CATERING Tasting Success
What’s on the menu is a priority for people choosing a care home. Ian Jackson, managing director of the CAP Awards, provides his top tips for achieving gold in care catering.
When residents and their loved ones are asked to rate their care home the standard of the catering on offer is always front of mind. This shouldn’t surprise us, as in our own daily lives we’re quick to complain if we eat out and the experience falls short of our expectations.
Getting catering right in a care home matters. It matters because the nutritional balance of a meal is closely linked to the health of the residents and it matters because delicious food is a source of enjoyment and happiness, a highlight of the day.
At the CAP Awards we assess care home providers on their catering and help them improve the service they provide to residents. So how can care providers deliver personalised, tasty, variable menus day in, day out on a budget?
First, menus must be aligned to resident needs and expectations. Make sure you ask the important questions. What local dishes do the residents like, which comfort foods do they enjoy and how do they usually balance wet and dry dishes?
Consistency of quality is critical. There’s no point in cooking a delicious apple crumble one week if the following week it is unpalatable. This annoys residents and creates a feeling that the catering team doesn’t keep an eye on the detail.
Make sure you have the skills in your catering team to deliver the menus that have been requested. If you don’t get those skills through recognised training schemes, consider setting up in-house training sessions for staff.
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Keep the menus balanced in terms of nutrition, both within individual meals and by service. There needs to be a good balance across the whole day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Avoid repetition by running short menu cycles. No one wants to stare at the same list of foods every day.
Look at your daily food and beverage offer as a whole. Do the different sittings complement each other, what else could you do to create some interest throughout the day? Perhaps create variety with small homemade nibbles (cupcakes and biscuits) during morning and afternoon breaks.
It goes without saying that robust food safety procedures are also vital. Ensure you have Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point data from supplier audits through to control at the food service point – you’re looking to create a complete chain of compliance.
Of course, value your staff. Catering in a care home environment is a tough job so make sure they know they are valued. A great way to do this is to enter awards schemes, such as the CAP, and commit to an annual training scheme so employees are always learning.
In addition, ensure members of the catering team are aware of each other’s roles so that the front and back of house communicate on service needs and expectations and understand the pressures each other face. This will make it much more likely that the kitchen teams get the food out on time and the front of house staff are serving it as expected.
Resident feedback is a must and should be regularly collected via a
number of different routes – verbal, written and electronic. Without this you’re flying blind and you’ll probably only know that your service isn’t up to scratch when someone makes a serious complaint.
In order to create that extra special atmosphere for the residents plan ahead on a rolling 12 month schedule so that key events are mapped out, including anniversaries and birthdays.
Finally, the catering department must develop a good relationship with the other teams within the care home – clinical, care, maintenance, housekeeping and SMT – as no one department can deliver the consistent excellence required without the help of others.
Getting the catering right in a care home is a tough challenge but it can be done. For those who excel the reward will be happy residents, high occupancy rates, dedicated staff and a gold standard reputation for being a care home that really does care.
www.capaward.co.uk - 23 -
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