Senior dining communities solve COVID challenges

Sponsored by Campbell’s Foodservice^®

While this is vital for maximizing the safety of residents, it can also disrupt the efficiency of the dining dynamic and compromise the quality and appeal of meals being served.

Luckily, as senior living operators adapt to face this challenge, there are a number of convenient and creative solutions available. One area of note is in respect to food packaging. A seemingly straightforward aspect of meal service, there are a surprising number of options and features worth considering. Let’s take a look at these considerations through three lenses: safety of the experience, integrity of the food and hospitality of the operator.

Safety of the Experience

There are multiple ways staff can use to-go container features to show they’re being careful and considerate every step of the way.

One way is to add a tamper-proof seal or sticker to each closed container, assuring residents that their meal has not been disturbed since it was prepared.

It’s important to remember that hot items like soup should be sealed in a strong, secure container with a tight, vented lid. There is a range of container options that feature a snapping lid, which makes it easy for staff members to know when the container is good to go.

Another smart precaution is to let residents take their containers from a tray or cart. Placing individual containers on a surface for residents adds an unnecessary point of contact during the transaction, which we recommend avoiding when possible.

Integrity of the Food

Since food delivery introduces multiple factors that can degrade the meal experience compared to dining on-premise, it is advised to choose containers that work hard to preserve each dish’s quality.

Although many mains and sides are best served hot, there is such a thing as “too hot.” Choosing vented containers that can also withstand food temperatures up to 200°F will ensure the containers don’t swell or burst. It’s also worth noting that a strong, vented lid-locking system will help meals stay hot and tasty without getting soggy.

Additionally, it is recommended that containers are microwave safe for instances when residents will be heating up meals themselves.

If using paper containers, options with a poly coating generally offer added strength and insulation properties. This helps to keep dishes closer to their intended serving temperatures.

Hospitality of the Operation

Believe it or not, container selections can have a large impact on the perceived hospitality of the operation. In many ways, the to-go packaging contributes to the “brand” of your foodservice team.

Little things like choosing sustainable containers and cutlery will get noticed by residents and offer a more desirable dining experience.

Another small decision that can make a big difference is utilizing clear containers or lids. This helps residents “eat with their eyes” first and see their meal right away, rather than spend time figuring out which items are in which containers. Operators can also note each container’s contents with a sticker or marking. There are even packaging brands that make to-go containers with a small chalkboard panel for operators looking to offer a handcrafted look and feel.

It’s also important for operators to pay close attention to the sizes of containers they stock, especially as this relates to what’s on the menu. Not only will this prevent dishes from becoming unappealing by “spreading out” in an oversized container, but operators should also keep a variety of sizes on hand for menu adjustments.

Last but not least, senior living operators can and should lean on their trusted industry partners for additional solutions and support. A great place to start is the #openfortakeout social channel.

Here’s to all the hard-working senior living operators out there who are finding new ways to offer comfort and happiness through delightful meals.

Sponsored by Campbell’s Foodservice^®

Balancing nutritional requirements and resident expectations is already like walking a tightrope, and considering the additional vigilance needed to keep residents safe, staff are exhausted. It’s increasingly important to find solutions that ease the burden from your team while maintaining high-quality service.

Serve Scratch-Made Taste

While many chefs feel inclined to make their soups from scratch, switching to a frozen soup saves time and labor without sacrificing quality. Frozen soups deliver the same scratch-made flavor that residents enjoy; the difference is that staff are free to focus their efforts on other areas. With a ready-to-serve soup that has a long-lasting shelf life, it’s easier to offer variety day in and day out, no matter the season.

Reduce Waste and Costs

With frozen prepared soups, you can slack out smaller portions, avoiding the issue of “use it or lose it.” Soup can be served on its own or used as a speed-scratch ingredient to create unique dishes. Sauces, dressings and dips are just a few ways to puts its versatility to the test. This variety of applications helps to minimize ingredient costs and maximize inventory.

Menu Creative Offerings

Frozen prepared soups are also a canvas for chefs to add their own twists.

