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 lattes. This is the generation that has traveled the world and enjoyed cruise ship vacations. They have been introduced to the cuisines of foreign countries and conditioned their taste buds. Benefits learned from spas in the mountains and spas in the valleys relieve stress and detox their bodies. Seniors have learned to appreciate drinking fresh fruit-flavored water. Now as many are moving into senior living communities, they are looking for these offerings in the dining rooms before making any decision on which one will be their home. Some of these higher-end communities have reported hiring 3-star chefs because the community dining room is a competitive advantage.
Senior living communities that are not luxury based have found their dining room meals improved tremendously by utilizing local farmers’ markets for fresh supplies at equal cost-effective ways. Chefs plan menus and introduce healthy foods to tempt the taste buds as well as rely on long-time favorite stand-bys. Herb gardens planted outside the kitchen stoop keep costs down while keeping quality and flavor up. The new, positive culinary frontier can be adapted into the present budget.
Kind Dining® coaching encourages the food serving staff to work as a team with the kitchen food preparers generating a smooth, pleasant mealtime for residents and their guests. While the chef adopts seasonal options to create nutritionally balanced meals their teammate-food servers greet seniors with a cheerful welcome and guide them to table-friendly diners if they enter the dining room alone. While the culinary team is thoughtfully ordering regional foods and creating specialty menus, paying attention to gluten-free, heart-healthy, and pureed and textured foods, again their food serving team will recite menus and options with knowledge and familiarity, answering any questions the diners may have.
The New Year is the perfect time to make the improvements needed in your kitchen and dining room food preparing and serving staff. Upgrade their skills and allow your food serving team to become the team revered by others for their community dining room finesse. Kind Dining® helps to heal broken relationships and supports harmony, communication, and team-building! When your food preparers and food servers perform their duties easily and work with their teammates, they will come to love their job, the people they serve and the company that employs them. It’s a great plan to begin a new year!
Our B♥ Kind® Tip: You are important to your company’s reputation; how meals are prepared and served MATTERS!