Create a Community of Belonging
Transforming mealtimes to energize your community toward hospitality and kindness is not an event, it’s a relationship journey.
What is Kind Dining®
Kind Dining® is a proven comprehensive training and marketing tool.
It is a cost-effective practical, one-of-a-kind curriculum that offers immediate skill building and represents our Kind Dining brand of hospitality.
We offer a common sense and often overlooked perspective that every meal is an opportunity for residents to affirm they made the right decision to live in your community. Your trained staff will feel more valued and respected by you for the individuals they are.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, clients share with me that there has never been a more important time to invest in training that:
- Counters the epidemic of loneliness and isolation we face.
- Redefines the dining experience in ways that make a difference.
- Teaches or refreshes all staff in civil behaviors and courtesy.
- Embraces a Servant Leadership approach to ethically manage in the dining environment and beyond.
Attract Residents, Retain Staff & Create a Community of Belonging
Click on each image to learn how this benefits you
Our Approach
Kindness and Generosity
Our Process
Retain staff and Attract Residents
Our Unique Framework
Strengthen Teamwork
Kindness and Generosity
We provide managers with consistent education and training tools that help improve employee commitment to your organization. It starts in the dining room.
We teach the skills and competencies employees need to thrive in a changing and challenging environment.
Our approach is different.
We help people see new opportunities around them to get along better, find a new sense of purpose, and have relationship success personally and professionally.
It matters how we think and behave in the dining room.
When staff see how easy it is to be successful, they put their full heart into their work!
When you have staff who are content with these qualities, they become eager to learn and share smarter ways of working.
You have a winning team that is committed to your success as well as their own!
Our principles and best practices teach:
Knowledge: Learners need to KNOW in order to perform well.
Skills: Learners need to be able to DO to succeed.
Attitudes: Learners need to believe, feel, or value in order to succeed.
Continuous Improvement
Kind Dining® is a turnkey, 9-module training series that helps organizations set dining service standards everyone understands and performs.
This training and marketing tool teaches employees how to enhance the dining experience for themselves and:
√ Optimize the residents’ dining experience, leading to their improved nutritional health and wellbeing
√ Grow personally and professionally while on the job
√ Commit and contribute to creating a more civil work environment
Modules offer immediate skill building. Each participant works through their interactive handbook containing key content that aligns with your organization’s mission and values.
Our unique approach produces confidence in your team members:
√ Affirming your trust in them
√ Aligning all staff with the goals of your organization
√ Accepting responsibility for their behavior, and willingness to improve
Modules were designed to build on each other and not sold separately. Repeating modules has been shown to improve performance.
Energize employees, Build productivity, Increase job satisfaction, Strengthen teamwork
If you proactively ask for their help, provide the tools, and give your staff the opportunity to grow their professional skills, that your residents value. You will achieve a more civil community and a competitive advantage.
Kind Dining® offers an affordable and effective way to accomplish that.
How?
We work you through the process that leads to establishing and communicating service standards, in fact, we built them into the training.
Kind Dining®’s Primary Outcome: Learners think and act differently!
They work better together and consciously counter the epidemic of loneliness, isolation, and feelings of not belonging we are facing today.
√ Focus shifts to put the resident’s needs first
√ Service quality becomes consistent in every dining area
√ Staff develop a broader perspective of their work
√ Staff realize greater sense of purpose and stay longer.
√ Staff understand challenges in respective departments
√ Staff learn how to support one another.
Moving Toward Hospitality in All Ways
It’s easy to imagine that civility, service, and hospitality training is taking place in another department, or that your staff instinctively knows how to treat your residents and one another with common good manners and good sense.
Training vs Trying
One of the causes of incivility and poor hospitality is the wrong interpersonal behaviors are being reinforced.
People aren’t coming to work with the relationship skills that improve people’s lives but can learn.
What are you doing to keep your staff members’ skills and knowledge at the level needed to create effective relationships?
A primary goal of management is to provide training so employees feel they belong in your organization. This is why people stay.
