2023 Hospital Power Players

With pandemic era restrictions finally ended or broadly loosened, foodservice programs in hospitals are looking for a return to normal operation, serving staff, visitors and patients and even enticing customers from the surrounding community to come in for a bite to eat. In this latest installment of FM’s Power Players series, we take a look at what’s being offered at some of the largest hospitals in the country.

Jackson Memorial Hospital

Miami

1,500 beds

Foodservice Management: Sodexo

Jackson Memorial’s cafeteria serves separate breakfast (fresh pastries, bagels, fresh fruit, eggs, bacon, sausage, hot cereal, pancakes, French toast), lunch (fresh sushi, wraps, deli sandwiches, salad bar/fresh-made soup, grilled burgers, fries, innovation station, hot line-entrées and sides and desserts) and dinner (featured hot entrées and sides) menus in meal daypart blocks between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. There is also a Cuban-themed coffee shop that operates 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays serving Cuban pastries, croissants, Cuban toast, hot breakfast sandwiches and specialty coffee drinks like Café con Leche, espresso, colada and cortadito.

AdventHealth Orlando

Orlando, Fla.

1,368 beds

See profile here

Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland, Ohio

1,300 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

Related:Taking it from standard to splendid

At Cleveland Clinic Main Campus, some patients are served using a room service model where they call to place their order, while other units such as the neurology units are served using a bedside service model. The hospital recently updated its recipes based on patient feedback and has also focused on serving fun holiday meals such as the 4th of July, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, using the resources provided by Morrison, which has also brought its popular Limited Time Offer menus such as the Summer Salad series to patients.

Cleveland Clinic now has four cafes open at its main campus, and has converted one of its cafes to a micro-market concept to provide more hours of access for caregivers working in the research building.

The hospital participates in WasteNot 2.0 ad has a relationship with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank for food donation, though increased concentration this year on better forecasting and reducing overproduction waste has decreased the food available for donation. The culinary teams were tasked with achieving a 50% reduction in food waste over the summer, and have responded well to the challenge, the hospital says.

Mayo Clinic Hospital-Saint Marys Campus

Rochester, Minn.

1,265 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

Related:Best Concepts: Central Table Eatery brings healthy, abundant choices to Pennsylvania hospital

See profile here

Barnes-Jewish Hospital

St. Louis

1,250 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

On the 850-bed South Campus, Morrison utilizes the bedside service model through which Patient Dining Associates take meal orders using iPads (or nursing, in some cases, will call the diet office to place patient orders). On the 400-bed North Campus, the service model is Dining on Call/Room Service through which patients can place their own meal orders using the iPads located in their rooms and schedule a desired meal delivery time (or just call the call center to place their order).

Barnes-Jewish is currently in the process of developing a new patient services menu expected to debut in Q1 of 2024. One change that already has been incorporated over the last year is the addition of monthly patient menu specials such as the Cobb Salad and other salad entree specials offered in June, the BBQ Specials I July and a Jerk Chicken and Black Bean entree special in August.

The retail dining end operates two cafeterias, two coffee shops, one coffee/gift shop combo and one unmanned self-serve coffee kiosk that replaced a full-service Starbucks in April and has been extremely popular with night shift nurses as special coffees were previously not available after 4 p.m. Other advances for serving the night shift have been a reopened salad bar with revamped offerings and a full-service deli operating every Tuesday and Thursday night.

Other recent changes include the new "Embers" program that allowed Morrison to streamline grill operations and offer attractive new items like a one-third pound grilled cheeseburger, a grilled Impossible burger, a brined ad hand breaded to order Crispy Chicken Sandwich on a Brioche Bun and a Salmon BLT. Customer satisfaction has improved with the new menu offerings as wait times have decreased over 60%.

Coming up, the hospital is in the process building a new 16-story bed tower that will also feature a new kitchen, a large cafe with a 350-seat dining area plus a coffee shop. A new Cafe/Kitchen scheduled to open in June 2025 is slated to have at least two self-checkout stations, a food ordering App/pick-up station and even some tray delivery robots for late/rush trays, as well as a Tug System for meal cart delivery to and soiled tray retrieval from patient floors. Morrison is also looking at technology for hand washing hygiene and compliance in the kitchens.