A signature tomato or marinara sauce – Use roasted red pepper and smoked gouda bisque as a base, and blend olive oil, onion and roasted garlic. Mix in smoked Gouda cheese, oregano, parsley and penne pasta. Add a protein like sausage and garnish with red bell peppers. 

Curried Shrimp Bisque – Use creamy tomato basil bisque as a base. Then combine shrimp, green onions, cream, tomato paste, curry powder and seafood seasoning to create an on-trend dish.

French onion dip or sandwich spread  – Turn your French onion soup into an onion dip by adding cream cheese, sour cream, roasted garlic and crispy fried onions. Consider replacing sour cream with Greek yogurt and serve with an array of vegetables.

Red Pepper & Smoked Gouda Mayo – Combine roasted red pepper and smoked gouda bisque with mayonnaise and add an innovative flavor to your sandwich offerings or use as a dipping sauce.

Put a New Spin on Customization

Customization can still be integrated in today’s style of serving. While the dining room may be closed, operators can package soup toppings in mini containers for residents to enjoy in their rooms. Think of chili toppings like scallions, avocado and crumbled queso fresco that residents can use to personalize and add pizzazz to their meals.

While nothing is guaranteed in an ever-evolving situation, operators do have control over identifying areas where they need some back-up and adopting solutions that better equip them to care for their residents.

Boston-based Optimus Ride originally intended to use the 76-acre Paradise Valley Estates (PVE) nonprofit life plan community as a deployment site for its self-driving vehicles when the partnership was formed last year. However, those plans—which had just been nearing completion of phase 1 of deployment to provide point-to-point mobility services within the gated community—were put on hold when PVE introduced a campuswide stay-at-home policy on March 18 that effectively closed communal areas such as dining halls, the onsite café and the community center post office as precautionary measures against the coronavirus. At the same time, Optimus Ride paused passenger access at all of their sites, including PVE.

With the closure of the communal dining venues, the PVE dining team quickly launched a meal delivery program for the community’s 500-plus residents—all of them age 60 or older—using the PVE’s fleet of golf carts, which was almost immediately supplemented by the Optimus Ride vehicles.

 “The major advantage is providing safe delivery of meals to a vulnerable population by not exposing them to the risks of congregating in the confined, enclosed spaces with other residents and staff members,” observes Optimus CEO Ryan Chin.

Optimus Ride

The self-driving Optimus Ride vehicles originally were intended to offer point-to-point mobility services within the Paradise Valley Estates gated community, but the advent of the COVID crisis and the subsequent shutdown of communal areas changed those plans at least temporarily.

The vehicles made their first dinner deliveries within 24 hour of the shutdown and have since transported 50 to 80 meals a day and also provided “last mile” delivery of mail packages from services like Amazon, UPS and DHL, reducing exposure risks from those sources in the process.

Optimus Ride had already been piloting a delivery service involving prescription drugs in the Boston area for over a year before it introduced its vehicles to PVE in November 2019 following a suggestion from a resident who had seen an article about its deployment at the Fairing Way Retirement Community in Boston.

Conversion to meal delivery required only minor modifications to the vehicle seats to accommodate bins that would allow for easy stacking and securing of packages. The company says it is also exploring new vehicle platforms that would enable three different modes: delivery-only, passenger-only and an adaptable version that can accommodate both functions.

Optimus Ride currently operates two vehicles at PVE that deliver dinners Monday through Saturday between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. The kitchen staff who normally operate the dining service prepare and pack the meals, which are then transferred to the Optimus Ride vehicles parked next to the kitchen area. A staff member rides with the meals and delivers them from the vehicle to the front door of each resident, ringing the doorbell and then walking away to ensure safe social distance while waiting for pickup. Once that’s done, the vehicle and staff member move to the next delivery point.

Currently, PVE is the only life plan community where Optimus Ride vehicles are used for meal delivery, but the company launched a similar service in Washington, D.C. on May 28 with real estate firm Brookfield Properties’ The Yards development to service area families struggling with food insecurity. It has also been exploring food delivery options at the 300-acre Brooklyn Navy Yard industrial park in New York City.