Your employees need to:
√ Feel good about themselves
√ Understand the importance of their position
√ Deal with their misconceptions and attitudes that need adjustment
√ Know your service standards
√ Apply the foundational building blocks to provide outstanding service
We’ve done the work for you…
Module 1: Can we make a house a HOME? lays the foundation of valuing the significance of the dining experience, the work of each server, and discovering the best path to making it more meaningful and enjoyable for everyone.
We invite students to participate, interact, be empowered, and be challenged to help find workable solutions that break down barriers to their success, challenge the status quo, and gain new insights and skills to improve the community spirit of working and living together in this community.
As a participant in this module, you will:
* Examine the science and psychology of hospitality. Yes, really!
* Explore how to be more attentive to and connect in our relationship with residents and their dining
experience
* Translate, and get behind a company’s mission statement and how it relates to dining and you
* Analyze a list of what gets in your way to be more successful in your job.
Module 2: WHO are you Serving? sets out to broaden an understanding of the aging process, create deeper relationships, and promote person-centered hospitality.
We practice exercises around the dining setting that create empathy and compassion for the aging process community-wide.
We discuss the senior care marketplace, the growing demographics of aging adults, and the advantages of learning skills to improve communications with peers and the people in their care.
As a participant in this module, you will:
* Examine our aging population and its impact on you
* Explore some general stages of aging and quality of life
* Be able to appreciate the lives of older people
* Learn how we contribute to other’s dignity & satisfaction with Whole Care
* Be attentive to the dining experience as it becomes more personal
* Practice communicating in a way that nourishes this community
Module 3: What do YOU bring to the Table? offers even more extended communication training.
We ask learners to look in the mirror and discuss their own strengths by way of a self-assessment.
We challenge them to learn new skills and behaviors to be significant in their work.
As a participant in this module, you will:
* Recall and relate to using a “mirror” in different ways
* Examine teamwork skills and why they matter (to us!)
* Discover how to become more understood
* Explore what characteristics delight our residents
* Be attentive to how to hear people better
Module 4: Making it Personal presents the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to ensure that the flow of the meal meets resident’s expectations.
Pre-service planning to protect the integrity of the product (meal served) is a critical element that no server is born knowing.
At all levels of dining care, we focus on teaching an appreciation of this particular planning and how getting it right shows a special appreciation for the residents and one another.
As a participant in this module, you will:
* Explore why checklists are important.
* Check your own appearance and attitude against a list of personal readiness items
* Practice skills in positively presenting the menu to residents
* Identify set-up requirements based on your menu.
* Be attentive to improve skills in meeting and greeting residents and their guests
Module 5: The Symphony of Service orchestrates how the server sets the ambiance through their knowledge, skills and serving actions individually and as a team.
They learn to appreciate the control they do have to set the atmosphere in how professionally they serve the meal and apply best practices for service and infection control.
As a participant in this module, you will:
* Describe the proper flow of the meal.
* Review the process of taking an order
* Explore three levels of care.
* Recognize visual cues in reading the table.
* Apply Best Practices for service and Infection Control
Module 6: If I Only Had a Heart embraces the importance of dining as a feature element to the success of the community.
We teach relational skills. In fun, but challenging exercises, servers practice the fundamentals of politeness and courtesy.
Developing rapport is essential to any excellent person-centered hospitality culture and is especially important in serving older adults living in senior living communities.
As a participant in the If I only had a Heart module, you will:
* Be able to demonstrate kindness and friendliness to others throughout the meal
* Apply courtesy words and phrases to use every day, and especially in difficult situations.
* Acquire some chit chat skills often needed to start and end conversations.
* Become skilled in recognizing–and responding–to our residents and co-worker’s emotional state and needs.
* Identify the core values that drive you to go the extra mile.
Module 7: Emotion Control addresses two of the areas most requested by the staff:
How to deal with complaints (when situations go wrong) and how to manage our own emotions around the loss of a resident we have served.
