Your food serving team is the most powerful segment of the senior care community! Their work responsibility begins long before the salad is washed or onion is tossed into a pot. Your registered dietitian might be busy researching and choosing foods for individuals who need particular attention to what they can and cannot eat. They are designing meals for residents recovering from illness or physical disability for added nutrition selected for healing. Dietitians and other Nutrition Professionals are very passionate about food. They work closely with your Chef and Food and Dining Service Directors.

Menu planning to satisfy the many different palates and tastes and preferences of your residents; finding sources for fresh vegetables and fruits, the best meat suppliers, and other foods get the chef’s attention before even thinking about firing up the stove or filling a pot with water. Chefs are very passionate about food. They also work closely with the other chefs and cooks in the kitchen.

Food preps do the chopping, slicing, dicing, and preparing foods to ready them for the chefs. They need to be dexterous, energetic, and stress-free. They are very passionate about food and often are there to gain experience too, hopefully, become a chef one day.

Assistants and helpers fill in other necessary jobs in the kitchen. The best are reliable, efficient, and skilled at maintenance. They are also passionate about food. It is why they choose to work in the kitchen. By now you know this is a unique team of workers that ready the food for the servers to deliver to residents either in the café, dining room, or their private quarters at least three times a day. Since culture change requirements suggest keeping the kitchen open, the kitchen must be manned at all times.

All of these people are highly skilled. When the results of their efforts are favorable, word spreads and the community will attain a high occupancy. The quality of food and its presentation often is the only promising difference when a potential resident is searching for the right place to call home.

With a top team preparing meals and snacks for your residents, you want to have highly skilled food servers from all departments delivering these wonderful meals. Your food servers are the bridge not just from the kitchen, but from the community to the residents. It’s vital they use their developed skills to gain trust, open communication and build relationships.

Kind Dining♥ training sessions are now available online and on-demand using training modules that are divided into 3 sections. The Foundation of Service, (1-3), the Nuts & Bolts of Service, (4-6), and Polishing Service (7-9). The series takes approximately 8 hours to complete.  The curriculum has recently been approved for 11 hours of credit (CEU), including 1 for Ethics, from the Commission on Dietetic Registration. Allow yourself or your wait staff to become passionate about serving food that was prepared in a kitchen full of people passionate about food.

Be♥ Kind Tip: Allow your wait staff to become passionate about their work.