Blog
What is your food serving team doing about special occasion celebrations?
The story came to me about a daughter's sadness who planned to have a big celebration for her mother’s turning 80 years old in the senior living community. How disappointing, even in the midst of all the coronavirus chaos going on, that her big party plans could not...
Your Monday Morning B♥ Kind® Tip
. There is no 'I' in team! Find ways to praise co-workers at every opportunity.
B♥ Kind® Tip Get Ready Get Set Go!
Get Ready! Get Set! Go! "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." UCLA coach John Wooden
Is it time for change and celebrations?
It’s important to continue having celebrations in this time of extreme caution and stress. Have you ever been in a restaurant when the table or two over from you received a cake lit with candles and the wait staff singing Happy Birthday? Didn’t it make you and the...
Is this the new normal?
It seems like Halloween, the food serving team is dressing up in weird costumes and carrying grandma’s dust cloth. Actually it’s the attire necessary for today’s responsibility for being on the job. Face masks, gloves, and cover-ups that the surgical team wore in the...
Can robots replace your food serving team?
Already many stories have come out of our physical distancing for more than a month now. One I heard recently concerned a woman’s husband who was ill but not with the symptoms of the novel coronavirus. The husband didn’t have a cough at all, or fever, muscle pain,...
Do you ask residents to share their ideas on making mealtimes more enjoyable?
The story came to me recently about a conversation between a few friends. They were reminiscing on FaceTime about their earlier married years when they used to have themed parties on Saturday nights after settling the kids into bed for the babysitter. Now they were...
Does your food serving team receive a ‘thank you’ for using their learned skills?
The food serving team in a community sets the ambiance for each mealtime and everyone agrees that mealtimes are the most important time of the day for residents. With today’s required physical distancing, food servers are often the one human, in-the-flesh-link to the...
Is your food serving team interacting with your residents?
Serving food has always been so much more than bringing food to the table. Every person who loves being in the kitchen or has restaurant life in their blood system knows that “Bad service can ruin a good meal yet good service can save a bad one.” Even your finest...
How can you help someone overcome isolation at mealtime today?
The story came to me about a woman lamenting the loss of her friend's meeting for meals at noon. It was her big social time of the day. Special. A reason to pouf her hair and add a pretty scarf around her neck. Now she was hovering in physical distancing. All meals...
Is your food serving team committed to endure the months ahead?
A friend of a friend told me how upset he was because he couldn’t enter his mother’s assisted living community to visit her. “That’s why I moved to this area,” he said. “I visit her three times a week until today. The door was closed to me. I want to see how she is...
Are mealtimes still the focus of your resident’s day?
Kind Dining® has always stressed the importance of mealtimes in the community dining room. Now that residents have been restricted from coming into the dining room for meals it is more important than ever for food serving teams to take up the social aspect of...
Stop. Look. Listen.
The Coronavirus has changed the landscape of our lives in a matter of two weeks. A week ago I entered the hospital to visit my husband Mike after his elective back surgery. First, I was screened, temperature taken and a series of questions to answer. I was the only...
Do your food servers and dining servers know they are crucial to your community’s success?
When a chef leaves his domain in the kitchen to enter the dining room to say, “Hello, I hope you enjoyed your meal today. I created the menu with you in my mind,” he touches everyone in the dining room creating a bond between himself and the seniors. Relationships...
Do you know the importance of the dining table goes back to centuries ago?
A friend of a friend who is a food server in a senior living community in the East told me about Mary’s early experience moving into the community about five years after her husband passed away. She timidly stepped into a busy dining room for the first time, glanced...
Demonstrate extra kindness today.
It’s more than food servers being courteous to the seniors in your community dining room. It’s more than pulling out a chair or finding the best table for a particular senior to sit. It’s also about being civil, courteous to all your coworkers. It’s about lending a...
How can you make mealtimes memorable especially for guests, single and widowed seniors in your community?
The niece of an acquaintance was telling her experience of being a guest and her first dinner with a friend in a senior retirement community recently. After stating how surprisingly wonderful the food was, she mentioned the service. The server was a young college...
Do you have good leaders hidden in your food serving team?
You will find true leadership that shows a deep caring for your residents in different areas of your workplace. Someone from management that stands at the entrance to the dining room on Friday nights to greet seniors, often by name, shows a person bonded to her...
Is your turnover in food servers high?
Keep in mind that if you have residents in your senior living community, you need a food serving team to serve them. While this sounds elementary, consider that you want skilled, knowledgeable, talented, considerate, food servers that exude a pleasant attitude. Do you...
Does your administration support your food serving team?
An acquaintance recently told me about her teacher friend who was about to quit her position as a third-grade teacher. She could endure the ogre of a principal in the small school no longer. The woman caused friction between the other teachers and completely upset the...
Marketing plans? Do you keep your community dining room in mind?
Robert opened a bistro in a small town expecting people to flock in just because his place was new. Just in case that didn’t happen, he had a plan to use coupons, specials, and discounts to get people to try his menus. He knew once they came they would return. He was...
Is your senior living community dining room ready for the new decade?
