Your world has been dominated by shifts and progressions, forcing the evolution of your operations. So how can you keep up?
After months of surveys, conversations, trainings, and research, we’ve identified three hospitality foodservice trends to help you rise above.
You’ll learn:
With warm weather quickly approaching, so is the return of outside dining. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing restaurants to get creative, patio dining became a necessity to keep businesses open and maintain the social distancing requirements. Enjoying beautiful breezes and outdoor views during meals was a way for many to have a sense of normalcy during the pandemic. This new fix for many restaurants will now be a staple moving forward in the future.
Many restaurants that embraced patio seating will be looking to expand this area for the upcoming season and even into the future. With the investment made into quality patio furniture and renovations to these areas, there is a desire to maintain this investment and keep these dining options available. Some restaurants removed a portion of their interior dining as a way to expand patio options. These renovations have made patio and outdoor seating essential for their business operations for the long-term.
More than just seats and tables were purchased for outdoor seating options. Creating an inviting atmosphere of lighting, partitions, and even plants were purchased to accent the patio and bring the inside atmosphere outdoors. This type of transition is designed for long-term changes, expecting guests to enjoy this atmosphere even after the pandemic is gone. These new dining areas are new and vibrant, attracting diners to continue the experience and appreciate their surroundings.
Although the pandemic appears to be slowing down, the warm weather and spring sports seasons will bring diners out of their homes, looking for environments that give them the dining option while doing so safely. Keeping these distance requirements in mind, restaurants across the country are prepared for COVID-19 spikes that may happen and keeping their diners safe while eating. Many diners are still conscious of distance and will continue to have reservations about close seating moving forward. Patio seating allows these diners to be comfortable and keep staff members safe at the same time.
Privacy on the patio is not something found prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Even if diners are not overly concerned with social distancing, some restaurants have tables on the patio set up so that they can enjoy a private outdoor meal with their family or friends.
Many of these diners who have embraced patio seating at these restaurants last year were pet owners who found this dining option to be accommodating to their furry family members when they went out. Instead of being forced to take-out options, many restaurants allow pets to sit with their family while dining outdoors. For this reason, many pet owners were able to be flexible with running errands and getting outdoors with their pets. This flexibility has allowed many restaurants to expand their customer base in their area, targeting customers who otherwise would look past their restaurant for other dining options.
While some restaurants offered live music to their guests on the inside, they decided to take a chance and move the music to the patio where guests were dining. These restaurants were able to attract other customers nearby looking to grab a bite to eat and catch some music with their meal. Allowing guests to have this option during the pandemic gave further ground to the outdoor patio, and these stages that were designed for these patios are ready for the upcoming season.
The last piece of the puzzle is to make sure service is easy and efficient. With mobile carts and serving stations that can be moved throughout outside seating areas, operators can set up points-of-service that make things easier for staff. At the end of the day, this makes the experience better for guests.
Lakeside has a wide range of serving solutions that can help restaurants prepare for the resurgence of outdoor dining.
Foodservice in a senior care community or nursing home can be a tricky balance. On one hand, you have to make sure meals are safe and nutritious for residents. On the other hand, you have to empower residents to make decisions on their own. In reality, these two things don’t have to be in opposition to one another.
According to the Pioneer Network’s New Dining Practice Standards, food and dining requirements are core components of quality of life and care in senior care communities. Let’s go through three important phrases from their findings and see why.
STATEMENT 1: Choice of food has a tremendous impact on quality of life.
In fact, some say it actually defines it. Food can provide many amazing benefits, and those positive attributes begin with choices. Ask a few simple questions. What does the resident want? For example, how did they do things before moving in, and how can those things be replicated within the community’s foodservice program? What to eat, when to eat, where to eat, and with whom are all important things to determine. Provide real choice, not token choices like the difference between hot and cold cereal.
STATEMENT 2: We do not assume that just because residents may not be able to make a choice in some parts of their lives, they cannot make choices related to dining.
