had a Heart- (caring to become better);
- Emotion Control-(dealing with the hard parts of serving;
- Don’t Touch That!- (preventing foodborne illness);
- Polishing Service- (respecting the company that hired us).
We believe active learning in practice and experiential classes are better ways of educating. Our unique approach to teaching benefits the seasoned server and the novice, the part and full-time employee alike.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Grabbing a bag of chips for a snack may no longer be satisfactory.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Leadership, Resident Centered Dining Service, Retain Staff
Finding a new approach to dining in Residential care communities while still keeping within the present budget has been introduced by trending chef leaders of creative community dining. Using fresh, local food supplies to serve on order ala restaurant-style dining is here and is doing well.
Creative menus offer wholesome foods that taste as good as the food looks and are healthier than the cafeteria-style and cooking from canned foods and steam tables.
Chefs are preparing foods with herbs and seasonings to replace unnecessary sodium that most seniors are avoiding for health reasons.
Mealtimes are the most popular events of the day for socializing at the table, meeting new neighbors, and sharing with friends. Residents reject loneliness and isolation when looking forward to mealtimes as a time to make plans and share stories.
Upcoming chefs are redesigning their kitchen work habits to accommodate new ways of cooking on order and serving fine dining meals. Establishing salad and casual snack bars replaces time-consuming efforts in the kitchen that can be used for other preparations.
Meetings encouraging the food serving team to offer their ideas and comments allow everyone to be part of the changes taking place. This inspires the food serving team to be more aware of the care they use in serving residents and will alert them to the importance of their work.
Creating new and better ways to serve meals is a time for unique opportunities for reviewing the work habits of every staff member who serves meals. Instilling a sense of pride in one’s work through meetings and discussions where each person on the food serving team has the freedom to be part of the transformation.
Kind Dining® training sessions are designed for all employees who lift a plate of food, or even deliver a beverage to a resident.
It includes full or part-timers, nursing and caregivers, housekeeping department staff, and department managers.
Your food serving team is a powerful asset to the company when they are giving quality service.
Employees are cross-trained in our fun, focused, practical skills and competency curriculum which teaches how each meal can be an enjoyable experience.
Kind Dining® developed virtual training instruction online workshops for easier access. The goal is to help food servers work better by working wisely, while still learning how to expand their knowledge in their work field.
by Melanie Davis | Build Communities of Belonging
Hilda was having her annual insurance check-up online via her computer. They were in the middle of the session, and insurance representative Mrs. Jones was asking questions.
“Do you understand everything so far? Do you have any questions?” Mrs. Jones was on top of things.
“Well, yes, I do. I toured a senior living community yesterday. I never thought I would be interested in that style of living, but the tour has me rethinking. How would my insurance work if I lived in that community? I have to tell you, I was impressed!
Everyone was kind and considerate, not just the tour guide but the other staff. Residents stopped and gave me comments, mentioning how many years they lived in the community and how much they enjoyed it. One lady even told me she fought against her daughter’s wishes to help her sell her house and move here. She thought she would hate it.
But no. Just the opposite. She kicks herself for not coming sooner. The woman mentioned trying to keep up with house maintenance after her husband passed away, dealing with repairmen, watching her savings account dwindle, and wondering if they were taking advantage of her.
She thought of all the lonely nights she spent at home, with no one to talk to except the TV and nowhere to go after dark.
She gave me her apartment number and said to look her up when I moved in. She’ll help me meet people and find my way around. She was quite talkative.”
“Well,” Mrs. Jones said, “I really . . . . “
“Furthermore,” Hilda continued. “My ladyfriend was with me, and we had lunch. Oh, the wait staff was so kind and attentive. Not only to us because we were potential residents, but I watched. They were kind and talked to everyone like they were family. Well, maybe better than family.”
Hilda laughed at her joke before going on again. “Our young girl came and refilled our coffee cups 3 times! And there was no extra charge on the tab. She did that with the other tables, too.
