Voices: carmen Fronczak, chief Revenue Officer, Friendship Village Senior Services, And president of fv Ventures

This article is sponsored by FV Ventures. For many older adults, the need for support begins well before a move into senior living ever feels necessary. That creates a major opportunity for operators to build relationships earlier, deliver value sooner, and rethink how they serve the aging journey beyond their physical walls. In this Voices interview, Carmen Fronczak, Chief Revenue Officer at Friendship Village Senior Services, and President of FV Ventures, shares the vision behind STAY, how the app helps extend support to older adults who are not ready to move, and what will separate senior living organizations that build meaningful connections earlier from those still relying on a more traditional model.

Senior Housing News: Can you start by telling us what problem you were trying to solve when you created STAY? Walk us through the journey from idea to the launch.

Carmen Fronczak: STAY was created because we had launched membership programs for our waitlist, and we were also launching a new business called Senior Concierge. We wanted to tech-enable both of those efforts and find a better way to serve seniors in their homes, not only through our live concierge program, but also through a custom-built app.

For context, I’m Chief Revenue Officer for Friendship Village Senior Services, which is an operator in St. Louis with two large life plan communities offering life care. I’m also president of FV Ventures, which is the part of our company focused on investing back into ourselves through technology, services, new locations and other opportunities.

That operator perspective is important because STAY really came out of our own need. We had a healthy waitlist, and a couple of years ago we decided to offer memberships to seniors who were waiting to move into Friendship Village. Once we did that, we knew we wanted technology to help power that program.

So we really built STAY for Friendship Village first. It was created for our company, our members and the seniors we wanted to continue serving before they moved in. But as it evolved, we realized it could solve a broader problem for senior living operators.

Today, STAY is doing what we originally built it to do, but it has also become something bigger. It is really the first prospect engagement tool in the senior living industry, giving operators a way to reach prospective residents much earlier and much higher in the funnel than they have been able to in the past.

Can you share how the STAY App helps extend the support of a senior living community to older adults who aren’t ready to move?

The STAY App gives operators a way to offer something valuable to prospective residents and to older adults living in the local community around their bricks and mortar. It allows an operator to extend its brand, its name and its support beyond the physical campus.

For seniors, the app includes tools that are useful while they are still living at home. They can connect with a trusted contact every day, receive fraud and scam alerts, use a sophisticated AI assistant and access an IT help desk for everyday technology issues. That could be something as simple as trouble with a remote or another device in the home.

For operators, it becomes a way to build trust earlier with people who may want to move in later. It gives them something practical and helpful to offer before a senior is ready for a larger decision.

It can also support the broader service lines many operators already have. If an organization offers home health, hospice, private duty, concierge services or other ancillary services, STAY can help create earlier connections to those businesses and drive downstream revenue sooner.

What does life look like for a senior before STAY versus after, and what do you think matters most to the people actually using it?

For seniors using STAY, I think life can feel safer, more secure, more connected and more independent. It gives them a social outlet, which is a very important piece.

One of the features of STAY is that operators can curate social experiences and bring seniors together in a safe environment around shared interests. For us, that might mean hosting morning coffee on a Wednesday at a local coffee shop and sending a message to the seniors connected with us so they can come together. For another operator, it might mean organizing a trip to a winery and inviting people to meet at a certain time and go together.

That social piece is huge. But the daily connection is also very meaningful. A senior can check in with a loved one each day, so instead of the adult daughter always calling to check on mom, mom can automatically send that check-in to her daughter. That is fantastic for families.

For operators like us, STAY also includes premium features that allow seniors to order things like meals, home repair or transportation. So for the person using it, the app helps them feel safer, more connected and more secure. It also helps them stay at home longer than they otherwise might have.

What excites you most about this moment in time for older adults and technology, and why do you think we’re finally starting to get it “right”?

I think we are getting to the point where seniors are much more accepting of technology, and that is very exciting to me. We are crossing a bridge. Some of the residents who live in our communities today are still a little anxious about technology, but our future residents are embracing it much more.

With STAY, we spent a lot of time understanding what was important to seniors. We did market research to understand what features they actually wanted, so I think offering them something useful, easy to use and built around what they value is incredibly important.

The technology will continue to iterate and get better over time. Hopefully, it will keep growing and offering more features. But as an operator, I am really excited to have something of value that we can give to a prospect every time we engage with them.

Instead of just handing someone a brochure, we are handing them a free app. That matters because it is not just marketing material. It is something free that is actually useful to them.

How do you see the STAY App transforming the relationship between senior living communities and the people they serve?

For senior living communities, I think STAY is one of the best ways to get outside of our walls.

Operators are all trying to find ways to diversify revenue and extend their reach beyond the physical campus. STAY gives communities a practical way to do that. It allows an operator to extend its brand, build trust and create new opportunities for revenue in ways they may not have had before.

More importantly, it creates a different kind of connection with seniors. It gives communities a way to engage people earlier, support them while they are still living at home and build a relationship before they are ready to move in.

I really think it is an opportunity for senior living communities to connect with seniors in a way we have not been able to before.

What do you hope the future of the STAY App will hold, and how will you know when it’s truly making a difference?

I hope the future of STAY is one where it is in millions of seniors’ homes across the country. We know the number of people turning 65 each day continues to grow, and more seniors want to stay where they are for as long as they can.

For me, making a difference means helping seniors live where they want to live, which is honestly at home for as long as possible. If STAY can extend that time, make it easier for them to be successful at home and help them stay connected rather than isolated, then it is doing what we built it to do.

I also think there is a meaningful future for operators. When a senior uses the app, there is an opportunity for the senior living community they are connected with to stay visible and continue building that relationship. So it supports the senior, but it also gives operators a new way to engage people earlier and create value beyond the campus.

We are beginning to build more direct-to-consumer awareness in the markets where STAY is available. The goal is to create something that seniors and families find useful on its own, while also helping communities become a more active and trusted presence in the lives of older adults before they are ready to move.

How can a resident-facing app create value for operators beyond convenience, particularly when it comes to engagement, visibility and new revenue opportunities?

One of the big benefits for operators, especially early adopters, is visibility. In the cities where we are launching STAY, we are also running a strong direct-to-consumer digital campaign that can help drive consumers and prospective residents back to the participating senior living communities.

Once a prospective resident signs up for the STAY App and connects to a specific community, that relationship continues inside the app. Every time that senior opens it, the community stays visible. The home screen can highlight features and services from that operator, so in a way, it becomes a daily touchpoint between the senior and the community.

That is valuable because it keeps the operator’s brand in front of someone before they are ready to move. It creates familiarity, builds trust over time and gives the community a reason to stay connected in a useful way.

Depending on what the operator decides to offer, it can also create new revenue opportunities. For example, at Friendship Village, we have a trusted provider network through our Senior Concierge service. If someone uses the app to order meals, rides, house cleaning or home repair, it creates a way for us to support that senior while also generating revenue we would not have had in the past.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

STAY partners with senior living communities to help them reach prospective and future residents earlier while supporting older adults who want to remain independent at home. By combining hands-on expertise with trusted collaboration, STAY helps providers strengthen resident well-being, extend services beyond the campus and improve operational performance. To learn more, visit stayapp.com or seniorcstl.com.

The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@wtwhmedia.com.

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