When both residents and staff are well-educated on matters of choice, when staff are trained to look for the right things, and when residents have consistent relationships with staff members who can advocate for them, even residents with impaired decision-making capabilities, can experience choice as it relates to dining. Studies show that cognitive impairment does not impact choice-making, and people with mild to moderate cognitive impairment can still provide input on food choice and successfully and make many of those decisions.
STATEMENT 3: Mealtime dining studies provide evidence that enabling residents to choose what they want to eat at mealtime does not result in negative nutritional outcomes.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When residents have choice at mealtimes, it actually enhances the nutritional impact of meals. Even more important, it increases not just resident satisfaction, but also the satisfaction of staff, caregivers, and family members.
Lakeside is here to help improve your Senior Care Dining operations with various product solutions! The Suzy Q cart is the ideal solution for providing a person-centered dining environment for senior care communities!
There are several key challenges senior care foodservice directors face. Some of these challenges are day-to-day in their nature, while others are more macro, focusing on the bigger picture. Let’s run through a few of these challenges and solutions.
BUDGETS
Tight budgets are common. In fact, directors tend to have about 10 dollars to feed a resident three meals and two snacks per day. If you’re in senior care or nursing home foodservice, you know it’s important to master the skill of doing a lot with a little.
COLD FOOD
Whether you’re transporting food from the kitchen to the dining room or even directly to a resident’s bedside, maintaining proper food temperature is always a struggle in senior care foodservice.
HIGH FOOD WASTE
We waste a lot of food. In fact, studies show as much as 50 percent of the world’s food supply is wasted. In senior care foodservice, this is also an issue. From residents who throw away food they were served but didn’t want to discarding the cold dishes mentioned above, food waste is the same as wasting money.
POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE
Meal times are some of the most enjoyable for senior care community residents. Staff should recognize this, and provide the type of service that makes residents happy.
LACK OF TEAMWORK
When staff communicate with one another, it’s easier to pinpoint potential issues in foodservice. Setting up a culture of sharing is a great way to combat this.
HIGH STAFF TURNOVER
These last three are all related. A disjointed team that provides poor service will most often be a staff that sees high turnover. Likewise, high turnover can lead to a lack of teamwork and poor service. Everything staffing-related is interconnected.
Meal delivery can make all the difference.
There are essentially two common ways to provide meal service. The first is with trays. Trays are very institutionalized. We don’t eat on a tray in our own homes, so using them in a senior care community seems a bit out-of-touch. Senior care residences are not intended for acute care, where trays are acceptable. Senior care residences are homes where people live.
The second mode is pre-plating. Similar to a restaurant, the plating is completed in the back-of-the-house with lists and tickets. Staff run plates back and forth from the kitchen and the dining room, making this what we call the “throw and go” method
The best way to deliver food is with mobile meal service.
Mobile meal delivery carts allow operators to bring fresh options and meal choice directly to the table or to a resident’s room. This way is the future of senior care dining as more and more directors realize the benefits.
Mobile meal delivery can eliminate cold food and food waste by allowing residents to hand-select what they want for dinner. It promotes interaction with staff and builds a sense of connection and teamwork. And, they’re certainly great for an operation’s bottom line.
Lakeside is here to help you improve your senior care dining experience. The Suzy Q cart is the ideal solution for providing a person-centered dining environment for senior care communities!
As the vaccination distribution begins to ramp up, you’re looking towards reopening your restaurant or foodservice business. However, you want to do so safely, and you know that Americans will always look at safety differently in the wake of COVID-19. This makes it an ideal time to create a plan for additional safety along with a list of the equipment and supplies you’re going to need to reopen with safety as your main focus.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Whether you’re offering up hot or cold items, these grab-and-go kiosks keep cold items cold and hot food hot. There are several styles and sizes to choose from. You can select a kiosk that comes with shelves above the main heating and cooling section for items that don’t need climate control, such as chips, pretzels, or fresh fruit. These shelves can also increase impulse purchases as the customer grabs a bag of chips to go with their cold soda or hot sandwich. You can even have your company name or logo printed on the side.