I watched closely. It was like they were dancers choreographed in a play. They breezed in, carrying those big trays like they were toys. Chatting while they set the plates exactly where they belonged. I watched that, too. No plates were changed, and no plates were removed until they were empty.
Did I tell you how delicious the food was? Everyone had menus handed to them. Can you imagine? Who knew something like this was available to me? I put my house up for sale an hour after I got home. I hate to admit my daughter was right, but right is right. I’m going to live in a senior living community! Now, about my insurance….”
Kindness and consideration can be learned through Kind Dining® training sessions. Your staff deserves to learn all the skills that make them better at their jobs. Residents deserve to receive kindness and consideration each time they interact with any member of your senior living community’s staff. Kindness is who we are. We Bring Warmth to the Table.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Guests touring your community will respond to the kindnesses they see.
by Melanie Davis | LeaveBlank
It is the Power of One theory. Twenty years ago, a photo of cellist Vedran Smailovic sitting in the bombed-out National Library in Sarajevo brought beauty in the middle of the devastation of siege.
That strong but reassuring picture illustrates how one person can make a difference and influence others to let go of their fears of war.
I’m thinking of your staff.
Each staff member can bring a feeling of belonging, joy, contentment, security, and a shared life to each person they contact daily. Much happiness spreads around your community with little effort but intentional kindness.
In return for the kindness they share, they receive joy, a sense of belonging, confidence, work security, camaraderie, and a sense of who they are and the weight they carry.
It is time for company executives to notice the basic tools they can utilize in their community. True leadership allows your serving staff to raise their potential and improve the dining experience for everyone. Success awaits in this detail.
This all brings attention to mealtimes being your residents’ most important times of the day. We know how elders take time to prepare for it and look forward to this social time of the day. It is so much more than satisfying a hunger for food.
Meeting new people is a chance to chase away any loneliness that may linger. That is an opportunity for your food servers to orchestrate a social moment. They get to chat and get to know the residents. As a result, they can pair up with people who may be too shy to sit at a table without being invited.
Person-centered care is about the staff, as they are the service providers who deliver the care.
Through the Kind Dining® training curriculum, serving staff can grow their skills by changing their mindset, skill set, and, ultimately, their everyday behavior.
Their lives will be improved while improving the lives of everyone around them: coworkers, residents, and whoever is at hand. It takes a desire to uplift one’s life, which one can do through training and practice.
Discussion afterward is highly recommended. It keeps the training close in mind, and the skills will follow.
Who doesn’t want a better life and a workday you love, full of the kindness of friends and coworkers?
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Mealtime: an opportunity for serving staff to orchestrate a social moment.
by Melanie Davis | LeaveBlank
During a coffee break at the Senior Living Community, Lillian was chatting with her food serving team. “Whew! Thankfully, today is going along much smoother than yesterday! I don’t remember having a day like that when everything that could go wrong did go wrong! It’s not through anyone’s fault or anything major. It’s just a string of little incidents being off-center. It seemed things broke or just went the opposite way of right.” She laughed, happy that they all survived the day before.
“Yes,” Don said. “I agree and when I thought about it last night, I realized how the lessons practiced in our training sessions helped to pull us out of what could have been an even worse day than it was. Does that make sense to anyone else?”
“It does to me. I always carry the statement of ‘Working Smarter, not Harder’ in my head. “Mary piped in. “Yesterday proved how good training can save the day.”
“Now that you mention it, my favorite phrase learned is “Hospitality is Healthcare.” It makes me feel like I am doing something important that isn’t always obvious but is always there, underneath, and important. My caring makes a difference. We make a difference.”
Lillian smiled back. “I like ‘Happy dining equals happy residents equals a more successful senior care community.’ I think our teamwork and camaraderie help us achieve that vision. Teamwork was obvious yesterday and is a part of our workdays. We all use kindness, almost as a badge of honor now, if we didn’t before. We don’t mention it, but it makes us the caring workers. I’m sure you have all noticed the difference in our working together since the woman whose name I didn’t mention left. Some people don’t seem to want to change, grow, and learn to love coming to work.”
