Blog
Would your food serving staff like to advance their skills?
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,...
Does your company and employees make the best choices?
A great way to invest is to encourage them to do their very best on the job. Let them know that you see their potential, expect them to do their best, and that your company believes in them and depends on them. Remember that complimenting good work will encourage one...
DiningRD Acquires Kind Dining
DiningRD Acquires Kind Dining I want to let you know that Kind Dining is transitioning to become part of a more significant movement to enhance relationships and the dining experience in senior living communities across the United States and Canada. Please understand...
Does your staff realize how alien your community is to a new resident?
What makes your residents want to stay in your community? Many older adults have the wrong impression of what a senior living community is like. Just because an individual moves into your community doesn’t mean he/she is happy there. It is often more difficult...
Does your staff include kindness in their every day work?
Do your food servers know the crucial role they play as they interact with residents during mealtimes? Do they know kindness is one of the skills needed to play that role successfully? Many residents and even other staff suffer from an emotional disconnect in...
Instilling civility into your food serving team makes positive, lifetime changes.
A few on the second shift food serving team gathered at a table for their dinner break. They picked up the conversation where they left off earlier about their pre-shift training session that morning. “With a little more practice, I think everyone on our team will...
Do you read the latest research on the Business of Aging Services?
Do your community supervisors continue to read research on how to secure and keep healthy employees? Do they know why it is necessary to have healthy employees and how it benefits your residents and your community? Do they know the benefits of teamwork?...
How do your employees become one of the good ones?
How do you become ‘one of the good ones’, as an employee is sometimes referred to? Many times several employees do the same work, get it done on time and never cause a problem. Yet they aren’t especially referred to as ‘one of the good ones’. ...
Do your food servers set intentions?
Think of when a toddler takes that first important step in learning to walk - setting an intention is the first vital step for your food server to be the best at their job they can be. That intention brings focus to building on the skills they already know, to further...
Do your food servers carry happy holiday spirit with them?
Do you know that holidays can bring severe, sometimes unexpected, melancholy to many seniors? Even though the pandemic is gone, it has left many elders without loved ones who passed away during that time. There is nothing a food serving staff can do to bring...
Do you lose good employees for lack of good supervisors?
“Does this new management team take care of us employees as we take care of our residents? No, I’ll answer for you. As you know, I’m unhappy and have been for the last six months since the new, upper regime moved in. I’ve brought my concerns to the bosses hoping to...
How do you see the work you do?
“How did you come to work in this assisted living community?” Maryann, who is a part-time food server on Spring Break from college, asked Helen. They formed a friendly/mentor relationship since Maryann first came to work and now share a table during their lunchtime....
Would you recommend your community to your job-hunting friends?
Can you honestly recommend your assisted living community to friends who are looking for a job? If you know they are naturally thoughtful, caring, and considerate, and would look forward to training and education sessions to hone their skills, would you alert them to...
Do you pay attention to your residents’ suggestions?
Do your residents ever make a complaint or suggest the food service? Do you take the time to listen? Or do you try to change their mind before they even finish saying what they have on their mind? It costs absolutely nothing to pause, stop what you are doing, look...
Does your food serving team know about “soft skills”?
The two women were walking down the hallway heading towards the kitchen to begin their work shift at an independent living community. They just finished a segment of the training session and were discussing their opinions. “First of all,” the older one said, “I never...
Does your food serving team have a high EQ?
Do you know what the most successful companies look for in an applicant when hiring? They seek a person with the combination of skills that enable a person to learn, relearn, and relearn again. We know how rapidly changes are happening in our long-term care...
Do your employees stay with your community?
A retired friend told me recently how she made an excellent living in the old days, by being a waitperson during the years of raising a family. “I was good at it. My aunt trained me,” she said. “I was pleasant and paid close attention to my customers’ tables without...
Is your community aware of the new trends in food 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...
Are your employees familiar with experiential training?
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...
Do your menus reflect a food serving team that cares?
"When my husband and I decided it was time to move to a senior living community, the first thing I said was, 'I'm going to miss going out to restaurants to dine.' Mrs. Long was talking with her friend about her and her husband's plans. "As seniors, after struggling...
Does your food serving team see through the eyes of your residents?
Is this a good time to look at your food service through the eyes of your customers as top-notch restaurateurs do? Do you realize that your residents yearn for the same quality of food and service that their favorite restaurants gave them? Those are the restaurants,...
Do your food servers encourage new residents?
Many seniors will decide to leave their present home and make their new and final home in a senior or an assisted living community. This is a lifetime decision and not one that is made lightly. When keeping this in mind, your food servers have the power to...
Are your food servers aware of the emotions of starting over for residents?
Starting over. Your new residents are starting over, sometimes after living in the same house for 50 or 60 years. They had to downsize, give away, donate, or throw away their lifetime of brick a brac, and souvenirs. Art treasures and wall hangings must go. There is no...