In fact, delivery, not just of meals but other goods, is seen as a growth area for the company, which has roots in robotics research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston’s vibrant robotics ecosystem.

“We do see demand for logistics of all types—prepared meals, groceries, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc.—growing significantly,” says Chin. “Optimus has been preparing and is ready to take on this new market vertical.”

The company says it plans to continue delivery services to PVE residents as long as needed. When campus dining halls and common areas can safely reopen, passenger access is expected to resume, with the eventual goal of expanding services to the entire campus.

A little over a year ago, Duet Hospitality purchased a food truck for its four Colorado senior living communities. The idea: to give residents unique meal options and food-centered outdoor experiences. Duet is the branded partnership between Christian Living Communities, which runs the community, and Morrison Living, the culinary provider.

The food truck was popular from the start. But during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s taken on a new significance.

Marco Valadez, regional executive chef, says it’s “perfect that we had the food truck because we can move the residents out from quarantine, into an open area. Some residents were really getting tired of not being able to go out.”

The community fed residents expressly through room service at the height of the lockdown. Though they now offer restricted in-person dining that includes reservations, health screenings and limited seating, some residents still eat most of their meals away from groups.

Duet Hospitality purchased a lightly used truck that came wrapped and fully equipped.

Rachel Bell, director of communications at Morrison Living, says the food truck not only gives residents an excuse to get outside and engage with each other, it gives Duet “the versatility of being able to provide a new menu each time the truck rolls around.” They also use the truck at events for prospective residents and as a tool for recruiting young chefs.

The truck is scheduled at one facility or another about twice a month. Now that life has settled into a new rhythm at the community, Duet is open to scheduling events more often. They’ve found that it’s a respite for both residents and staff.

“They absolutely love it,” says James Kleiber, system director at Morrison Living. “They don’t want us to shut it down at all this winter if we can avoid it.” In fact, the truck will operate in all but the coldest months, when they’ll winterize it so the equipment doesn’t get damaged. Between events, they store the truck on-site at one of the communites.

The food truck functions just like any other venue. Meal payment depends on the level of service: meals are included for residents with all-inclusive care and operate on a declining balance for others. Staff and visiting family members pay for meals directly, as they would at any retail food truck.

Photo: The Duet Hospitality food truck came fully equipped and can fit up to five cooks for quick-paced operations.

Though Duet Hospitality researched options to purchase a new truck, they ended up purchasing a used one, already wrapped and fully equipped. (They’ll upgrade to a custom, branded wrap in the spring.) It came with a three-section sink, two reach-in coolers, one reach-in freezer, a roll-top deli case for food preparation and cold hold applications, a 48-inch flat-top griddle, two deep-fat fryers, a steam well, prep table space and shelving. For quick-paced operations, there’s room for as many as four or five cooks at once.

The Duet staff approaches menu creation for the food truck as they do for the other concepts at their facilities: a mix of traditional entrées and high-concept, special-diet options.

“You have to think of how to balance it out,” says Valadez, noting that residents are demanding a higher quality of food. “I’m doing items that are traditional comfort foods and then something a little bit more trendy. I try to balance those out and keep everyone happy.”

Morrison Living says the food truck events are a respite for residents and staff alike. “They absolutely love it,” says Morrison Living system director, James Kleiber.

Communites that request a food truck event choose from a series of suggested menus. These include a Mediterranean street food concept with lamb shawarma or falafel pita with baklava for dessert; a Korean-Asian fusion menu with beer-braised bison tacos or crispy rainbow trout with chipotle peach purée over fry bread; or a Spanish-inspired menu with a choice between a bacon-wrapped hot dog with pico de gallo, avocado and lime crema or vegetarian taquitos with black beans and cumin-spiced sweet potatoes with an optional side of loaded jalapeño fries. They also have an ice cream truck concept that offers vanilla, chocolate, or cookies and cream with a variety of sauces and toppings.

