This text is sponsored by Gordon Meals Service. This text is predicated on a Senior Housing Information dialogue with Eric Johnson, the Vice President of Culinary Providers at Trilogy Well being Providers, Krista Zvoch, the Director of Diet at Storypoint Group, and Barb Minger, RD at Gordon Meals Service. This dialogue happened on Could seventeenth, 2024 on the Your Meals, Your Story session for the DISHED convention. The article under has been edited for size and readability.
Barb Minger: Being a differentiator within the market is essential with the intention to construct census, and we all know that competitors is excessive. Now we have operators right here to supply perception on branding their eating program.
Eric Johnson: I’ve been with Trilogy for about six years. I didn’t come from a senior dwelling or healthcare background, and whereas that was difficult, it additionally gave me the chance to ask a whole lot of questions of issues that I simply didn’t know, and what we’ll undergo here’s a results of a few of these questions.
Krista Zvoch: I’m a registered dietitian, and I’ve been with StoryPoint Group for occurring 4 years now. Previous to this, I had no senior dwelling expertise apart from working at PACE. Our firm, after I began, had perhaps 25 communities. We’re now at about 120, and projected progress is 200 by the tip of the yr. These 4 years have been a giant studying curve for me as nicely, however, identical as Eric right here, I used to be pushed to ask all of the questions, and I nonetheless am.
Minger: Eric, inform us what branding a eating program means to you.
Johnson: Once more, after I got here into the group, we already had a really stable popularity of high quality meals, and it was very useful available in the market. One factor that I observed was the id of the culinary workforce. To start with, we labored on eliminating the phrase “dietary” as a lot as we are able to from the lexicon. It appears small, however we needed to raise the worker expertise. Trilogy is a really employee-first firm. As I regarded on the branding, so to talk, the very first thing that we needed to do was to assist that workforce have a extra clear id.
We got here up with a emblem and the tagline of “Flavorful Residing.” We don’t market this Culinary Providers model, however it was extra actually to assist the culinary groups contained in the buildings have an id. Then, together with that, we developed a mission assertion for our workforce.
We’re divided into 11 divisions in our footprint, so every of these has a divisional help, and in order that help mission assertion is our workforce’s mission to help our culinary staff. We went by a gaggle train and requested 4 questions. “Who’re we? Why are we right here? What’s most essential to us? What’s least essential to us?” From all these conversations, you see the solutions to the primary three questions in our mission assertion, and we took what was least essential to us and set that to the aspect.
Minger: Krista, you’re in a unique a part of your journey at StoryPoint, so what’s that?
Zvoch: Once I got here in 4 years in the past, the corporate had carried out a whole lot of work figuring out their culinary core requirements. They led to a basis of a really nutritious diet. We’re now at present branding ourselves with reference to extra of that vitamin philosophy. We’re on the very early levels of this, so what branding has meant to us up to now is asking ourselves who we’re, determining what sort of elements we wish to use, what sort of recipes, what’s our menu combine in relation to meals, vitamin, and wellness?
Our advertising workforce has our story at a sure stage, and now we’re going to get an exterior model for that, and our objective and our imaginative and prescient is that anybody can have a look at that model and know, “Hey, that’s that StoryPoint group, and I do know that they’re deeply dedicated to the sort of menus they put on the market regarding the connection between meals and well being and wellness. They obsess over it.” That’s the purpose we wish to get to and make that constant amongst our communities.
Mission-wise, it’s not totally baked out, however finally it’s like we’re utilizing essentially the most present analysis in vitamin science. We imagine meals is drugs. Our mission is to supply these choices to our residents.
Minger: Has there been any encounter of resistance by your groups in such a a branding program, attempting to get that continuity? Is there any suggestions from nursing, or different departments?
Johnson: We haven’t skilled any resistance, the intention of making that mission assertion was to make clear extra clearly precisely what it’s that the culinary workforce brings to the resident expertise. Flavorful Stability is you could’t drive individuals to eat wholesome and we definitely don’t wish to try this, particularly our residents, we don’t wish to take any decisions away.
What we did was we took a have a look at our total cycle menu and evaluated it based mostly on sure dietary standards that our scientific vitamin workforce knew.
By an extended course of, we rewrote each recipe and the strategy was to do away with components and preservatives that brought on disagreeable signs.
Minger: Eric, are you able to discuss that as nicely?
Johnson: Now we have all of our campuses on board with this, 131 buildings in 5 states, you’ll see that time period flavorful, however this can be a clarification of the significance of how meals ought to search for our interval residents.
When you put your self within the thoughts of a resident who’s on a pureed weight loss program, they’re at a degree the place they’re not dwelling in their very own dwelling, their decisions of what they’ll do is much less, their well being has gotten to some extent the place they’re consuming pureed meals, so psychologically, they’re not in a great house, and after we put unrecognizable and unappetizing meals in entrance of them, they’re a lot much less more likely to eat it. Lengthy story brief, we educated all of our cooks on some actually robust methods.
The time period Flavorful Dignity actually does hold it on the entrance of thoughts of the employees that we wish to be sure that these residents are handled with as a lot dignity as potential. It’s fairly exceptional what occurs when the emotional response that you just get from a resident after they put one thing in entrance of them that’s recognizable, it can deliver tears to your eyes.
Minger: Krista, identical for you, by way of your interdisciplinary workforce getting concerned on this, after which the place you’re at this level.
Zvoch: A few years in the past, we outlined our reminiscence care eating strategy. In doing that, I used to be actually diving into that MIND weight loss program analysis, and including these recipes into our communities. We labored with our reminiscence care coordinators to include a brand new service type together with the recipes. The resident suggestions was incredible. Initially, the cooks didn’t imagine the residents would really like it.
We requested them to provide it a shot and later did a survey with our advertising workforce, with 100% of our cooks, they usually all mentioned the overwhelming majority of their residents liked the number of greens, liked the totally different preparation methods of the greens.So we pulled collectively a workforce. Finally, we decided that most of the residents wish to eat wholesome, they usually need it to be straightforward for them.
Minger: How do you each really feel that this impacts your census, and what suggestions do you get from potential and present residents?
Johnson: We ensure that our enterprise growth workforce can reply the questions and direct clients to the Flavorful Dignity or Stability program.
We audit our buildings every quarter with sure requirements round Flavorful Stability and Flavorful Dignity in order that we hold that consistency within the branding internally.
Zvoch: Our gross sales workforce is reaching out to me nonstop about when the advertising supplies are going to be prepared. I’m now included in all of their month-to-month calls to simply assist them navigate.
Minger: How are you each protecting the model on the forefront of what you do with rising prices and budgets? Is that this serving to in any means?
Johnson: Once you convert a kitchen from a whole lot of comfort meals to meals in its pure state, the meals’s cheaper. That’s helped us, over the previous few years, to essentially mitigate the rise in prices. We’ve additionally put a excessive emphasis on working with Gordon Meals and HPS.
Zvoch: It’s an important a part of the dialog, a whole lot of the culinary individuals in our neighborhoods instantly are like, “Oh, that’s going to price extra.” We’ve labored actually laborious with Gordon’s during the last yr to lock down our order information. We’re now partnering with DSSI in that respect, and tapping into GFS and HPS, our GPO, to establish reporting instruments. That cash that we’re saving, then, may be capable to go into some cool tasks which can be up and coming.
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