Your staff’s behavior will determine the kind of community you have, and your training program will determine the kind of staff you have. Training that does not change behaviors, encourage responsibility, and move your food-serving teams towards caring wastes time and money.
Kind Dining® training curriculum was designed for your employees to embrace learning, practice, and results. It allows those employees to build teams that work together and make your community the place seniors want to live.
Kind Dining® asks what goals your community staff intends to achieve this year. Are you working to improve service quality standards or build confident, caring teams?
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Stand out from the competition and win industry awards with good training.
by Melanie Davis | LeaveBlank
Charles was having an impromptu and informal lunch with two colleagues in a private dining room at the Senior Living Community. He was anxious to hear the first results of the new training they began for all employees, including their leadership staff.
“Well, what are the murmurings? Has there been any rumbling in the trenches?” Charles was anxious to hear if his guidelines were adopted by his most recently promoted leadership team now that some time passed. “Has the team used intentional, collective consciousness to guide our food servers? Have they passed intention-setting to the food-serving teams to accomplish our goals? I want to know if our teams are showing signs of having more confidence. Do they collaborate more at all levels? I expect less conflict among all our employees. Has that happened?”
Robert spoke up first. “After our training sessions, we shared your strategies, including everyone’s input to succeed. We stressed the importance of how their work intentions, positive attitudes, and the changes they create are the strengths of our community and our company. We discussed goals and how the importance of their work is based on results. We have created colorful charts to show the progress of all of us working together with intention. They are displayed so all can see them and take pride in moving forward. We’ve opened a clear communication method in all work areas to emphasize that we are all moving toward our goal. Anyone who wishes to be heard is listened to on an ‘always-available’ basis.”
John added, “We have also let it be known that we expect this cooperation from everyone as it impacts the results. Our employees were interested in knowing how decisions are made and how those decisions come from their work experiences. Consideration is obvious. Our teams show excitement in seeing our progress through the charts. They also enjoy the team gift cards we use as rewards.
Charles wrapped the conversation, “The reality of leadership is complex. It sounds like the potential expected of you both shows in your early results. You are managing new roles with vital collaboration and commitment and building a culture of organizational intention that requires encouragement and open communication. Now, let’s have dessert.”
Kind Dining® training helps in these areas of organizational skills! Inspiring staff to find a new sense of purpose and embracing a community’s common goal of rallying around the dining experience is basic.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Train your leadership staff on the complex role of valuable administration.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Resident Centered Dining Service
A friend told me recently that while having lunch at a local café, she overheard this conversation from the booth next to hers and could hardly wait to repeat it to me.
“I just found a larger senior living community with more amenities than where my mom is living. I researched it thoroughly, and when I told her about it, and all the extras offered that she doesn’t have, guess what she said? ‘No, thank you. I love where I am now. I’ve made new friends that I won’t leave them behind. Our group meets every day at noon for lunch, and we have the best time! Mike always has a funny story to tell, and Maryann comes up with one interesting subject or another. She’s a writer, you know. We make plans and go to whatever special program is happening for the day. After dinner together, we get a card game going. That is the most fun! No, dear. Thank you, but I’m having more fun than in the old neighborhood, so I’m not going anywhere.’ I was surprised to hear her so enthused. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time.”
Her lunch companion replied. “So, you don’t have to feel guilty about encouraging her to sell up and move into the senior community?”
“Feel guilty? I’m collecting congratulations and applause. She went on to tell me how easy her life is now. Huge amounts of work and household responsibilities are gone. No more lonely nights. Replaced with fun time. She has even taken up genealogy to research the family line. I’ve never seen my mother so engaged in living! Really. The staff are all nice and friendly, even to family visitors. She has staff favorites that she now tells me about. She knows who is going to college and who will be a grandma for the first time. My mother has become amazing. All thanks go to her senior living community ‘family’ as she calls them.”
Our Kind Dining® training curriculum was designed to create that true home feeling for your residents that comes from how your staff interacts with them and each other. Once seniors move into your community, it is the warmth of caring that comes, especially from your food serving team, that makes them feel at home. Offer training to your employees to hone the skills that achieve the results you want for your company. Well-trained employees are a powerful asset. Invest in your staff and save the cost of hiring new employees. Keep in mind that happy residents don’t move out!
