MENU & FLAVORS Leaders in Culinary Share Lessons Learned and Ideas for the Future
SIMPLE AND SOPHISTICATED “We continue to focus on the center of the plate, putting high quality entrees out that offer a variety of choices,” says Juniper Communities’ regional culinary director Kris Kishbaugh. “We are serving everything from your traditional comfort meals like meatloaf and country fried steaks to more upscale offerings such as pan-seared scallops with olive tapenade.”
COMFORT FOODS REBOUND “Comfort foods have been so fundamental to our approach to dining during the pan- demic. We’ve really leaned into this concept to help our residents (and ourselves) through these challenging times,” says Nick Olla, Merrill Gardens vice president of special projects. “Food has such a power to evoke memo-
ries of people and places that can seem so remote during times such as these.”
DINING LOCAL Pandemic restrictions meant residents might have missed dining out in favorite local res- taurants—and that those restaurants were suffering from the drop in business. Juniper Communities found an ingenious way to address this, with its Suite Eats program, an “upscale room service option.” “This program was created at the height
of the pandemic to offer residents local fare that can be found at our local restaurants,” says Juniper’s Kishbaugh.
NO PROMISES, NO SURPRISES “Food supply-chain challenges and food manufacturing slowdowns forced us to get much more general on our menu verbiage,” says Guy Hemond, vice president, culinary, dining experience, and procurement logis- tics at Benchmark. “We would typically list on the menu a
variety of French fries, for example: curly fries, waffle fries, steak fries. On our current menu series, we have listed simply ‘fries,’ in response to the uncertainty of availability of specific product lines.”
Merrill Gardens residents share a moment.
FRESH IS KING “Fresh is always king!” says Mike Lewis, senior director of culinary operations at Spectrum Retirement Communities, LLC. “The biggest menu trend for 2022 for us is smaller menus done right with a focus on quality, not necessarily quantity. We are moving away from excessive variety and larger menus; concentrating more on do- ing a smaller core menu focused on ease of execution.” “Our culinary philosophy is simple foods
done right, using fresh, high-quality ingre- dients and variety that residents know and love. We want food that is approachable. The culinary experience doesn't need to be over-thought. Comfort foods they grew up on, with a healthy twist. I call them ‘fast balls down the middle’—simple, and done right.”
CONSISTENT QUALITY “We like the idea of focusing on fewer items and making them fantastic quality,” says Merrill Gardens’ Nick Olla. “This is especially true for our Truewood by Merrill middle-market brand. Excessive customiza- tion and trying to be everything to every- body is expensive and difficult to offer with the degree of consistency that is needed.”
PARTNERING FOR VARIETY:
“We continue to build new partnerships weekly at our communities with local wineries and breweries to offer our residents more experiences from the outside community,” says Juniper Communities’ regional culinary director Kris Kishbaugh. “We are also starting to partner with local culinary schools for externships in our New Jersey, Texas, and Pennsylvania communities.”
MARCH/APRIL 2022
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