Great Spaces: Atrium Café at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pa.

In January 2013, Geisinger Medical Center opened the Atrium Café, in the lower level of the campus’s Hospital for Advanced Medicine. Foodservice Director Steve Cerullo says the 350-seat café took the place of three disparate operations and has increased participation at the 10,000-employee campus by 35% to 40%. A scatter-system servery features separate stations for pizza, entrées, grill items, salads and even sushi. There is also a small convenience store attached. This is the first phase of a two-stage project that includes a room service component, scheduled to kick off in late March. The second phase is a new production kitchen, for which ground was broken recently.

Wide aisles, such as in this area between the salad bar and the cashier stands, allow customers to move more freely through the space. Foodservice director Steve Cerullo says the pathways are wide enough for easy wheelchair access. As a result, customers can get where they want to go and out more quickly.

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the lower-level Atrium Café is its 300-seat dining space—from which the café gets its name—which customers can access via a stairway at lobby level.

Large, interactive menu boards like this one are placed strategically throughout the cafeteria, allowing customers to scroll through station options—even seeing nutrition information—simply by touching the screen. Foodservice can also place health messages and notices about upcoming events.

A wood-burning pizza oven has improved customer satisfaction, since customers now are able to see pizzas being made fresh in front of them. As a matter of fact, most of the food served in the café is now prepared in view of customers.

The Atrium Café features a longer salad bar with more variety than Geisinger was able to offer in its old location. The salad bar is also now open around the clock to satisfy the desires of third-shift employees.

Sushi, rolled fresh daily, is one of the new additions to the foodservice operation at the Atrium Café.