But chefs can do their own thing, too. If they want to come up with their own menu, Kleiber says, “the sky’s the limit.”

Andy Thomas, regional director of operations with Morrison Living, says the food truck fits in with their “fresh, local, innovative” food goals.

"Our goal is to continue to push the envelope, in any way that we can, to really be creative and bring that element of surprise and delight to the residents." He says. "We want to be more unique than anything we’ve ever seen in senior living.

Like senior living facilities across both the United States and Canada, Menno Place in British Columbia has had to take drastic steps to keep its population of some 700 elderly residents safe from the coronavirus for the past five months. The facility’s success in this can be measured by the fact that it has not seen any infections to date.

The changes forced by coronavirus at Menno Place certainly have impacted the meal service, which used to provide a communal main meal in the middle of the day to its 250 independent living residents and two such meals to its 100 assisted living residents. These would take place in dining rooms where the residents could socialize over their food.

Since the coronavirus-imposed lockdown, all meals have been delivered to residents in their rooms. This has, of course, imposed a hardship on residents, who are mostly isolated in their residences, but some relief is coming.

The menu has not had to be adjusted at Menno Place as the SuzyQ carts are able to handle the meals that have traditionally been served in the congregate dining areas.

On July 6, Menno Place intends to start bringing residents to dining rooms once a week so they could have a meal where they sit communally, though that still means one person per table. That’s preferred to plexiglass dividers, which could hamper communicating for seniors who may have hearing issues, says Angela Ross-Fehr, director of dining experience.

“We have five floors, so doing one floor a day Monday through Friday will allow each floor—about 20 persons—to come down to the dining room and we’ll have a regular foodservice for them,” she explains. “Then, after they’ve eaten, we plan to have them stay and we’ll have some recreational activities.”

While one floor gets the communal meal experience, the others will get their usual meals delivered to their residences. That will require the dining staff to do double duty—including monitors to regulate traffic in the elevators (one person at a time only, at least for a start) and wipe down the buttons after each trip—but Ross-Fehr has allocated adequate labor and sees it as more than worth the extra effort.

“The value of this is in getting them out of their rooms at least once a week,” she declares. “I am very excited about it.”

Otherwise, for meal service, the delivered breakfast is more of a snack, usually with a baked good like a muffin and fruit, Ross-Fehr says. “At lunch we come by with our hot food cart and stop at each door. We partner with healthcare aides who move one door ahead of the cart and knock on doors to let them know we’re coming. They also ask the ‘COVID questions’ to make sure they are alright and bring the meal in if the resident can’t. My staff don’t go in the rooms.”

Delivered meals replaced communal meal service when the coronavirus forced restrictions on congregating in dining rooms.

The meals are all in disposable servingware, so there is nothing to retrieve afterwards.

“Early on, we tried just splitting up the residents with half coming at one time to the dining room and the other half at another time, but that had just too many people in elevators, and we weren’t able to keep the social distancing,” Ross-Fehr explains, “so we quickly moved from that to serving meals in their rooms.”

Meal service for continuous care residents is a little more difficult, she adds, because of issues such as dementia that can make patients unaware of the COVID situation and its restrictions, so patients will go to the dining room at mealtimes and expect a meal. The staff has adjusted to this by spacing out the tables there and serving whoever comes. Those who stay in their rooms get their meals there.

“We have not had to change our menus at all because the hot food carts are our normal way of serving,” Ross-Fehr notes. “We can still provide beverage, dessert and salad carts and two [entrée] choices for every meal and that’s beautiful because we have a great menu,” though the facility did have to purchase two extra carts to handle the extra room delivery requirements. The kitchen recently shifted to its summer menu that takes advantage of the fresh locally grown produce, and it puts on special event meals such as barbecues.

While residents can’t attend these in person, “the smells drift up so whole campus knows its barbecue day!” Ross-Fehr says. “Then we just put the food in a hot food cart with prebagged condiments and toppings and take it to their rooms.”

