3 Future of Cuisine at Senior Living

The food is raved about at Chateau Retirement in Washington, unusual for senior living communities. What makes Chateau different and have such great resident feedback? Chateau Retirement's Vice President Culinary Services Tom Wichert and Sherrelle Collingridge, Culinary Service Director at Chateau Bothell Landing, join Suzanne Newman on the Answers for Elders podcast.

How do Tom and Sherrelle see culinary services evolving in the future? Sherrelle says, "It will continue to focus on individual personalization. Every every ten years or so, we think this is going be the wave of the really healthy people. It hasn't quite happened yet. They say they want to be healthy, but when fried chicken is on the menu, we sell 90% of those specials. But other things, the gluten-, dairy-free, more of a global cuisine. It's no longer just about like American Chinese. They'll do Indian food, Mexican, Thai, and Vietnamese, and different cultures that we get a chance to play with. And our job is somewhat to educate the residents, to expose them to things that they maybe never had before. And they get annoyed sometimes, and ask, 'why don't you just call this sauce something simpler?' I'm like, 'Because this is what it's called.' So if you go to a restaurant now, you know what an airline chicken is now. You know what a beurre blanc is, because you got it and you can order it."

Tom adds, "I think eating later is going to be a thing... We will get residents come in that want specifics things and have specific needs, so we will will cater to that as best we can. We really haven't had the really big push for some of the specialty things, but I think just an open variety of different kinds of things is happening. As far as individualizing goes, can you put something Thai on, or I saw this, or here's the recipe for this, could you do that for me, could you make that? Could you make this for grandma?"

All together, well over 100 employees in the culinary. Tom says, "The hiring process is so important, getting the right people, and about the young kids, teenagers, for a lot of them it's their first job. The main thing with them is getting the right attitude. We can train them, do anything to serve. So getting the right person in there, that wants to be there. Residents love younger staff. They always have, because I think that to them that's that's the age of their grandparents."

How does the restaurant style work at Chateau? Tom says, "I think the intensity of that, along with the caring that we do for the residents, comes together and all works really well. The staff is fantastic, and they care about the residents. We really care, and we really want to do the best for the residents. Whatever the resident wants, we're going to do our best to it."

Sherrelle says, "I don't want to overuse the term family, but I spend more time with my dining room managers than I do my own kids, who are now grown up and in their twenties now. But they're my work kids, they're my frontline staff as well. So I'm kind of pouring into those guys, so they can pour into the servers and the residents, it all kind of flows together."

Chateau Retirement provides independent living, assisted living, and memory care services. They have been locally owned and family operated for more than 25 years. Chateau Retirement has three communities in Washington's Seattle/Puget Sound area: Chateau Pacific in Lynnwood, Bothell Landing in Bothell, and Chateau Valley Center in Renton. Visit them online or call 800.960.1944. Visit Chateau's specialist page on Answers for Elders.

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