Do your employees listen when residents in the community share their stories?
Everyone has a story. Ending an old year and beginning a new one brings out the stories that residents find satisfying to tell. The savvy food server gives the best gift and builds a good relationship when he/she listens intently to what the resident wants to share....
Do you have any residents in your community that are lonely?
Imagine sitting in your room in a senior retirement living community. You have survived the loneliness of isolation from the Covid-19 pandemic, but now it is over. Yet you are still lonely because you moved into this caring community just before the pandemic started,...
Do your employees practice kindness as a way of life?
“Well, now that you have been on the job, let’s see...6 months, what do you think?” Laura asked Susan, the newcomer to the senior living community food service team. “Do you have an hour? I have lots to say for an answer.” Susan replied in a joking manner. “I’m...
Do you know a resident’s toughest challenge today?
What are the toughest problems older adults face in their communities today? It isn’t the lack of a swimming pool or a 5-star restaurant. Loneliness and isolation are at the top of the list. They are two challenges that became prevalent during the coronavirus pandemic...
Does your staff help new residents feel at home?
I am delighted when friends of mine, knowing my passion for my work, bring personal stories and feedback to me from the retirement and assisted living industry. This is another recent one that reinforces the importance of my beliefs in the training curriculum I’ve...
Is thoughtfulness part of your serving staff’s daily routine?
Moving into a new home can be strange and difficult for anyone at any time. Making your last move into a senior living community, knowing it is the last time you will change your residence, can be unsettling. This change in a new resident’s life can be scary,...
Do your coworkers extend the hand of friendship to one another?
Many friendships are formed and carried through long periods over the lunch/dinner table. ‘Let’s meet for lunch’ is a common phrase that indicates wanting to spend some time with a friend. It’s nice to have lunch served to you but it’s the friendship that is the...
Do your coworkers form friendships with residents?
After an exchange of comments about friendships in today’s world, this true story came to me: “UPS in my neck of the woods, otherwise called a neighborhood, many of us have formed an unusual friendship . . with the UPS driver! He is so friendly, considerate,...
Is your staff aware of the importance of social interaction?
Joyce was talking on the phone with her long-time and long-distance friend David. He lives in the northeast, and she lives in the southeast in the same town as his mother. They grew up together, and though they married and had lived far apart, they always...
Does your staff know socializing tends to improve a senior’s health?
Healthy people who enjoy living solo know when it is time to be social and mix with friends. Living in a senior living community makes it easy. All a resident needs to do is step outside their apartment home and head for the dining room or to a planned activity event....
Does your staff notice lonely residents in your community?
“Whenever I am filling out forms and asked if I live alone, I always fill in the blank space with ‘Yes’, and somewhere near it, I write ‘by choice’. The form taker always asks what I mean. I explain that I like to be alone. It is solitude after years of too many...
Does your staff notice any residents feeling lonely in your community?
There are no reasons to be lonely when you live in an Independent or Assisted Living community. Yet many residents have become lonely despite being closely surrounded by others in their age range and various life-enrichment activities to appeal to their interests....
Does your food serving team feel they belong in your organization?
“I know many people, women in particular, will stay home with a salad in front of them rather than eat in a restaurant alone. I am not one of those people. I love it because I hear the best stories by listening in on what is being said around me.” A writer friend...
Do your food servers treat every resident the same?
Some of the best information comes to me from friends overhearing conversations at lunchtime in restaurants. This conversation came to me from a friend: “When are they going to understand that I am not my grandmother? I am their grandmother. I am different and...
Do your employees carry a sense of belonging?
The human emotion of that “sense of belonging” does not fade away after graduating high school, raising a family, and/or fulfilling a career. It remains with us as long as we breathe. As many seniors choose to shed household ownership responsibilities to live in a...
Do your food servers and caregivers think of their work as a calling?
Assisted Living and Long Term Care communities may have different regulations than Senior Independent Living communities but many similar responsibilities make one community stand out from its neighbor. It’s a time when those regulations and also policies are updated...
Do your LTC employees stumble along, learning from mistakes made?
“While I stand in line to buy a cup of coffee at a ridiculous price to drink while I run errands, I wonder why I do these dumb things. I could easily have made a whole pot at home.” This woman’s story came to me. “You may know that I work in an assisted living...
Does your food serving team bring holiday cheer along with the meals?
It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, Little Women, and Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer are a few from a long list of stories of Christmas where kindness wins the day. Winter Holidays, no matter which one you celebrate, are a time for...
What do your food servers see during the Holidays?
Close your eyes, think of the Winter Holidays coming up, and what do you see? Perhaps a Christmas tree in the background, hear Christmas carols being sung, but you ‘see’ family and friends gathered around a festive dinner table, no matter which holiday you celebrate....
Since 1994, the organization has supported its clients by enhancing the dining experience and ensuring the nutritional care of residents.
Learn more at www.DiningRD.com