Also worth noting is the 30,000 sq.ft. commissary kitchen that produces items like grab-n-go products, salad bar prep, sliced deli meats and chicken salad for 15 other facilities within the Barnes-Jewish system. It produces soups, sauces, gravies, oatmeal, beans, greens, mac & cheese, potatoes, etc. that are packaged using reduced oxygen packaging that has a 21-day shelf life for the system. It uses the sous vide cooking process to produce chicken, pork, beef, turkey entrees for they system as well while its full-service bakery produces dinner rolls, brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, lemon bars, cupcakes, rice krispie treats, etc. for the system.

UAB Hospital

Birmingham, Ala.

1,157 beds 

UAB Hospital recently engaged a food services consultant to help determine a long-term strategy to assist navigating the new healthcare food services environment, including dealing with food waste reduction and potential food donation initiatives. Currently, approximately 15% of the food purchased comes from local sources.

Meanwhile, it currently operates patient dining primarily with a hybrid room service model in which the majority of meals are called in by the patient or care team and prepared by order between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., plus a limited selection for after hours. It had moved away from a full room service model to ensure the kitchen operated more efficiently to assist with increasing volumes post COVID. While the number of selections from the pre-COVID patient menu was reduced, a Chef Special was added.

On the retail end, UAB Hospital has two cafeterias at two different hospital locations and a coffee cart that is in-sourced and managed by UAB Food and Nutrition Services. In addition, there are a full service Starbucks, Panera Bread, Chic-Fil-A, Red Cat Coffee and Subway units on the premises managed by outside vendors.

Mount Sinai Hospital

New York, N.Y.

1,139 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

Options for patient dining ordering at Mount Sinai include the Catering-To-You program, which has Patient Dining Associates taking orders with iPads, and the CBORD Mobile app, which allows patients to log in and select meals independently (with feedback diet restrictions). It recently launched a new streamlined menu that offers specific chef special entrées, which not only improves food quality but increases a focus on plant-based. There are also seasonal and LTO options that rotate on monthly/quarterly basis—a summer salad and a shrimp roll are the current options.

On the retail end, there is a main restaurant/cafeteria in the Plaza, a Starbucks in the main lobby and three smaller retail kiosks throughout campus. There's also a Farmers Fridge vending machine available offering fresh food like salads and sandwiches that supports the overnight team with healthful meal options. In the last year Mount Sinai launched the InstaEat meal pre-order app at coffee kiosks and a system-wide CBORD mobile ordering app. It has rolled out self-checkout across system hospitals and implemented digital signage at Mount Sinai Hospital, with self-checkout in the planning stages. The InstaEat mobile ordering platform is being marketed to in-house staff for convenient mobile ordering and pick-up at a designated location.

Mount Sinai utilizes Morrison's Waste Not 2.0 platform to reduce retail and post-consumer food waste, with other waste cut through a successful transition of all plates, plastic containers/carry out trays, cups and cutlery to compostable and bio friendly disposables. Also, Morrison is currently in the process of partnering with the hospital to bring in a bio-green digester for composting.

Mount Sinai also recently launched a food donation program that partners with hospital offsite clinics, presenting an opportunity to donate salads and sandwiches that are near expiration for clinics to pass out to patients for free.

Last year, the Mount Sinai Hospital had sustainable purchases representing 20% of its total purchases, an increase of 3% from the previous measurement. Of that, sustainable food purchases were 20% with local purchases representing 3% of that spend, and non-food sustainable purchases were 24%.

Beaumont Hospital

Royal Oak, Mich.

1,101 beds

The Mackinac Dining Room is the main retail eatery augmented by a Starbucks unit, two cafes, a deli ad an outlet of the Papa Joe’s Gourmet Market grocery chain that features a Kabob Grill counter, gourmet deli sandwiches and salads, sushi, and an array of ready-to-go meals and healthy snacks.

Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center

Houston, Texas

1,082 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center uses both room service style and bedside service for taking patient meal orders off a menu that has been revised within the past six months. On the retail end, it operates two cafeterias, one coffee shop and one c-store. The cafeteria recently opened a ew BBQ station serving smoked brisket, ribs, chicken and sausage along with various sides, and a new taco shop serving bowls, tacos and burritos, with house made tortillas and fresh salsa. Other recent additions to the menus include homemade chicken tenders—house breaded chicken tenders served with fries, coleslaw, Texas toast and house made special sauce—a build-your-own pizza station with MOD style pizza baked in a Turbo Chef oven, and hand-crafted burgers using fresh hamburger patties served on a brioche bun. The hospital is also piloting Relay devices for patient services.

Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center

Charlotte, N.C.

1,059 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

At Carolinas Medical Center (CMC), Morrison offers hybrid delivery services that include room service through its MyMeals app, which allows patients to review the menu and call into the call center to order meals at their convenience, and the bedside service in-person platform in which patient dining associates (PDAs) take the meal orders using Ipads on Morrison Healthcare’s proprietary My Dining platform. It has scheduled delivery times with meals are delivered to patient rooms by the PDA at designated meal times. For both styles, the MyDelivery platform allows trays to be tracked from the kitchen to the patient rooms with tray pickup times also tracked to ensure a seamless flow and optimum patient experience.

The transition from traditional hospital menus to restaurant-like dining experiences has resulted in offerings like seasonal summer salads and elevated desserts that move away from institutional offerings such as puddings and gelatins.

On the retail dining end, CMC currently operates a unit of Morrison's Market Café concept that is open between 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. every day with the Grill station and grab and go items available in the late night hours. To facilitate transactions, CMC also offers the InstaEat app, which allows customers to place their orders and pay ahead of time and Morrison is currently exploring some frictionless shopping options that would allow access to nutritious grab and go items 24/7 to bridge the gap between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.

CMC also operates a Caribou Coffee in its Levine Cancer Center that is open weekdays between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. while the Levine Children’s Hospital has the Xray Café that offers a wide variety of grab and go items, grilled options and some fun food offerings tailored to children every day from 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. (5 p.m. on weekends).

To reduce food waste, CMC partners with Feeding Charlotte to donate food not utilized in operations to nonprofits around the community, amounting to over a ton of food donated annually. It is also committed eliminating Styrofoam in its cafeteria, retail and patient dining and continuously focused on reducing single use plastics, with all waters bottles already replaced with box or aluminum offerings.

In addition, a number of plant forward meals are offered in the cafeteria and CMC is committed to sourcing foods responsibility and locally. It participates in a BIPOC farmers program that identifies local farms owned by Black, Indigenous, People of Color, supporting them through sourcing and utilization of their crops throughout its menus, where these ingredients are highlighted.

Morrison's MyMeals app has been seamlessly integrated with CHC's exclusive data platforms. This synergy empowers room service patients to place orders via the app, circumventing the need for the call center. This not only grants patients heightened flexibility and control over their dining choices but also reflects our commitment to embracing technological advancement. Moreover, our dedication extends to streamlining the workflow for our clinicians. Through our TaskVue technology, clinicians can access real-time data to monitor tray statuses, liberating their time for more critical responsibilities.

OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital

Columbus, Ohio

1,059 beds

Foodservice Management: Morrison Healthcare

OhioHealth Riverside, the state’s busiest mother/baby hospital, offers an all-day room service menu for patients. It has special after-hours options for mother & support person in its post-partum units and engages High-Risk OB patients who often have longer stays by initiating a chef visit and accommodating any special requests within the diet order.

A new menu for patients incorporates more fresh, local foods through partnerships with suppliers that have also significantly reduced out of stock items. The menu also features a daily chef special to support execution and consistency with attractive menu options like Apricot BBQ Pork Loin and Bananas Foster French Toast. Limited time offerings were piloted to increase seasonal ingredients that are patient satisfiers while also being easy and cost effective to source, giving our patients additional variety without long term commitment.

The hospital’s OhioHealth partnership allows it to collaborate on menus through the patient lens, leading to continual and steady improvements in Press Ganey scores that have reached the 84th percentile in overall patient meals over the course of four years.