The beginning of a new year and a new decade is the perfect time to take stock and decide what new training needs to be considered to make your senior living community dining room better. Take note of where your food preparers and your food servers need new...
Do your food preparers and food servers work as a team?
Welcome news is being spread around that culinary schools such as Johnson & Wales and the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) have redesigned the curriculum to focus on teaching cooking for the senior population. The baby boomers enjoy dining on sushi and drinking...
Is your retirement community looking forward?
January is a great time to think about looking forward. Starting a new year gives many seniors the idea of starting over . . . by changing their lifestyle. They will be casting aside the dread of aging by embracing it as a time to bring the dreams of their youth to...
Are seniors starting over seeking your community as their home base?
Starting a new year brings starting over to mind. There are a zillion stories out there about starting over. Surprisingly many are stories from people in their 40s leaving higher paying positions in what they consider toxic environments to find employment in a...
What is this about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?
A friend mentioned that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas story has been accused of exposing the young stag to bullying. She claimed that his dad Donner, made fun of his red nose and shunned him. Furthermore the school coach said, “From now on, gang, we won’t...
Does the warmth of your holiday table bring residents together?
A friend said the winter holiday season was a favorite of hers because it was the only time of year when extended family came to visit when she was a child. The adults gathered around the dining room table laden with all the holiday foods that were never seen during...
Do your residents ever see the chef in your community dining room?
My friend’s brother returned home to the States after 50 years of living abroad. “Nearly all of those years were in Puerto Rico where he owned a very successful business. Now his health was failing and he yearned for the land of his youth. Our family was a...
Do you remember the first compliment you received?
Remember when you were a little kid going to school and the teacher responded to your raised hand when you knew the answer? A friend was telling me about her memory. “I was learning to read in first grade. I raised my hand to read a sentence and my teacher, Mrs. Smith...
Does your dining room make people want to live in your community?
My friend Alice told me about meeting with a long-time friend recently. Knowing my Kind Dining® beliefs and dedication to senior retirement communities, she thought of me as the conversation unfolded. “My girlfriend brought me up to date on the small hotel business...
Quotes About the Importance of the Dining Room
Speaking of importance in a dining room… “I stopped trying to chase the perfect place to be, and realized the perfect place is with your loved ones and your closest friends, around the dinner table, over a good meal, talking about the past year and the year to come...
Do Your Food Servers Meet Residents’ Expectations?
Autumn turns a chef’s ideas to serving comforting foods to your community residents gathering around the traditional table of warmth and congeniality. It’s a time for coming in out of the cold, looking forward to sharing a meal and conversation that warms your heart...
Does Thanksgiving Day bring fond memories to your food servers?
“As soon as the trees begin to turn into a glorious canvas of autumn colors, I begin to think of Thanksgiving Day. I mean this year’s Thanksgiving Day to come, based on all the previous ones I remember. I love that Day and think it is my favorite holiday of the year...
Do Your Food Servers Give Individual Attention?
When a friend who taught occupational therapy suffered a stroke and wound up in a nursing home for permanent and long term care, she learned a new way to look at what she had been teaching for many years. As her progress restored her to a normal life again she wrote...
Do You Have Bullies in Your Community?
My friend told me “I admit that I was eavesdropping in a restaurant when I heard the word ‘bullying’ mentioned. Expecting to hear a story about kids in school I was quite surprised when they were talking about a senior community not too far away. Claiming territory in...
Do Your Servers Exude Hospitality?
A writer friend, who enjoys traveling solo, says she prefers staying at B & B style inns rather than hotels when she goes to Great Britain. There is such a huge difference even though hotels also extend courtesy and consideration. She said, “It is usually like...
Do Your Food Servers Know the Hospitality Skills to Help Personalize the Dining Hour?
Teenagers looking for jobs during the summer and school vacation times often apply at retirement communities. One in particular was a boy working in the kitchen. When he started, he had no other thoughts than earning money toward future education. His entire attitude...
Do you have days when nothing goes right?
There are days when any commercial kitchen can run into problems. Electrical systems shut down for some unknown reason, the fresh vegetable supply didn’t come in, the chef took ill, the sous chef has poison ivy, and so on. Can those problems be fixed? A back-up...
Welcome New Residents with Caring and Consideration
I often write about welcoming new residents that have chosen your community for the next chapter of their lives, which may be a fresh beginning for them. Your dining room is an important place for them to meet friends by sharing a meal and listening to their stories....
Food Serving Experience
Ambiance in the dining room is vital to success in the community. That means a food serving staff working together, cheerfully, enjoying the work they do. Dining seniors will respond in kind to that attitude if they see it every mealtime. Forward-thinking providers...
Does a bully ruin your community dining room?
A friend told me about her friend Anne starting a new job as a food server in a senior living community. She ran smack into a bully that pulled gloom down over everyone in the dining room. It was a sad place to be. She boldly criticized every other food server trying...
Leading the Troops
Seniors telling their stories is an important part of who they are as they evolve into their elder years. I heard a WWII veteran tell his story on NPR’s StoryCorp. He was part of a platoon who had to come up with ideas on deception; how to fool the enemy into...
Since 1994, the organization has supported its clients by enhancing the dining experience and ensuring the nutritional care of residents.
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