Eskenazi Hospital opens in Indianapolis

Wishard Hospital, which graced Indianapolis for 150 years, is no more. In its place is a sleek 350-bed medical center, known as the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Hospital. Few people are more excited about the new space, which opened in December, than Tom Thaman, the director of nutrition services at the hospital.

“The hospital was much needed,” Thaman says. “It has the same number of beds as Wishard, but it has a smaller footprint and is a much more efficient use of space. The old hospital was really a series of buildings added over the years, with the oldest being built 150 years ago.”

Thaman has a special reason to be jazzed about the space: He helped to design the foodservice portion. “I have worked in other facilities where I was stuck with whatever foodservice was in place,” he explains. “If we wanted to change the menu we had to do a lot of work, so I had these spaces designed with flexibility in mind.”

The main foodservice operation is The Marketplace, a bright, airy space that features several concepts that lend themselves to menu adaptation. The most popular station thus far is the Italian station, which has a pizza oven that allows Thaman’s staff to prepare and sell customized personal pan pizzas, pizza by the slice and a pasta of the day.

The Marketplace also includes a deli, an enhanced grill station, a double-sided soup and salad bar, an action station and a grab-and-go store. Food wells at each of the stations are designed to be used as either cold wells or hot wells, adding to the flexibility of each station.

“The action station is going to be one of the neatest elements,” says Thaman, noting that this area has yet to be brought online while staff continue training. “It faces a 20-seat dining area with glass walls in front so that diners can see the chefs at work. The glass walls slide open so that we can move the tables and chairs forward and do cooking demos.”

Thaman calls the grab-and-go area a “quasi convenience store,” with three open-air coolers that hold sandwiches, salads, and a variety of healthy snacks and beverages. There also is a counter that holds a coffee station and a soft-serve ice cream machine and a dedicated cash register.

“We’re currently discussing how we might make this area a late-night option,” Thaman adds. “We may also decide to package hot meals and sell them out of the coolers so that staff can retherm them and take them back to their desks or work stations.”

Across the way from the hospital is the Third Fifth Building, which houses administrative offices. On the first level of this building Thaman operates a “retail wing” that features a Starbucks, Café Soleil—a 100-seat sit-down restaurant—and Café Soleil Express, which offers the full Café Soleil menu, but for takeout. Café Soleil is a holdover from the old Wishard Hospital.

“The Café Soleil menu features pasta and other entrées, salads, wraps and sandwiches,” Thaman says. “Check averages here are a little higher than at the Marketplace, $6 to $7, versus about $4 in the Marketplace. We also do all of our catering out of Cafe Soleil. At Wishard, everything came out of one kitchen. Now, we have a dedicated kitchen for the retail wing.”

Patient foodservice at Eskenazi is continuous room service from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Thaman estimates that about 80 percent of patients are able to take advantage of it.

“One of the smart things we did was start room service in 2010, in anticipation of the new space,” he says. “That gave us two to three years of practice before moving into the new facility, and it was a good thing because it allowed us to redesign the room service kitchen for Eskenazi. We realized that our original plan would not have worked and we were able to realize it before we had committed the original plan to drawings.”

The final element of the new hospital that impacts foodservice is the 6,000-square foot “sky farm” on the hospital’s roof. Thaman says the space has been contracted to a local group that manages urban farms. The space will grow tomatoes, kale, other greens and herbs.

“It obviously can’t satisfy our produce needs,” he notes. “We will use the space mostly to promote healthy eating to patients and staff and also to promote urban farming in general. But we will use whatever is produced in our patient meals and in the Marketplace, for as long as we can.”