Similar to the grab-and-go kiosks, these mobile food carts make it easy for you to offer both hot and cold food offerings except they have wheels to move it where it’ll attract the most customers. You can choose among a variety of laminate colors to complement your company logo. The mobile food carts can include custom graphics to use as an advertising source. The cabinets open easily to making cleaning or draining melted ice a snap. A shelf at the end of the cart is a great location for napkins, condiment packets, or plastic cutlery.
Buying individual packages of condiments is too expensive unless you’re offering to-go only options. Condiment dispensers are easier to clean than leaving ketchup or mayonnaise jars out for customers to use. You can easily fill the condiment dispenser and get back to the work you need to do. With dispensers, you can provide more condiment choices and more available products, so you don’t spend a lot of time restocking. Also, dispensers help with portion control. You need to create a system for keeping the parts touched by humans hand cleaned and frequently wipe them down with a sanitizer but it’s easier and safer than individual bottles.
In order to protect both your customers and employees, you need clear partitions set up around your restaurant or food service area. You might put up a partition at the point of sale and in between tables and booths. Anything that you can do to keep different people from introducing their germs to others is a positive. When planning on installing clear partitions, you need to put a plan in place for cleaning and sanitizing them. This should become as second nature as wiping down the tables and seats between customers.
Americans have become very conscious of keeping their hands clean and their surfaces sanitized. By installing either a hand sanitizer or disinfecting wipe stand in your restaurant or foodservice operation, you can provide your customer base with extra peace of mind. Making these products readily available to your clients and customers helps to minimize the transfer of germs and other contagions. These stands are easy to set up and restock with supplies.
No matter who we are or where we live, mealtimes are often some of the most enjoyable moments of the day. We get to spend time with friends and family. We can order or decide to cook things that will meet our cravings. And we can take a few moments to slow down and relax. For residents of senior or long-term care communities, meals can provide the exact same benefits.
“Mealtimes are a mainstay of life through which residents’ experiences are characterized, exemplified, and magnified,” one study found. To understand just how important meals can be, consider this. They play an integral role in the emotional and psychological connections residents feel with other residents. Meals can help residents manage competing interests with limited resources, and they can provide an element of familiarity and routine that is so important.
On an even more granular level, food and mealtimes can provide three critical components. First, they bring people together. Through what are traditionally communal dining spaces (an area that has been challenging during the Covid pandemic), opportunities are created for socialization that are critical to a person’s mental health.
Second, food provides a sense of control. In a senior care community, this can mean selecting a certain entrée off a menu or even choosing to double up on a helping of green beans instead of receiving a plate of mashed potatoes a particular diner might not even like. With a demographic that tends to lose control of many health-related issues, having control at the dinner table can enhance the importance of mealtime.
Finally, meals provide structure and routine. These points of the day can provide much-needed stabilization and familiarity. In some situations, due to deteriorating mental capacities, the structure meals provide can be critical to a resident’s well-being.
The 3 Principles for Successful Senior Care Dining
Now that we understand the importance of senior care foodservice, what does a successful operation look like? This is an important question, and no matter where you end up in the ensuing discussion, that conversation must always begin with the safety of the residents. First and foremost, successful senior care foodservice should be safe and nourishing, promoting the overall good health of those who eat the food.
According to the Pioneer Network, food and dining are the core components of quality of life in long-term care communities, and they can be defined in three important ways.
STATEMENT 1: Choice of food has a tremendous impact on quality of life.
In fact, some say it actually defines it. Food can provide many amazing benefits, and those positive attributes begin with choices. Ask a few simple questions. What does the resident want? For example, how did he or she do things before moving in, and how can those things be replicated within the community’s foodservice program? What to eat, when to eat, where to eat, and with whom are all important things to determine.
