Civitas Rewrites Recipe for Senior Living Dining Services

Civitas Senior Living has overhauled its dining program and shuffled culinary roles earlier this year to prepare for the senior living customer of tomorrow.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based senior living operator intentionally rebuilt its dining program from the ground-up with a focus on better resident experiences.The dining refresh included training staff to bring more hospitality-forward skills into operations. That meant changing staff roles, defining new roles for both front-of-house and kitchen staff.

While the industry has pushed to bring more restaurant-style dining experiences to today’s senior living residents, Civitas Co-Founder and Chief Program Officer Misti Powell said the operator wanted to not just mimic restaurants, but compete with them for top-level staff and the quality of the food that ends up on residents’ plates.

“The biggest thing that we had to do was scrap everything that we’ve ever previously done,” Powell told Senior Housing News. “We reimagined what it would be like if you were a resident coming into our communities.”

With an emphasis on “greeting, warmth and presence,” Civitas leaders brought new hospitality training to staff to help spur this shift from old dining practices. That also meant training employees in new ways, with standardized and visual aides for staff less familiar than others with restaurant experience.

New staff training is an easy avenue for senior living operators to make changes across their organization regardless of department, according to Civitas Vice President of Food and Beverage Taylor Richey.

“You have to be committed to breaking away from ‘we’ve always done it that way,’” Richey said. “Staying in that mindset keeps you in a comfortable echo chamber—and we weren’t willing to do that. Do the free stuff well: smile, greet people, and bring genuine hospitality.”

Today, these foundational changes to the company’s dining program have paid off as Civitas now reports the lowest company turnover across its organization from food and beverage folks calling it quits, according to Powell. She added that the company’s dining overhaul helped in-part to propel Civitas’ occupancy from the “high” 80th percentile to over 90% average occupancy today. Dining changes additionally helped improve sales and marketing efforts for visiting prospective residents, Powell said.

“We had to make sure that we weren’t just talking the talk, but also executing in a way that helps us meet the future demand of what older adults expect in dining at their communities,” Powell added.

Richey has led Civitas’ culinary leaders as they have turned their vision to transform culinary into a reality with new menu redesigns, from new graphic design elements for physical and electronic menus. They also added new dishes and flavors into the community’s monthly menus to give residents a wider array of choices.

Menus at the company’s larger communities now include 15 entree options that chefs change every 90 days. The menu includes lunch and dinner specials with an emphasis on using fresh produce and other ingredients, Richey said.

Civitas’ seasonal menus help residents “feel the change” at hand. Richey developed menus based on regional tastes and including vegetarian, vegan and meals that eschew certain allergens., he said.

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Through these dining changes, Citivas now creates “micro-revenue opportunities” such as pop-up dining events for friends and families of residents. Other thematic elements include chef cooking demonstrations, weekly events and family nights to “bring the kitchen and stories to life,” Richey said.

Civitas also as part of its dining refresh held “menu matters” meetings with culinary teams while taking resident feedback into consideration for making changes to dishes or seasonal menus. Civitas uses software to send dining information to clinical teams to track wellness goals and overall resident health more closely in order to make these changes accessible to residents in higher-acuity settings.

In order to support all these changes, Civitas invested for renovations and CapEx projects to include counter refrigeration, order-fire line layouts, salad bars and bistros in independent living settings along with new printed menus.

In the future, the company’s dining program could also grow to include poolside menu and mocktail services while expanding regional partnerships with hydroponic produce farmers, boutique bakeries and artisan coffee roasters, Richey said.

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