Optimize Your Healthcare Dining Operation: Tips to Know

Healthcare facilities have continued to modernize and evolve over the years, which means best practices have also changed. Seating, plating, dinnerware, menuing and presentation, staff training—it all looks a little bit different today. Getting each of these areas right is essential to creating an environment that is welcoming and results in high satisfaction scores by patients, staff, and visitors alike.

So how do you keep up with it? Here’s a quick primer on best practices to make sure your healthcare operation is meeting the needs of all kinds of visitors. While every operation may be a little different, consider this your starting place.

Dining area design

The norm for many healthcare dining operations today is a food hall model with a variety of dining options. Think of a wide-ranging modern food hall with options for bowls, sandwiches, sushi, salads, plated specials, etc. That creates a dynamic space where diners can select the options that fit their own preferences, switching it up from meal to meal or day to day to prevent dining fatigue.

Lancaster General Hospital, in Pennsylvania, transformed their usual collection of dining options (cafeteria, coffee kiosk, etc.) into Central Table Eatery, a more food-forward and inviting space with twelve different dining concepts, featuring everything from sushi to pizza to burgers (the latter two are the two most popular options—clearly comfort foods are still key in healthcare).¹

The organization’s CEO says the transformation has increased retail sales by 67%, while check counts have grown 32%, boosting the overall well-being of staff, patients, and visitors alike.¹

Food hall-style arrangements also improve flow, preventing a single cafeteria serving line from backing up, allowing customers to create multiple lines across the wide range of stations and to choose a smaller line if they are in a hurry, creating a more efficient system.² Check out Simplot's station dining options for inspiration.

Seating

Having numerous options isn’t just the norm where customers order food, it’s also a best practice for seating areas. Incorporating many different types of seating arrangements, including large tables, small booths, bars with stools, and even outdoor seating allows diners to choose the option that works best for them, whether that’s a quiet meal to get some work done, a larger meal with friends or family, or a chance to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.²

Designer Yi Belanger told Healthcare Design magazine that she thinks in “zones” with differentiated spaces for “serving, dining, lounging, and personal space,” preferring “movable furniture and modular systems that can be transformed” depending on the need and time of day.²

Menuing

Healthcare operations are unique in the wide range of dietary requirements they need to accommodate. For many healthcare operators, it helps to work backward: first identify all patient dietary requirements, then write the menu. Consider these:

• Vegetarian

• Vegan

• Ethnic Diets

• Diabetes

• Renal Diets

• High/Low Fiber

• High Protein

• High Energy

• Oral Nutritional Supplements

• Gluten-Free/Wheat-Free

• Lactose-Free/Low Lactose

• Reduced Salt

• Potassium

• Phosphates

Once you have identified which dietary requirements you need to support, you can create a menu that can accommodate them with the right mix of dishes, ingredients, and easy tweaks.

Plates and drinkware

While most operators think of the dinnerware, smallware, drinkware, etc. in terms of “form before function,” preferring options that fit the brand, for a healthcare operator the decisions can be more impactful for patients, residents, and other customers. Carol Klein, Tabletop Analyst for Gordon Food Service, says, “A red plate can help foods—especially light-colored foods like poultry, pork, potatoes, and corn—stand out.” That’s particularly important for patients with vision or depth-perception issues.³

She says plates with rimmed or raised edges also help diners in hospitality, as they allow patients and residents to more easily scoop up their food. Similarly, lightweight and easy-to-hold durable drinkware options that won’t break easily—there are many options available today that have a glass-like look to them—can ensure a simple spill doesn’t become a safety issue.³

Food presentation

Again, presentation in healthcare foodservice isn’t just about aesthetics, though of course every diner wants food that looks appetizing, vibrant, and fresh. However, it’s important to offer those options within the dietary needs of the patients or residents. For those on a puréed diet, for instance, molding the blended food into the shape of the original ingredient (blended carrot molded into the shape of a carrot, for instance) makes it not only more visually appetizing, but also provides a comforting, familiar look.

These types of adjustments to the presentation can have tangible health impacts. According to some research, enhanced plating presentations can even “increase food intake, leading to improved care outcomes.”³

Staff training

While there are a lot of best practices in healthcare dining, there may be no more important factor than staff training. Today’s staff training programs are modern and wide-ranging, taking into account the diverse set of needs that visitors, patients, and residents may have. Cultural factors may influence how and what someone eats, for instance, while a well-trained staff member can ensure that patient or resident dietary needs are being met—and that potential problems are caught early.

More importantly, that little bit of hospitality that comes from a well-trained staff member can be the support someone may need during a trying time. That includes all staff members, from those working the lines to cashiers to managers and beyond. It only takes one bad hospitality experience to sour a patient or visitor’s perspective, which can ultimately impact a hospital’s ratings overall.

¹ Hamilton Beach, Get Inspired by the Best New Concepts in Healthcare Foodservice, October 2023
² Healthcare Design, Good Taste: Designing Healthcare Dining Spaces, June 2015
³ Gordon Food Service, Perfect Plating Creates a Positive Healthcare Dining Experience