Last updated on June 15th, 2023
COVID-19 has made it a challenging year for senior living communities. Your staff and residents have been forced to completely change how they live and operate. But with the vaccine rollout, it seems like things may be somewhat “normal” again soon, and when that happens, your community needs to be ready to rebuild your census.
In their 2021 Outlook Report, Senior Housing News surveyed subscribers about their views on the senior living industry in 2021. Respondents said they expect to see occupancy come back by the second half of 2021 because of vaccine availability.
A great dining program will be an excellent way to improve your census and refresh your marketing materials when this happens.
Creating a Top-Notch Dining Program
In the Senior Living News survey, 22% of respondents stated that occupancy would be their greatest challenge in 2021. Does your community feel the same way? Your census cannot recover without an occupancy strategy.
A good occupancy strategyhttps://culinaryservicesgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/Senior-Living-Occupany-Strategy-1.pdf will focus on the most important aspects of resident life. Your dining program provides hundreds of interactions with residents and their families and can act as the cornerstone to attracting and retaining new residents.
However, if you’re going to show off your dining program, you need to make sure it’s an exceptional experience. That starts with your team. The right dining team can take your program from good to great. Some communities choose to hire and train the right people themselves, and others rely on the resources of food service management companies.
Once you have the right staff, focus on menus. Your senior residents want real, fresh, delicious food. And they want variety! One way to start improving your menus today is to ask your current residents for feedback. What do they like? What don’t they like? Are there any foods they wished you served? Another way we recommend evaluating your menus is by asking your staff if they would eat the food you’re serving. Does it look appetizing to them? Does it taste good? If not, you need to rethink your menus.
A Marketing Strategy That Highlights Dining
Once you have an expert staff serving great, fresh food, make that known in your marketing materials. Display pictures of delicious meals on your website, highlight a signature recipe in a brochure, and post food-themed events to social media.
While we’re still in the midst of the pandemic, focus on ways to showcase your dining program virtually. Post your weekly menus online for prospective residents and families to see the variety you offer. Consider filming virtual tours of your dining area and kitchen, and ask current residents to speak on camera about their opinion of the food. Another way to show how unique your program is is to film videos of your chefs making the food. This will highlight that your meals are handmade (not microwaved!) and that your ingredients are fresh.
During the pandemic, one independent living community asked residents if they had any friends in the town who might enjoy living in the community instead. They regularly reached out to the residents’ friends to increase socialization, and they delivered one fresh meal and one frozen meal per week. Because of this, they saw more than a 30% uptick in lead generation for their community.
Once you can begin marketing in-person again, include meals during tours for prospective residents and their families. Invite them to speak to the chef and ask any questions about the program. Your chef should be an ambassador for the dining program in your community. Also, consider hosting food-centered activities like theme meals or cooking demonstrations that are open to locals in your town. Fun events will get residents and families talking. This word-of-mouth advertising is free, and when resident referrals go up, so does your census.
A Good Partner Can Help
Suppose you’re not sure where to start when it comes to improving your dining program or building a marketing strategy. In that case, a food service management company like Culinary Services Group, can partner with you to provide these services.
When census numbers are down (like they may be right now), many communities feel pressure to cut costs, which equates to limiting new partnerships or outsourcing. There’s also always a temptation to reduce the quality of food to cut costs. But as we mentioned above, serving good, fresh food should be a priority for your program if one of your goals is to increase occupancy.
The right partner can actually improve the quality of food while lowering many commonly associated dining costs. For example, among Culinary Services Group’s senior living clients, we can often pass on dramatic savings on food costs because of our partnership with a Group Purchasing Organization. On average, our clients saw $43,800 savings on raw food costs and a $79,000 reduction in other expenses. For many, the cost savings of outsourcing with us was far more significant than managing their program on their own.
We provide customized menus tailored to each community’s needs based on regional preferences and resident feedback. Our menu building software allows us to monitor the daily nutritional values of menu items, and our CulinaryEDGE program provides inspiration for food events, theme meals, and fun activities that will get the community talking.
Building value is the key to a successful occupancy strategy and a steady census. If you’d like to learn more about how Culinary Services Group can help your start improving your census today with a great dining program and marketing strategy, contact us here.