Cindy has a passion for food and hospitality and a unique approach to it. When you hire her to train your staff virtually, she will bring the energy and expertise that reinvigorates your entire organization to embrace customer service with a new mindset that produces positive results”.
Kind Dining – Hospitality makes the difference!
B♥ Kind Tip: Encourage your staff to show they care by interacting with your residents.
by Cindy Heilman | Resident Centered Dining Service, Retain Staff
Is the goal for your long-term care community to be superior in service to other communities in your area? To have your reputation rise above all others? To be a top-notch community where service people want to work, and aging adults want to live? If you answer yes, it is time to introduce lifetime learning to your staff.
Kind Dining® has helped staff understand and improve their role and the importance of teamwork to enhance dining and nutrition for residents by adding new ways to their workday.
Learning ‘mindset before skill and tool set’, including soft skills, to their present skills to become a valuable member of the food serving team. These soft skills of conscientiousness, personal reflection, and development, added to experience and mentorship, are learned through our Kind Dining® training sessions. Their soft skills become power skills.
We have revisited staff who benefitted from our curriculum to hear what they learned from Kind Dining® training sessions. The following are a few of the replies received:
“I’m more compassionate, take my time to listen, and make their mealtime more enjoyable. Helped in the serving department and treated the residents as if they were in a restaurant setting. I am more aware of how I serve the resident their food. Try to breathe through my nose before I respond. When something goes wrong.” – Caregiver
“Remembering to have empathy, remembering that the care center is a home, showing kindness to everyone.” -Activities
“I am rephrasing how I want to explain things to the resident. I’m making the food look more presentable and prettier for the residents.” Cook
“I engage in more conversations, and I am more attentive to the needs of the residents when they are dining in the dining room.” Caregiver
“Dining as a community event and the role of food in healing.” Nurse
Quietly send your mother to have dinner in your dining room:
- Would she experience a well-oiled team working together?
- Would the dining room be full of smiles?
- Would her needs be satisfied without asking?
- Would she receive kindness and compassion?
- Would the staff exchange polite words with her?
- Would she be served an appetizing and nutritious meal?
- Would you be delighted with the report she brought back to you?
Be committed to hospitality and healthcare in your community by enrolling your staff in continuous learning with Kind Dining® training. Help your staff advance their skills. Kind Dining® training modules, now offered online, will save your company time and money.
Check them out at KindDining.com
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Superior teamwork enhances the dining experience for residents.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Resident Centered Dining Service
This conversation came to me from a woman who knows how I work to improve senior and assisted living through staff empathy and kindness.
“I stopped at a small local café type restaurant for lunch the other day. It was after the usual lunch hour which I chose because it is always a lot quieter and the waitstaff aren’t in a mad rush getting everyone’s meal out while it’s still hot. When eating solo, I often bring my journal to update. I always carry it with me. Sally spotted me coming through the door and immediately came to my chosen table before the other waiters even saw me. I like when she waits on me. She always gives her best, carrying cheerfulness and consideration with her. Today she was wearing a pale pink tee shirt with a saying across it.”
“Welcome. It’s good to see you today.” She said with a beaming smile as she handed a menu to me. “What would you like to drink while you read today’s specials?”
“Water with lemon and no ice for now.” I replied and commented. “Is pink your favorite color? You are positively glowing today.”
“Yes, it is. I wore it today because I think it makes other people happy, customers and other food servers alike. Besides that, we have a new junior cook in the kitchen. He is quite handsome and single, too.” She laughed at her own confession.
“I thought about Sally while she went off to get my water. She paused to answer a question from another table, smiling and leaving laughter behind as she continued to the kitchen. It was like she left a trail of sparkles behind her as she breezed across the room. I wondered if the owners knew how fortunate they were to have her. Without effort she added so much more to a simple lunch.”
