3 Tips For Getting The Food You Want When Working With A Food Service Management Company

If you are in charge for the food for a senior living center, it is your job to communicate and work together effectively with the food service management services that are in charge of providing the food for the senior living center. Here are a few tips that will help ensure that you get the food that your residents want when contracting out food service management services:

#1 Create Meals That Use The Same Ingredients

One of the challenges of getting the food you want when contracting with a food service management company involves creating meals that complement one another. Sit down and work together with the food service company to create a menu of unique food items that build upon one another. For example, a soup that uses celery, onions, carrots, potatoes, and beef followed by a stir-fry that includes carrots, onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms and then a dinner of beef, mashed potatoes, and baked carrots.

Create meals that use ingredients from the previous meal. Reusing ingredients from one meal to the next is an effective way to ensure that your residents get the meals they want while staying within your food budget. It will also help the food management company more effectively purchase supplies. 

#2 Get Your Residents' Feedback

Next, make sure that you include your residents in the food process. At the end of each week, survey the residents and find out what they thought of the quality of the food. This will allow you to find out if they really loved the soup and the stir-fry, but didn't care for the meat and potatoes. Getting this feedback right away will allow you to make changes to the menu and let the food service company know in a timely manner if your residents don't like the way that the food is prepared. You will get much better service from the food management company if you are providing them with weekly feedback on the quality of the food that they serve at your senior center.

Be sure to get ideas from the residents at your senior center about what they would like to eat as well. They may get tired of eating the same thing all the time, and they may have unique tastes from years of living that you may not think about. Catering to the senior's special requests will help them be a lot more satisfied with the food they are getting.