O the retail end, OhioHealth Riverside operates a large main café, a Starbucks and a Subway.  The cafe’s grill was renovated in the past year and the café menu restructured to increase variety during peak times with combinations and meal combos.

Hours that were reduced during COVID have now been reopened, with options offered until 2:00 a.m., including more hot options that associates indicated they wanted. Overnight hours also included special events like the Juneteenth celebration to include everyone.

The hospital uses the Morrison Healthcare WasteNot 2.0 program to help in reducing food waste and improve purchasing and par levels from each service line and overall improved costing. It also has a partnership with the Mid-Ohio Food Collective for any donations and partners with a local composting company to transform compostable food into enriched fertilizer used in the campus gardens.

Tech advances include a Farmer’s Fridge unit, more self-check out kiosks in the grab and go areas to improve service times and order-anywhere kiosks for custom orders to be retrieved at the chosen station.

Duke University Hospital

Durham, N.C.

1,048 beds

Foodservice Management: Aramark

The main retail dining outlet is the Atrium Café with its four serving stations plus an Omelet Grill for breakfast that expands to six stations for lunch and dinner. A full-service Starbucks and Subway are located next to Atrium Cafe. Elsewhere, there is the Duke Clinic Food Court with a Subway and Chick-fil-A among its four concepts, a Panera unit in the Duke Medicine Pavilion, a 24/7 Starbucks in the Duke Central Tower and the Tropical Smoothie Cafe in the Duke Cancer Center. Online ordering is available for the Starbucks, Panera, Subway and Tropical Smoothie locations.

Tampa General Hospital

Tampa, Fla.

1,040 beds 

Foodservice Management: Sodexo

The Tampa General Hospital Café features a full cafeteria-style food court with vending machines and microwave ovens and is open daily between 6:00 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. Other retail dining options include a Starbucks operating between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. daily and a 24-hour McDonald's unit. Tampa General is planning a Patient Room Service Delivery Program for Fall 2023 and is upgrading its kitchen to support the creation of the Room Service Delivery Program.

Christiana Hospital

Newark, Del.

1,039 beds 

Retail dining at Christiana Hospital is provided in the West End Cafe, a full-service all-day cafeteria that also opens for late night hours between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., as well as three Brew HaHa! Coffee shop locations and an Au Bon Pain unit. The Corner Cafe in the Women & Children’s Health building serves coffee, espresso, pastries, breakfast and lunch weekdays.

UH Cleveland Medical Center

Cleveland, Ohio

1,032 beds

Foodservice Management: Sodexo

The main retail outlet, the Atrium Café offers a variety of cuisines at seven stations: deli, grill, entrée, innovations, Freshens, pizza and salad bar, with packaged snacks, salads and sandwiches available for take-out along with a wide selection of hot and cold beverages. The Café also offers healthier options through UH's mindful nutrition program, which combines great flavor and optimal nutrition in a wide array of entrees, salads, soups, sides and desserts.

Other retail outlets on campus include a unit of Einstein Bros. Bagels, the Cleveland Coffee Company coffee stand that serves coffee, espresso, smoothies, cold drinks, ice cream treats and snacks; and Wolfgang Puck Express, the celebrity chef’s first restaurant to be located in a hospital and his first restaurant in northeast Ohio. It is a sit-down café located on the hospital's lobby level that offers made-to-order meals in a fast-casual setting.

Meanwhile, Sodexo's Our At-Your-Request Room Service program allows University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center patients to eat meals when they wish between 6:30 a.m. and 9 p.m., with meals delivered within one hour. Kosher and gluten-free menus are available on request.

UF Health Shands Hospital

Gainesville, Fla.

1,030 beds

UF Shands follows a traditional three-meals-a-day model with bedside service for patients and has started doing more seasonal specials, part of a focus on enhancing menus and recipes, especially desserts and salads.

There are four retail facilities across the hospital campus, plus three hospital kitchens, one self-checkout and one c-store, with the the main kitchen and south kitchen at the hospital being upgraded and renovated with all new equipment. A hot cart that runs every day offers snacks and has a team that cooks food (on a rotating menu) and brings it around to team members to grab.

