A quiet space to dine and relax

Like all hospitals, the Baptist Medical Center flagship campus in downtown Jacksonville Is a place of high stress, for staff, patients and their families. Fortunately, since the spring of 2022, the campus has offered a space where some of that stress can be alleviated, at least temporarily, by providing a relaxing space with comfortable seating, spectacular views of the adjacent St. Johns River and its environs, and, not incidentally, some great food choices.

Located on the eighth floor of the healthcare campus’ 10-story Wolfson Family Medical Adult Tower is a 15,477-sq.ft. dining and conference space that received a $4 million renovation in spring 2022, its first significant overhaul in decades. The renovation added a “new and enhanced dining experience” in the words of the news release announcing the project, along with updated conference rooms for meetings and education sessions, and a lounge area with the river view that remains open even after café serving hours.

Photo: The café offers freshly prepared selections in five serving stations, including a barbecue station that offers meats from the in-house smoker located in the main production kitchen on the building’s third floor. 

Photo credit: Baptist Health

While cafes and cafeterias in healthcare facilities have traditionally served as break and mental decompression spaces, they also are often crowded and noisy, so not the ideal environment for a nurse looking for a break or a family worried about a sick child. The eighth floor space in the Wolfson Adult Tower offers a more placid alternative.

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The renovation posed some significant challenges, says Matt Bode executive director of design & construction for the Baptist Health system.

“One of the biggest drawbacks was that the way the floorplan was organized at the time and where everything was positioned,” which meant that the floor could only be open when the café servery was operating, he explains. The renovation separated the café from the rest of the floor, which is about two-thirds of the total space, “so it becomes a great respite and lounge area for families and staff” over extended hours, and was enhanced with new, more comfortable furniture, not just tables and chairs.

The renovation also removed TVs, an unnecessary distraction in an era when most people have personal devices from which they can access news and entertainment when they want.

“We really gutted the whole floor and reimagined it,” Bode says. That included taking down walls and combining smaller rooms into larger conference spaces, while also opening up what had been separate seating areas on two sides of the floor into one larger, more open one that faces the riverfront.

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Windows facing the river already existed, but many were tucked away in smaller conference rooms.

Also expanded substantially was the café servery space, allowing not just more serving stations but more accessibility and more visibility as people come off the elevators, “so you don’t feel like you’re going through a maze to get there,” Bode explains.

Photo: All the sides at the barbecue station are made from scratch in-house.

Photo credit: Baptist Health

The café now offers five serving stations, up from the three there before. They include…

• a station with chef-prepared salads and wraps customized to order that changes its offerings monthly to take advantage of seasonality;

• a grill station menuing burgers as well as salmon and chicken sandwiches;

• a “reimagined” entrée station that, instead of offering the traditional entrée and two sides, has selections like rice and grain bowls;

• a rolled-to-order sushi station; and

• a barbecue station that offers meats from the in-house smoker located in the main production kitchen on the building’s third floor. Its monthly menu schedule touches on different regional barbecue traditions such as Texas, Carolina, Memphis, and Kansas City as well as some international variations like Mexican barbacoa. There’s even a Hawaiian one featuring whole pigs.

“Just at this station, we go through 700-800 pounds of meat a week,” notes Assistant Executive Chef Dan Conroy, who adds that the program makes its own sauces and rubs as well as its own sides and salads.

The barbecue station has a monthly menu schedule that touches on different regional barbecue traditions such as Texas, Carolina, Memphis, and Kansas City as well as some international variations like Mexican barbacoa.

The station mix was determined by what seemed popular and craved by customers, he says, “but we also pushed the envelope to try and stay on trend with what the restaurants and country clubs around here were serving.”

Customer response to different menu items is tracked and the data incorporated into future menu planning, he adds. Meanwhile, excess production is donated to feeding area seniors through the Meals on Wings program at the University of North Florida so that it doesn’t add to the waste stream while making a positive contribution to the local community.

Because a lot of what’s offered at the stations is made to order, the onsite equipment is a critical component, Conroy explains.

“The equipment was one of the big things we were able to change [with the renovation] and allows us to do whatever we want up there,” he says. “As trends grow and pivot, we’re able to pivot with them very easily and seamlessly.” The changes include a new grill and fryer to make sides, enhanced refrigeration units to hold backup product, TurboChef ovens for quick cooking, and flexible hot/cold holders replacing simple steam wells.

“Depending on what menu or region we’re featuring, we can have different wells holding hot or cold food so we can easily mix and match as we need,” Conroy explains.

The lounge area offers a relaxing space with comfortable seating and spectacular views of the adjacent St. Johns River and its environs.

Customer reactions help refine menu approaches going forward. For instance, Conroy notes that one of the more surprising hits from the barbecue station’s foray into Mexican barbacoa was the Mexican street corn served with it. “We could not keep up with it, we were going something like 75 to a hundred corn cobs a day,” he recalls.

Because most of the café’s customers are in-house staff, particular attention is paid to what they prefer. The café is open to the public and visitors, but being on the eighth floor it is not as visible as some of the other cafes in more trafficked areas of the complex. Bode estimates that the current customer mix is about 80% in-house staff, who have discovered and appreciate the fare and the surrounding quiet space.

The café itself operates between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., so it provides dining opportunities into the late evening but no separate breakfast service. A previous attempt at opening a second breakfast location other than the campus’ main cafeteria only served to split an existing breakfast customer base rather than expanding it, Conroy says. Instead, “we wanted to focus on doing lunch and dinner correctly and didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin,” he adds.

The facility also includes a room reserved for physicians where they can enjoy selections from the café in peace.

For the meeting and conference facilities, there is a catering menu that offers everything from simple Continental to selections for high-end plated events, or organizers can work with Conroy to develop a customized menu for a specific function. Much of the catering production takes place in the third floor production kitchen, with some finishing done in the café kitchen on the eighth floor.

The renovated dining and conference space in the Wolfson Adult Tower is the result of a combination of forward thinking and some serendipity, Bode suggests.

“Major clinical spaces, the surgery rooms and patient rooms, usually get the attention in medical facilities, while support spaces sometimes fall behind, but this was something that was high on the radar of our executive team for quite some time,” he explains. “In fact, COVID actually allowed us to shut it down and gave us the opportunity to use the downtime to get the project done.”

So now staff and visitors have a space that is “pretty quiet even at its busiest time,” he says.

“Anytime of day, staff and families can go up there, get away from the hospital setting and the stress of the patient floors and come to a spot where they are still close at hand but can feel like they can get a little respite.”