It’s true that some people are applauded when they enter a room and some when they leave it. I happen to know that if you don’t carry a natural ability for pleasantry, you can learn how to do just that. It is a choice that can be made through learning how to add that particular skill to your set of skills.
The Kind Dining® training curriculum addresses how your employees can learn to be at their best every day. Everyone in your aging services community will benefit from it, your employees most of all. And they don’t have to wear pink to carry the inner glow that comes from the challenge and growth of doing their best.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Happiness is a choice, like doing your best is a choice.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Training
Do you realize that Creating and Expanding Your Company’s Philosophy is a title for what Kind Dining® has been encouraging and teaching for numerous years?
Have you read about our belief in residents’ and staff’s sense of belonging, finding purpose, and knowing that the food serving team (from all departments) is the best asset the company can have?
Our curriculum teaches a better way of working, honing skills, and introducing social skills. It also discusses all aspects of the importance of the dining experience to residents.
If they are important to residents, they are doubly important to your food-serving staff. Introducing new culinary experiences and remembering to honor traditional ones come from kitchen staff who care about each person who enters your dining room.
Smart hiring practices and interactive educational training sessions keep top-rated staff wanting to benefit from lifelong learning and wanting to work in your community.
We teach them to connect and build relationships with the residents and coworkers. Building relationships inspires your staff to love their work; it is what we do because we love doing it, and we love the results. We want your food servers to share the same values, respect, team bonding, and visions that the company enjoys.
What have you learned from our training today? This is a question we love to ask after a training session. It not only reinforces our beliefs in what we taught, but we also learn what your employees didn’t know yet and need to know to be top-rated employees.
It is vital to your company and your community to have top-rated employees because they are responsible for sharing healthy attitudes that create a happy sense of belonging in your residents. Their attitude, every day, can affect a resident and make their day a happy one or a dejected one. It is also true that your food servers are ambassadors to family and friend guests in the dining room.
Don’t you want your employees, confident in their education, to show their loving, caring ways that shine through in their work? We call it marrying hospitality and healthcare to daily work days. And we call it employees who love to come to work.
Kind Dining® delivers our unique 9-module comprehensive dining service training series for food servers, ancillary staff serving meals, full-time and part-time direct-care workers, and managers.
B♥ Kind Tip: Your employees are more confident as lifelong learners.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Resident Centered Dining Service, Training
“My daughter tells me it is hard to make new friends,” Coleen told Kelly. They were having lunch after a long stretch of being too busy to get away. “She’s at college, the first time away from home. I almost laughed at her because I know how hard it is when you get older like our residents coming into our senior community when they don’t know a soul here.
“I know what that is like since I moved halfway across the country just before I came to work here. From my experience, I instinctively knew how to show extra care and attention, especially when serving someone who comes into the dining room without a friend.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Kelly replied. I was born and raised in this county and have always lived here. I would never have thought of that. I guess the training courses that teach us about building relationships with the elders and being aware of any resident who seems to be lonely are definitely for me.
“I behave as the training suggests because I enjoy talking with our residents. Now, I am content to know the cause of the loneliness that overcomes some of our elders. Those are some of the reasons, anyway. I know there is more to it. So many residents have outlived many of their friends and family.”
Coleen continued. “We improve their lives by adding intentional acts of kindness and awareness of their problems. Last week, I took Mary B. to the big table and introduced her to the group that usually sits there. They welcomed her with open arms. I knew they would. She’s been smiling ever since.”
Kind Dining® knows an educated staff that serves meals and cares about the residents in the community where they work, which is your company’s golden asset.
It’s vital that residents feel at home and know their neighbors, though many elders are too shy to meet new people on their own. The servers in the community are a major part of their contentment, helping them to feel secure and opening the way to happiness.
Kind Dining ® training modules teach your employees to understand the aging process, how your serving staff can make a difference, and how to protect the dignity of your senior population.
Encourage your serving team to notice opportunities to improve the dining experience around them. Call to arrange a schedule of training modules that fit into your employees’ working schedules.
B♥ Kind Tip: You know that your food serving team is your company’s best asset!