STATEMENT 2: We do not assume that just because residents may not be able to make a choice in some parts of their lives, they cannot make choices related to dining.
When both residents and staff are well-educated on matters of choice, when staff is trained to look for the right things, and when residents have consistent relationships with staff members who can advocate for them, even residents with impaired decision-making capabilities can experience choice as it relates to dining. Studies show that cognitive impairment does not impact choice-making, and people with mild to moderate cognitive impairment can still provide input on food choices and successfully make many of those decisions. Let’s honor this.
STATEMENT 3: Mealtime dining studies provide evidence that enabling residents to choose what they want to eat at mealtime does not result in negative nutritional outcomes.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When residents have a choice at mealtimes, it actually enhances the nutritional impact of meals. Even more important, it increases not just resident satisfaction, but also the satisfaction of staff, caregivers, and family members.
Partners in success: Lakeside can help promote the positive benefits of foodservice in senior care communities.
Lakeside foodservice believes in honoring residents’ fundamental right to self-determination at mealtime. Bringing hot, safe, flexible meal choices to residents is our goal and we are here to help your community accomplish this with SuzyQ carts, hydration carts, action stations, and more.
COVID-19 forced healthcare foodservice programs to do a complete 180 in how they serve and deliver food. We’ve heralded the role of food in healthcare and its healing power, but the coronavirus presents new and unheard-of nutritional challenges for dietitians. So how are they using nutrition to help patients as they fight and recover from COVID-19?
Malnutrition already increases the risk of someone getting sick, staying sick, and worse — dying. Add that into a pandemic, and delivering proper nutrition to sick individuals has never been more vital to the recovery process.
COVID Challenges for Dietitians
For starters, the COVID-19 pandemic has put dietitians in an unenviable position when it comes to working directly with patients. Lack of PPE and isolation requirements often prevent dietitians from performing their typical nutrition-focused exams to identify nutritional problems. Relying on telehealth and virtual exams are available for some facilities, but often a reliance on doctors and nurses to provide dietitians with nutritional updates is necessary.
With up to a quarter of COVID-infected people requiring ICU admission, nutrition is essential in the fight against coronavirus symptoms and helping patients recover quickly. Studies show that these ICU patients, who are often put on ventilators for multiple weeks, will become weaker and lose valuable muscle mass.
Nutrition is one of the best kinds of medicine to fight the virus head-on.
Using Nutrition to Fight COVID
A recent Food Management article on patient nutrition discussed both the challenges and strategies to providing proper nutrition to patients infected with the coronavirus. Some obstacles to nourishing COVID-19 patients include the common symptoms like loss of taste and smell or gastrointestinal distress, while other more severe symptoms like post-ventilator swallowing, respiratory issues, and even psychological ailments ranging from disorientation to depression create more obstacles to recovery.
With all the hurdles to providing nutrition to the people who need it the most, how are dietitians helping get these patients back on the road to recovery through the power of food?
High-calorie and high-protein provide a boost in energy and nutrients in each meal. Nutritional supplements and hydration are also key, especially for people with a lack of appetite to ensure they are receiving nourishment, even when they may not feel up to the challenge. Smaller meals are recommended for patients with poor appetites or respiratory problems so as not to force their bodies to become overworked. Even foods with different ranges of spice can help patients dealing with a loss of taste or smell.
Make Patient Nutrition Easier With the Right Tools
Healthcare foodservice programs everywhere are adapting their methods of meal delivery during COVID-19, and Lakeside is here to help you get the tools you need to keep patients, guests, and staff well-nourished. From meal and tray delivery carts for in-patient dining, hydration service, mobile grab-and-go solutions for guests and staff, and handwashing and PPE storage and transport solutions, Lakeside has you covered.
Lakeside has the COVID-19 Product Solutions you need! Learn about these solutions in our COVID-19 Resource Guide.