Menno Place sprawls over 11 acres in Abbotsford, located near the U.S. border with Washington state. Independent and assisted living residents live in three multilevel complexes, two with their own kitchens so that meal delivery is accomplished by taking heated food carts up elevators while the third facility does require a short outdoor trip. Menno Place has about 250 independent living, 100 assisted living and 350 continuous care residents.

Two weeks before nationwide guidance came out about social distancing precautions to prevent transmission of coronavirus, Legacy Retirement Communities proactively shut down all dining room operations and transitioned to full room service across its three campuses in Nebraska.

“Our executive team met at 10:30 a.m. one morning and by 4 p.m. we were ready to go 100% room service to all 680 of our residents,” says Robert Darrah, director of dining services. That meant acquiring enough disposable to-go containers and transitioning its evening servers to become food runners, delivering meals as well as taking orders from residents for the next day.

 “We didn't want to disrupt our residents’ lives any more than they already were. They were basically confined to their apartment at that point,” says Darrah, “so we hired additional cooking staff in order to offer our exact dining room menu from A to Z.” During this first stage of shelter in place, the on-site ice cream parlor and all dining rooms were closed, and all buffets, happy hours and special events canceled.

Then in mid-July, under revised guidance from the state board of health, Legacy reopened its assisted living dining rooms by establishing two dining windows with a half hour for sanitizing in between. “The state mandate is that we can operate at 50% capacity, but we are doing more like 38% capacity, which allows us to separate those dining by about eight feet,” says Darrah. “We wanted to get them back in that dining room because a big part of a retirement community is the social aspect and being in your apartment for 180 days is not good.”

Photo: To further combat menu fatigue, Darrah’s team developed an additional menu of seven entrees that are only available via room service. “It takes a little pressure off of the food service stations in the hallways,” he says.

Meanwhile, Legacy’s independent living dining halls, which can seat upward of 220, remain closed. “We’re in a holding pattern now to make sure COVID-19 levels aren’t spiking locally,” says Darrah. Eventually they hope to have two dinner seatings a night capped at 50 residents and offer independent living residents the chance to dine in-person up to three times a week to give everyone a chance.

In the meantime, the team has transitioned from room service for these independent living residents to food stations on each floor every night. Residents can socially distance in line and be served everything from the salad, entree to dessert. “Again, we offer everything on our regular dining room menu. The food is batched cooked before food runners bring it to each floor where a chef monitors the stations,” says Darrah. “We might have beef tenderloin, seared scallops and stuffed chicken breast, for example, as well as an a la carte menu of 11 different items and classic comfort foods.”

Meals are served in to-go containers that are recyclable as well as microwave-safe so that residents can heat up leftovers. “This style of service went over like gangbusters,” says Darrah.  “The residents were thrilled by this new option.” Residents are also offered treats and beverages via morning and afternoon snack carts, staffed by employees from Legacy’s fitness department who have been unable to hold in-person classes during the pandemic.

With restrictions eased a bit, Legacy has also been able to reopen the ice cream parlor from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day. Servers take residents’ ice cream and coffee orders from the doorway to avoid high-contact stations such as the cappuccino machine. “Twice a week, we also use this space to host a pop-up restaurant to give residents yet another option for their meals,” he says.

Typically, dining staff hosts a big catered event each year to attract potential residents. This year, however, they replaced that in-person event with live cooking demos on their Facebook page. “We demonstrated how to cook lobster bisque using live lobsters, for example,” says Darrah. “The first 50 people to sign up actually get lobster bisque meals delivered to them by our marketing department. We’ve had upwards of 1,000 viewers for each of these livestreams so far.”

As coronavirus concerns forced senior living dining rooms to shutter across the nation, isolation of these residents became a real concern. “When this started, I sat down with my team and said, ‘We can either crawl in a corner and just hope this goes away. Or we can move forward and keep our residents happy,’” Darrah says. “Everyone was a 110% on board and wanted to go above and beyond for these residents because they've lived a long life and they deserve to be treated and pampered.”