How Lifespark, Prs, The Springs Living Budget For More Creativity In Senior Living Dining

The baby boomers desire toothsome, fresh food. Senior living chefs and dining teams have to constantly innovate to serve them, and it’s not an easy feat from a budgeting perspective.

Many operators, including Pacific Retirement Services and The Springs Living, don’t have a dedicated line item to experimentation or innovation, and instead seek flexibility in their budgets to allow for creativity. As global turmoil related to the Iran War and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sends oil and therefore food farming and transportation prices higher, senior living operators must be especially careful in what they spend their funds on.

The Springs Living specifically allocates more money toward recruiting chefs to bring their experiences to the communities, particularly those from outside the senior living industry. Striving for innovative kitchens is something Director of Culinary Experience Jake Johnson said he has done throughout his career and he gives new chefs the tools to succeed in senior living.

“I find it’s easier to hire really talented chefs and teach them the senior housing instead of hiring [from] senior housing and teach them how to be really good chefs,” Johnson said.

St. Louis, Minnesota-based Lifespark is meeting in late April to come up with between 10 and 15 new dishes to roll out across the company for the year. Rather than focusing strictly on budgeting for new kinds of dishes, Culinary Operations Manager Joshua Ordorff said Lifespark is putting that money toward quality ingredients that its teams can work with.

Instead, culinary teams are relying more on customer satisfaction rather than finances when it comes to innovating the menu.

“If we can hit quality and we can hit customer satisfaction, budgets fall in line,” Johnson said. “We believe in quality. Budgets figure themselves out.”

Budgeting for creativity

Pacific Retirement Services bakes experimenting with new dishes and meals into community budgets as a general expense. According to Todd Albert, vice president of culinary services at Pacific Retirement Services, that is so chefs and culinary teams are “razor focused on creativity and doing new things” rather than worrying about making the budget work.

Building that flexibility into the community dining budget helps alleviate concerns they might have.

“When it comes to innovation, of course, we want them to control the budgets for operational reasons,” he said. “But at the same time, when they’re innovating, when they’re creating, when they’re developing new menus, we don’t want them to make the financial piece a priority. We want the food quality and the residents to be the priority.”

Roughly 20% to 30% of a typical PRS community’s dining budget is set aside for expenses, allowing chefs more room to come up with new dishes for residents. The company also stores between 10,000 and 12,000 recipes for teams to work with. Pacific Retirement Services’ average raw food cost is about $6 to $7 per plate on the low end to $10 per plate at its high-end communities.

If community budget costs decline, Albert said he asks if the decision stemmed from simple expense control or for food quality reasons.

“We don’t want it to be because of the expenses. It really comes down to the culture itself, and what’s priority,” he said. “For us, it’s all about quality and the residents’ experience.”

To help new menu items succeed, The Springs Living encourages chefs to create connections with residents. For example, one of its communities with residents who preferred a more meat-and-potatoes heavy menu introduced sushi during one of its monthly themed banquets. Because of the trust the chef had built with residents, they embraced the new food and now it’s a regular special in the community.

Culinary teams also have to keep regional preferences in mind when sourcing ingredients and planning meals, particularly when it comes to sourcing quality ingredients. What might work for one community on the west coast may not work as well in the Midwest, and according to Albert, culinary teams are in constant communication with each other across the company about how they make dishes succeed.

In some instances, kitchens are trying ways to offset some of the expenses associated with trying new menus. For Lifespark, that takes the form of either bistros or brunches that family members come in and pay to dine at. While it may not generate revenue, many times they nearly break even, which helps with food costs, Ordorff said.

Likes and dislikes

Not every new dish is received well by residents. For The Springs Living, it balances having comfort menu items as part of its daily offerings while marketing offerings to younger residents and family members who are more aware of trends and lifestyle menus. In Oregon, plant-based grain bowls have been wildly popular amongst its communities, but when the concept was brought to its Minnesota communities, it was deemed unsuccessful, Johnson said.

Instead of abandoning the concept entirely, Johnson said there were small changes over time to make residents more accustomed to them, such as adding in weekly rotating salads and over time modifying them by slowly adding in grains and animal protein before making the switch to plant-based proteins.

“We took baby steps, but now we’re where we need to be,” Johnson said.

Lifespark plans its menus for five week cycles, with new dishes encouraged to be used for at least one cycle. In the instances when something isn’t well received by residents, Ordorff said staff have the leeway to make changes before being sent to the corporate office for approval. Between 25% and 30% of the time, there are at least one or two changes to a menu cycle across the company, he added.

“We know all buildings are not the same,” Ordorff said. “The residents of different locations have different likes and dislikes … We’re not robots. There’s got to be some give, but there are stipulations.”

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