Step onto a college campus in 2021 and you’ll notice a few stark changes from a few semesters ago. First, the students, or lack thereof. In order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, many colleges and universities have moved to a virtual learning environment or a hybrid of in-person and online classrooms. Second, the staff. Professors, administrative staff, foodservice staff, maintenance staff, and more have all had their normal work routines and hours altered, with some, unfortunately, losing their positions entirely. But one thing that hasn’t changed on college campuses is the need to feed students in safe and efficient ways.
At a recent NACUFS Town Hall, foodservice directors from colleges and universities across the country shared the changes, challenges, and opportunities that they were seeing.
While avoiding layoffs was a top concern in regard to staffing, foodservice directors felt that restaurant chains around campus were affecting the ability to hire and keep students on campus. In response to limited staffing, foodservice programs are doing more with fewer team members, with plenty of cross-training and bringing in labor from other departments. Staff training is mostly virtual, and technology limitations affect the quality of training that can be done, with a majority occurring remotely.
The biggest challenge right now is an obvious one, and that is feeding students. A number of states prohibit inside dining or limit the number of students allowed in a dining hall at one time. The goal for colleges right now is to get students in and out of the dining hall in under five minutes. That means a serious adjustment in menus and execution. Microwavable meals and grab-and-go items are the primary meals nowadays. While some programs are using reservation systems, others use mobile ordering.
One major shift in how colleges are serving meals during the pandemic is by taking a more retail approach to campus dining. Members of the Town Hall echoed similar sentiments, saying all you can eat dining has changed into retail only. The grab-and-go method of meal service has proven to be an effective one at mitigating contact by limiting the time inside the dining hall. One approach to a more traditional, pre-packaged grab-and-go meal that some colleges are adopting is the home replacement meal trend or meal kits that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing advertised. The goal of meal kits is to provide fresh, chef-quality meals with an emphasis on the convenience of ordering and pickup.
Prior to COVID-19, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is one college that has taken the home chef kit model and made it their own. UMass Fresh “provides ready-to-cook dinner kits” that are cooked and chilled for transport right in the college kitchen, then packed up for takeout. With many students living off-campus, this offers them a practical meal plan solution as an alternative to off-campus takeout dining. The meals themselves are easy and quick to prepare, with multiple meal choices each day to choose from. Once a meal kit is prepped, it’s packaged for takeout and ready to pick up at a designated location. Now fully entrenched in a pandemic, this style of meal delivery makes more sense than ever.
Whether it’s grab-and-go, meal kits, or takeout from mobile orders, college and university foodservice programs have found themselves adapting to this new environment. With easy-to-use, durable transport, meal delivery can get from the kitchen to the students in safe, convenient ways. The Curbside Pick Up Cart is the ideal solution to provide eye-catching, weatherproof transport options for your program’s meals, giving students on-campus meals without the risks associated with COVID-19. Drive-through pick up is commonplace for restaurants all over the country during the pandemic, and now your dining program can offer that same convenience.
From dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks to pursuing solutions that allow foodservice operations to stay operational, things have been increasingly challenging in the last year. At the very beginning of the pandemic, there were concerns about food shortages as it relates to processing and distributing our food supply, and those challenges continue in varying forms today.
Let’s start back at the beginning when the national food supply was in possible jeopardy and was an unknown factor. Many people rushed to grocery stores to stock up for weeks and even months on canned and frozen goods. This left grocery shelves bare and consumers terrified for what was to come.
The industry that struggled the most during this period was the meat processing business. With heavy staffing working in proximity, many processing staff members fell ill with the coronavirus causing many plants to close. Companies responded, though, and measures were put in place such as temperature scanning, social distancing, and increased sanitation. By June, meatpacking was back to operating at roughly 97%, as reported by WebMD.
While the initial scare put us in a world of uncertainty, we slowly began to find a balance. More resources were available, and shelves were less bare. What we learned was the importance of keeping staff healthy across the entire foodservice spectrum, from grocery stores to restaurants to delivery drivers to meat processing plants.