As a participant in the Emotion Control module, you will:
* Examine new insights in how to respond to others’ emotions
* Review and practice the L.E.A.R.N. communication tool, learned in Module 3, which helps us through difficult or stressful moments
* Explore the art of making a sincere apology • Use new skills when we are in a sensitive moment of handling grief and loss
Module 8: Don’t Touch That! boldly centers on skills necessary to practice food safety, infection control and protect residents from food-borne illness.
Our older adult population is at higher risk of getting sick from poor food handling and poor personal hygiene habits.
The session arms food servers with vital skills to reduce the spread of germs, be they Norovirus or Coronavirus, providing serving staff with greater confidence to help them view their role more seriously and professionally.
As a participant in the Don’t Touch That! module, you will:
* Explore common foodborne illnesses and the keys to preventing their spread.
* Breakdown the essential principles for time and temperature control
* Improve and maintain personal health and hygiene to ensure food safety.
* Handle foods, plates, glassware, and utensils to avoid cross-contamination.
Module 9: Polishing Service challenges staff to continually look for areas to improve the living and working environment for residents and staff.
Skills focus on what to look for and how to communicate with team members, and managers so that the business and environment continue to thrive.
As a participant in the Polishing Service module, you will:
* Explore more about the different types of people you work with
* Explore a new way to communicate and cooperate to support one another within a team, and across teams.
* Take initiative to make improvements by personally changing things you can control.
* Participate in the actions your management is taking to transform dining
“Adding a Servant Leadership focused structure to dining can only add to the overall dining satisfaction.”
Dr. Christian A. Mason
FACHCA, CALA, CNHA, DBA President and CEO, Senior Housing Managers, LLC
“It will be difficult to suggest any improvements as the Kind Dining training was very current and inclusive. This was one of the best asynchronous courses I have taken (and I have taken a lot). The training is extremely engaging and interactive.”
Janelle Wallace, Education Manager
The Bethany Group, Camrose, Alberta CA
Our Unique Training Approach
We know what it takes to redefine your dining experience and retain the current and next generation of employees.
At Kind Dining® we will help you devise an ongoing strategy beyond your initial training to reinforce and continue this learning for all staff both current and soon-to-be hired.
Using methods selected in concert with administrators, Kind Dining® helps your team train in the context of the organization, including specific issues, challenges, and goals as training components are realized and discussed.
Kind Dining® is ready to implement today in an eLearning format.
The transforming experience of Kind Dining presents new insights, a change of mindset, and new behavior.
Click on each image to learn how this benefits you!
The Foundations of Great Service
The Nuts and Bolts of Great Service
Maintaining Great Service
How long does it take?
It takes approximately 8 hours to complete the 9-module series.
The series can easily be completed in 3 weeks, taking 3 courses a week.
- Modules vary in length depending on the topic and feature an expert instructor.
- Learners have 60 days to access and complete the series.
The 9-module series includes:
- Interactive lectures with a specific handbook you need to download. It contains key content for each session.
- The online multiple-choice quiz and Evaluation Form, follow each module.
- Upon passing the quiz, each learner receives their Certificate of Completion.
Who Should Attend?
We are committed to helping you keep your food servers and your newly hired employees, as an educated, invested team, who together, help you create a community of belonging.
We suggest that 50% of staff from all departments who serve meals or pour beverages regularly, part-time, full-time, or on an emergency basis attend.
It’s ideal as part of the Onboarding process for people who have never served meals before in Senior Living Communities for all levels of care.
Are You Ready to Order? Let’s Do This Together!
After registration and payment, you will be contacted with an email from education@DiningRD.com
This email delivers your personal login, password, and direct link to the online course materials.
If you have not received the email within 24 hours, please check the junk folder.
Additional Order Information:
Upon receiving your login and password, you will have 60 days to complete the coursework.
Order Instructions – Group:
Please reach out to DiningRD education@DiningRD.com, if you have an interest in learning more about how we work with larger companies and offer group training.
There are no refunds after training materials have been sent. Online training is not shareable, not returnable, and not transferable.
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
Call Direct
800-544-3059