Brookdale Senior Living received a 2012 Best of the Best Award for its innovative Menu Manager 8.0 program. The web-based application allows communities to plan seasonal, high quality meals that can easily be modified to suit residents’ dietary restrictions and personal preferences.
ALFA 2012 Best of the Best Winner
Nearly 20 years ago, when Brookdale Senior Living’s predecessor company had just four communities, the head of dining services shopped around for software to help manage menus and staffing and decided that Brookdale would be better off creating its own. Now, at 650-plus senior living communities strong, Brookdale is very glad it did.
“We really haven’t found anything anywhere close to it,” says Joska Hajdu, senior vice president of dining services, who still shops around from time to time. “There are a bunch of different programs out there, but if you want programs that allow you to do nicer, gourmet, high-culinary skill set recipes and food preparation, then typically it will not have a nutrition management and clinical piece covering special diets and [menu] modifiers and all that.”
In its current iteration, Menu Manager 8.0 is a proprietary web-based application that allows the corporate dietician and culinary professionals to preplan a 13-week menu cycle based on seasonal availability and individual community preferences while keeping in mind the nutritional guidelines for seniors. It also includes a database of more than 3,000 scalable recipes, each of which comes with nutrition information and diet modifications. Brookdale communities can make changes to the preplanned menu and add new recipes of their own.
Once menu changes are made, the system automatically generates the menu inserts, production schedules, daily diet modification sheets, week-at-a-glance menus, and room service order forms. The menu is also posted on each community’s public website for family members and others to view.
The system must be flexible in order to accommodate the wide range of dietary needs as well as Brookdale’s policy of honoring any resident request within 10 days. “Our residents dream it up, and we make sure we have it in our menu bank and are able to make that recipe on demand,” says Hajdu.
Brookdale’s Menu Manager 8.0 is proprietary, but any size company can create something of similar value, says Hajdu. “You don’t have to be 650 communities big to think outside the box for menu planning,” he says.
The above best practice was recognized as an ALFA 2012 Best of
the Best Winner. Do you have a best practice, product, service or
solution at your community or company that is advancing excellence in
senior living? The Call for Nominations for the ALFA 2013 Best of the
Best Awards will begin in November. Visit ALFA.org/bestofthebest to read more best practices.
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