As the virus continues to sweep across the United States, many are now worried that the industry won’t suffer from a supply shortage but rather a staffing shortage. Even with new regulations and rules set in place, extra cleaning, and additional precautions, people are still testing positive for COVID-19.
Critical labor is being put at risk in order to keep our food supply functioning, leaving many questioning if their jobs are worth that risk. On the other end of the spectrum, many are still seeking jobs and a surplus of people are working from home, keeping grocery stores flooded with business.
New solutions are popping up daily to help prevent the spread of the virus as well as assist in keeping operations functioning, and even in the initial scare, most weren’t going hungry due to a lack of food supply. Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics reported the biggest vulnerability for food insecurity was due to the loss of jobs from lost income with collapsing prices and lowered market demand.
While there’s still concern over the potential changes in the industry as we continue to deal with the pandemic, for the foreseeable future food supply looks promising and reliable.
For a full list of all available COVID-19 product solutions from Lakeside, we encourage you to visit our main COVID-19 Resources page.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on educational instruction throughout the world, cafeteria foodservice disruptions have also skyrocketed. The days of serving school children lunch in the cafeteria are now replaced with deliveries to individual classrooms. This new lunch schedule is difficult on staff as many school kitchens aren’t outfitted with the proper equipment for lunch deliveries.
The foodservice dilemma
With children returning to school in person, one of the many dilemmas facing administrators is how to safely feed them. The CDC recommends children eat meals outdoors or in classrooms while social distancing instead of in a communal dining hall. While the guidance is valid, it’s easy to see the strain it puts on an already stressed-out foodservice staff.
In addition to delivering meals, staff is encouraged to plate individual meals or provide prepackaged ones. Gone are the days of salad bars and other self-service stations. Now, along with disposable utensils and gloves, cafeteria staff need to be cognizant about their own cleaning and sanitizing habits while providing a safe environment for fellow coworkers, students, and teachers.
The financial burdens
School lunch programs were already pretty taxed even before the pandemic. The USDA reports that around 97% of costs are covered by revenues, but that means that most school foodservice programs operate at a small deficit or just break even. To make matters even worse, additional costs need to be factored in this year for protective gear for staff (masks, gloves, cleaning, and disinfecting supplies). Additional packaging also increases costs — whether staff are feeding kids in school or still providing breakfasts and lunches while classes are virtual.
Delivering food to individual classrooms may also require more money. If cafeteria staff do not have the appropriate carts to transport the food, it can waste time and reduce the quality of the breakfasts and lunches served.
The solution
Luckily, there is a solution. Classroom meal delivery carts are a cost-effective and efficient way to get meals into the classrooms, and Lakeside offers carts for a variety of needs. Thermal bags or coolers allow food to remain at the proper temperature and permit ease of movement down hallways and back to the cafeteria in limited trips. Let’s take a look at an example.
The Clermont School raised concerns about making their food deliveries more efficient. They felt that going from the kitchen to the classroom several times per service wasn’t the best way to use their staff’s time or to promote the quality of lunches. With the help of the foodservice delivery carts from Lakeside, they were able to reduce their amount of trips back and forth from 13 to three. With the lunch rush going smoothly, they implemented the easy-tow carts for breakfast too. The staff reported delivery was much more efficient and their own time management improved because of the new equipment.
The Clermont School is just one of many that needed to find a solution to this new food distribution problem. They immediately saw results and found that transporting food with the proper equipment makes for a more streamlined approach that benefits both students and staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrinkle into school food service plans. From dealing with additional guidelines and protective gear to serving lunches in classrooms, cafeteria staff had to roll with the punches and figure out ways to manage their time, all while delivering quality meals. Adding a Lakeside delivery cart to your daily routine will help cut down on trips from kitchen to classroom.
If you’re looking to ease up your school breakfast or lunch routine, contact us for more information about our carts and how we can help you.