The hospital participates in the Waste Not 2.0 program and so far this year has saved 27.6 tons of waste, 5.46 million gallons of water and 122.4 tons of CO2eq. It also supports the Reichert House Youth Academy in Gainesville, Florida with food donations. Last year, It spent $380,204 on local food purchases.

Recent initiatives include the launch of MyDining, a personalized patient meal-ordering system, and MyDelivery, an integrated solution that measures and reports on the speed of service across the campus. UF Shands is currently exploring introducing MyMeal, Morrison’s proprietary patient-facing meal ordering application within the next year. Also, self-check outs are being introduced across the hospital campus.

Massachusetts General Hospital

Boston, Mass.

1,021 beds

The hospital’s main cafeteria, Eat Street Café, features a variety of food choices with many healthy meal options available daily under the hospital's BeFit label. Other retail options include the Tea Leaves & Coffee Beans and Coffee South coffee shops and the Riverside Cafe that serves breakfast, a variety of sandwiches, soups, salads, desserts and hot and cold beverages weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital

Baltimore, Md.

1,000 beds

Retail dining options at Hopkins includes units of Starbucks, Baja Fresh, Flamers Grill, Noble Roman’s, Subway, Grand Grounds Coffee Bar, Me Latte (coffee bar with kosher food), Takiza Tacos and Umami Sushi, with the latter two only accepting Grubhub app or kiosk orders with locker pickup. There is also an outlet of the Balducci’s grocery store with a cafe and bistro, and Hopkins’ own Greens Project cafe that offers breakfast and lunch daily.

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pa.

988 beds

The main retail dining location at UPenn Health is the Pavilion, which includes celebrity chef Tom Colicchio's Root & Sprig cafe and Philadelphia coffee guru Thane Wright's Bower Café. The Pavilion's cafeteria, Green Family Commons, is run by food service vendor AVIFoodSystems and incorporates a menu built off the Good Food Healthy Hospital Platinum Standard criteria and features a salad bar, short order grill and deli, plus a variety of freshly baked cookies and desserts featured daily.

Pavilion patients can personalize and order meals at bedside with the help of hospital ambassadors assigned to each room, who help make breakfast, lunch and dinner orders on tablets that interface with dietary management systems, ensuring that more than 25 nationally standardized therapeutic diets are followed.

ECU Health Medical Center

Greenville, N.C.

974 beds

Foodservice Management: Sodexo

The main cafeteria offers selections ranging from from Asian cuisine to freshly baked pizza and a salad bar and also operates late night hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Heart Center Café in the Heart Center serves light and tasty items with choices typically having fewer than 500 calories while Café Bay near the children’s hospital lobby offers breakfast and lunch to-go items and the Coffee Shop in the main visitors lobby has fresh, seasoned and cooked-to-order burgers and many other grilled items. In addition, Starbucks coffee kiosks are located in the main cafeteria, the Heart Center Café and the Coffee Shop with the cafeteria location open 24/7. Patients are offered Sodexo’s At Your Request room service meal program.

Texas Children’s Hospital

Houston, Texas

973 beds

Texas Children’s Hospital offers all day room service for patiets between 6:30 a..m and 9:00 p.m. Over the last year, it has translated all menus to Spanish, Arabic, and Vietnamese; made all menus available via QR Code; revised wording and options to make ordering more simple for patients and families; added IDSSI items; and updated the Adult Congenital Heart Disease diet and is currently in the process of re-designing the menu.

Retail dining operates five venues and utilizes self-ordering kiosks and self-pay check out stations. The main bistro offers five stations, a food court with a Chick-fil-A, Subway and Micro/Pop Up stations, and three coffee shops. The Chick-fil-A was recently renovated and converted from an Express to a full-service unit. Another recent upgrade was the launch of an overnight, self-pay program in the bistro between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.

Texas Children’s participate in Waste Not 2.0 as well as a local composting program that diverts 12,000 lbs. of food waste a month from landfills. Currently, less than 30% of food purchased comes from local sources.