Harbor Retirement Associates has spent the final decade altering eating operations to deal with farm-fresh fare in an effort to raised attraction to incoming older adults.
Vero Seashore, Florida-based HRA is specializing in farm-to-table meals and scratch cooking in an effort to “disrupt” the way in which senior residing operators feed and nourish residents whereas selling extra sustainable practices, based on Vice President of Hospitality Anthony Polito. The corporate’s philosophy is that residents of tomorrow need a seamless, restaurant-quality expertise as an alternative of batch cooking and cafeteria-style meals.
“From the recipes themselves, the regional and seasonal menus and the structure and the way in which the menus learn, we actually wish to create that restaurant expertise for our residents and company,” Polito advised Senior Housing Information.
The child boomers are rather more involved with the place their meals originates than their predecessors have been, Polito mentioned. Now maybe greater than ever, residents crave farm-to-table meals with recent components.
Though HRA and Polito have developed the corporate’s eating choices in recent times, they wish to construct on these efforts and proceed to interrupt the mould for brand spanking new incoming residents with new tech and different hospitality-forward practices.
From ‘institutional’ to inviting
Though HRA’s meals program at this time facilities on restaurant-quality fare, that was not all the time the case.
Previous to 2013, HRA’s residents dined purely for sustenance, with one choice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“There was no pushing of the envelope,” Polito mentioned. “It was rather more institutional.”
Greater than a decade in the past, operators have been nonetheless anticipating the needs and desires of the infant boomer era. In 2026, the primary boomers flip 80 – and as they age into senior housing, they’re bringing with them new preferences for extra hospitality-focused eating.
Greater than a decade in the past, HRA started working with dieticians to make its eating menus each nutritious and palatable with quite a lot of decisions. The corporate has not slowed its evolution in eating since. Through the years, residents have turn out to be extra adventurous with their palettes and are coming in with a need to attempt new issues.
HRA is assembly these tastes by packing its communities with extra eating choices for residents, from full-service bars to fine-dining venues serving fruits, greens and herbs culled from native farms and onsite group gardens.
Polito, a restauranteur who traces his culinary roots to serving to his grandmother make tomato sauce on Sundays at age seven, doesn’t need HRA’s eating venues to merely resemble eating places.
“There’s no level actually calling it restaurant-style,” Polito mentioned. “We wish to function eating places inside our communities. And that’s precisely what we do.”
HRA has developed seven eating ideas for its communities, together with a bistro venue known as Counter-Provide to a reservation-only personal setting known as Zest. The corporate additionally has a devoted reminiscence care eating program known as Bridges, which “embodies the assumption that meals is extra than simply sustenance; it’s a bridge to the soul,” based on HRA’s web site.
“Every venue is distinctly totally different,” Polito mentioned. “Whenever you sit and dine at one in every of these eating places … [the] first impression could be, ‘I’m simply eating at a restaurant that simply occurs to reside inside one in every of our senior residing communities.’”
HRA populates menus with meals comparable to wild-caught seafood, recent produce and regionally sourced meats. In response to its web site, the corporate sources fruits and veggies, espresso and different fare from native meals producers comparable to Tractor Beverage, Lipman Farms and Thrive Farmers.
That strategy has helped the operator slash its uncooked meals funds round 20% yearly. Polito credit this to the culinary expertise throughout the corporate and since all the pieces is produced in-house, it cuts out manufacturing premiums from suppliers.
“There’s sort of a false impression that as a result of we’re elevating all this stuff and components that it’s going to it’s going to correlate to a big improve in items and value of products, however it truly works within the reverse method as a result of we’re getting very, very savvy skilled cooks that know easy methods to deal with it and work with these merchandise,” Polito mentioned.
Residents and their households favor eating places like those HRA operates over the outdated method of senior residing eating, based on Polito. HRA options its eating in advertising and marketing and advertises menus and components that “converse to” incoming residents who need extra health-conscious sustainable fare,” he mentioned.
Serving up new ideas
HRA is within the strategy of rolling out new ideas for its communities to maintain the innovation wheel turning. For instance, among the many operator’s latest forthcoming choices is The Cove, a bar idea that focuses on non alcoholic, botanical drinks and alcohol-free completely happy hours the place many various sorts of residents can mingle.
The non-alcoholic drinks are made with components that Polito mentioned promote immune methods or scale back irritation.
“It actually speaks to our residents in our communities, however it additionally speaks to the youthful generations which might be searching for these sorts of alternate options to alcohol,” Polito mentioned. “It’s one thing that I really feel may be very distinctive to us.”
Polito added he’s additionally within the strategy of growing a eating program round components thought to have optimistic results on cognition, comparable to lionsmane mushroom coffees and meals containing omega-3 fatty acids.
Wanting forward, Polito believes know-how use and adoption will drive the corporate’s subsequent chapter. The operator is updating and making adjustments to its level of sale system, which tracks how residents’ “eating {dollars}” are being spent.
“I believe know-how goes to play an enormous half in actually elevating the hospitality expertise, however not solely elevating but additionally creating efficiencies inside our operation to have the ability to present much more companies, and a good greater degree of service to our residents,” Polito mentioned. “I believe that’ll be the subsequent factor that we actually look towards.”
