Blog

We all know that the dining room in the community is not the same as a restaurant vying for its place in popularity with the public. But we also know that a community dining room run like that popular restaurant is a place we are aiming for. To satisfy our residents,...

Mealtimes meeting the American Geriatrics Society recommendations and the latest CMS regulations are goals. Communities have been challenged with the problem of seniors changing their habits from relying on appetite stimulants or high calorie supplements to keep their...

Remember being 24 years old, going out to dinner with the person/people you wanted most to spend time with. See yourself being recognized when you were greeted at the door of the restaurant and was led to a table you favored. This was where you wanted to savor your...

Maybe when you are unhappy it is better to go out for a walk instead of feeding your unhappiness with a plate of pie a la mode. In a study conducted at Iowa State University, students were directed to walk around campus for 12 minutes and practice one of three...

Communication is the glue that holds people together creating better working environments that create happier atmospheres for residents. Kind conversations are the handiest way to have communications between co workers. Food servers are the leaders in moving forward...

When Sally helped her mother select a long term community to continue her life after selling her home, she felt it was time for a change in her own life too. She left her job on cruise ships to working in her mother’s community, primarily in the dining room.  Even...

Rebecca thinks back to ten years ago when she suffered a stroke at 52 years of age and wound up in a short term Rehab facility. In the beginning meals were brought to her room. There was a noticeable difference in the attitude of who delivered her meals. One gal...

Joe couldn’t wait to go into the world as a young man looking for the adventures that would never come to him in the small mid-western town where he grew up. He traveled the world working on cruise ships, survived his adventures, and never did return to his hometown....

A friend was reminiscing about her first job after leaving babysitting behind. It was working in a luncheonette which is a smallish neighborhood restaurant that serves home style cooking, the kind that brings comfort when you need it and even when you don’t. It was a...

A friend told me she saw where a woman had left a bakery, smiling and happy with her warm bagel smeared with cream cheese and strawberry preserves, heading for the office. When she stopped at the curb to wait for the light to turn green, she saw him. Him being a man...

The story came to me about two brothers looking for a retirement living community for their elderly mother. They knew their mom was a modern thinking woman. They also knew that age would catch up to her in time and wanted that aging to take place in a community that...

Football coaches such as Vince Lombardi become legends by bringing their team to be top winners over and over again. At the beginning of training season he would traditionally hold up a pigskin and say, “Gentlemen, this is a football” in front of the rookies and...

Linda’s mother Anna moved from her retirement community after living there for only a year. “I never really felt at home there.” She said. “This new community that Linda found made me feel like they were truly happy to have me here. I’m greeted in the dining room with...

A friend told me about Claire, a college student who was hired as a food server in a nearby assisted living community for the summer months. She said she had worked with serving food when she was hired but it wasn’t very long before her nervousness caused her to spill...

A friend’s mother-in-law, Minnie, decided on retirement living a year after her husband passed away.  On her first visit to the dining room she spotted one of those don’t even think about sitting here looks from a snooty looking woman where one chair was vacant at her...

If you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards. Many changes are taking place in the community of today. Over thirty years ago when I began my career in healthcare food service, I entered the field at the lower end. I recall feeling the sting of being...

A friend told me about an acquaintance of hers who was widowed unexpectedly. Her husband had not been ill or shown any sign of the heart seizure that took his life. She was bereft. He took care of all the finances, maintenance of the house, and other responsibilities....

Walk into many elementary school buildings these days and you’ll notice posters and banners advocating being a friend not a bully. It is best and easiest to change negative attitudes early in life, opening the minds of children to show kindness and friendliness....

A friend of mine told me of a conversation she had recently. She asked her friend what it is about her job that makes her love going to work. The friend replied, “My coworkers are happy to see me and greet me with a hearty Good Morning! What a great way to begin my...

If speaking kindly to plants helps them grow, imagine what speaking kindly to humans can do.     A friend saw this sign hanging in a winter garden and knowing how I champion the word and the act of being kind, emailed me immediately. After a generation or two of Me...

A friend of mine told me of a conversation she had recently. She asked her friend what it is about her job that makes her love going to work. The friend replied, “My coworkers are happy to see me and greet me with a hearty Good Morning! What a great way to begin my...

Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Want must be one of his most revered paintings. It shows the grandparents placing the turkey on the Thanksgiving table with the family sitting happily around it. I think so highly of it that I have used it in my presentations. It is the...

A friend of mine told me about a recent dining experience she suffered through. Her words, not mine. “We were excited, out to an upscale restaurant new to us and celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. Of course we mentioned that fact to the perky young lady that...

Every generation seems to complain about the younger generation in the way they dress, in their awful language, and especially in their lack of the good manners taught to the earlier generations. It’s true! There is a new trend begun in the last few years that shows...

It’s usually easier to train new people to the community than to update new training to those who have been doing their job their way for a length of time. That’s where Kind Dining® comes in. With skill, experience, and the new rules and regulations at hand, we will...

The lessons learned in life are often as important as the first ones we learn in school when training for a career. This happened when the state surveyor pulled me into her confidence by telling me how much better I could be in my career by embracing the changes and...

Some time ago I was explaining the importance of learning new skills for nurses during a training session of Kind Dining. One individual balked at the idea of needing to do anything different than she had always done. She was so adamant that her arms folded across her...

In a successful community dining room, every staff member needs to perform their individual part to please residents, just like each musician in an orchestra plays from his sheet music to deliver a unified audience-pleasing performance. Executive Directors tell me,...

I recall a teenage kitchen worker in one Kind Dining® class. He was looking for a job and found one in this community. His focus on just earning money changed after he noticed how the residents became personal to him. “It didn’t take long for me to realize that...

When I was in my mid 20s I was working in the wilds of Alaska at an isolated camp where 100 young adults, ages 16-23 from multiple states came together for conservation work. This was bare bones living and working! There were no luxuries or electricity! Gracious, we...

One day an instructor called me, very excited, about a community where she had been conducting Kind Dining® training sessions.“The Licensed Nurse Aides (LNAs) have been serving meals in the dining room and came to me to ask permission to buy decorative baskets for the...

A Kind Dining® instructor called to tell me of an incident showing a big result from one of her Kind Dining® training sessions. One of the servers donned an apron just to see what reaction she would get. Surprisingly a resident told her she looked like Kind Dining®...

A friend told me that without revealing her professional interest, she’s asked friends of friends that live in a retirement community what made them choose a particular place for the expected final home of their lifetime? They invariably made an overall comment about...