Experience Matters: How Operators are Improving Resident Experience with Senior Living POS

So, welcome to this live episode of tips from Trestle, the senior living food and hospitality podcast.

I'm your host, Aaron Fish, and we have a great episode lined up for you today.

A little different than most of our podcast, we've got two parts. So the first half of the show, I'll be speaking with Matt Steenerson from eMenu Choice about how operators can improve the in res the resident experience with their point of sale systems. And then in the second half, we'll bring in a panel of operators to discuss their successes in maximizing their offerings using e menu choice. So, Matt, thanks for partnering with us today for this live episode of tips from Tressel.

Yeah. Great to be back here, and thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So let's jump in. So we wanna talk about how operators can create and kind of maximize the experience, maximize their success with point of sale. And so, obviously, you know, there's a lot of luxury senior living that's that's happening around. That's kind of the focus of what we're doing as an industry right now. And so when you think about what e menu choice can do to enhance that dining experience, What would you share with the the listeners and everyone with us live today about that?

Yeah. Well, one thing that we put a lot of focus on in our feature set the last couple years is is around revenue capture. I'm sure if you've talked to us, you've you've heard it from us, especially if you're in this this part of the market. I think one thing that gets missed, maybe explicitly, in the conversations is sort of how that revenue you know, it's not just for the communities and for the ownership and everything else, but it sort of can be reciprocal back to the residents. So how can you use that revenue capture to improve your your dining services or your experiences or even, like, outside of dining, but specifically, in this case, dining.

We're seeing a lot of people, use the features with any menu choice, to to offer more a la carte options, more flexibility in their dining programs. And as they're capturing more revenue, actually spend more on on their food. And so they can use the increased revenue to spend more on food, which makes the residents happy, provides higher quality ingredients, more choices.

We see it as kind of like a a virtuous cycle that sort of feeds itself as it gets started.

Yeah. I that's you're so true in that. And, you know, when I was working for operators, I was always one of the first things I would do when I was selling the opportunity to bring on a point of sale, vendor like e menu choice where it would be, you know, you may not see tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in foodservice revenue, but even if you get, you know, five, six, eight thousand more a month and you put that back into your food cost, your PRD number can go way up, and you get a lot more bang for your buck, and you can enhance those offerings like you just said.

Right. Yeah. I mean, we have we have people that are spending, into the double digits, you know, where our you know, some some other operators, their eyes water when they hear that, but, they're still they're still running that from a, you know, really positive revenue standpoint to to make up for it.

Yeah. I you know, I you know, when people ask me, well, what should my PRD be? What should my average be? You know, the the national average is somewhere between, like, eight seventy five and nine fifty, right, that operators are are running with now. But you add an additional, like I said, five, six, seven thousand dollars. You can get into that eleven, twelve, thirteen dollar range with zero impact on that bottom line, which I think is so, so, so important.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things, though, that, you know, as the industry is kind of, you know, evolving, we're starting to talk about, like, boomers and this huge growth in potential residents.

One area that a lot of places, you know, like Nick and senior housing news, they're they're starting to talk more about the middle market. Right? So these operators that don't necessarily have super high end budgets, their communities are designed for, you know, maybe your more average resident as opposed to those that have the the bigger bank accounts. And so when you're talking about how point of sale can benefit those operators, what are where does that focus need to be?

Yeah. I think it's, I mean, there's there's a lot of really great things outside of the revenue I think, you know, you spoke with with, Dan from my team not long ago.

Right.

I definitely recommend people go back and listen to that episode.

Dan talked a lot about sort of the roots of e menu choice and and, sort of before we were we were focused on a lot of the revenue features, how a point of sale can help beyond the revenue side of things. Yeah.

But that being said, I I do think you can use the same strategy, in a different market. Obviously, the middle market operators are are on a tighter budget because the residents are.

This is where we started as a company. It's still a huge amount of our customers are are in the space, and it still means a lot to us to be able to offer the same choice and and opportunities to to those residents and those those, communities.

So, really, it's like every time you can capture maybe, like, two extra dollars for an extra soup or dessert that previously was walking out the door as a part of a a meal charge.

Or, hey. Can I just get, like, a an extra portion of the main in a box to go? And now not only are you, like, giving away that main, but now they're not gonna come down for dinner, because they they have that.

So every time that walks out the door rather than, sort of upcharging it with, an a la carte option or an add on, that two dollars is is something that you can now invest back into the program or or back into other programs.

Yeah. I love that you're talking about this idea that senior living operators can be thinking more like restaurant tours and having a la carte approaches because, you know, I literally just this week was having a menu conversation with a client about, well, how can we expand our menu? Should we offer multiple special selections? And with that comes, well, the added cost of overage production and potential waste. And I just simply said, you know, If you expand the variety of choices on your always available or your a la carte menu, you can keep those costs down and having a system like you mean you choice to be able to let you do that is such a big deal. And I the revenue capture piece on a cup of soup versus just a full meal sale is a big, big piece of that, I think.

Yeah. I think, you know, operators in any market can use features like premium section as well to offer, like, special items. So you might have a prime rib or, like, a crab dinner, and it's a add on to a regular charge. So you can exceed your PRD for, like, a special occasion or once a week or something knowing that you're gonna cover that on the back end with with extra revenue.

The other thing that I wanna mention, I think we've talked about this before maybe the last time I was on, but I think it's important to to realize, and I think maybe, it'll come up in the panel discussion later, is that that two dollar soup that's separate from the meal charge, that's or or dessert or whatever it might be. That can be an extra if they've already had a soup and they want an extra one. But it could also be a really nice way to open the opportunity for a resident to only spend two dollars rather than a full meal charge if they're just looking to get a suit. So it's not always just about, like, more revenue, more revenue, more revenue.

It's, like, appropriate revenue for what, you know, the the customer in this case wants to have.

Yeah. I think it lets those middle market operators feel more high end by being able to offer that without being put into that box of we gotta add an extra thousand dollars a month to our rent to cover it. So Right. It's a great point you make.

So we've been talking about food and dining, but obviously, point of sale in general has the opportunity to really allow operators to kind of expand their their lifestyle options, some of their service offerings. And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how as these operators you're working with have evolved, what they're doing, how your how you mean your choice has adapted to support them.

Yeah. I think, the the communities that we're working with are are evolving. I think we're evolving too in in the types of communities that we work with.

And we've we've, become a lot more than what we started as, like, a dining management platform.

Yeah. We have customers all over the US that are using e menu, in their salons, including, like, booking reservations at a salon, like booking a seat for for a given time, convenience stores. We're also seeing a lot of communities using email you choice to to, like, book and pay for things like exercise classes, whether it's, like, a first party offering or whether it's even, like, a third party coming in. And then they can use the reports to, like, square up with the third party, at the end of the day or the billing period or wherever it might be. Even things like field trips, concierge service, all all these things. And the beauty is they can all be used under the same spend down accounts if that's how people want it to be set up.

Yeah. And I you know, having the ability to I know y menu choice does this, have different main meal plan meal plans in this. I'm using air quotes in this instance Yeah. Yeah. To be able to plug in all those different services as an option.

You know, maybe you're giving them instead of a five hundred or five hundred points or five hundred dollars meal, maybe you're giving them seven hundred or eight hundred for services across campus credits or something.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's really great to to be able to know that you don't have to have multiple systems to do reservations and to do, you know, charges. It can all be wrapped in under one system that communicates with all of your other systems and with accounting and those kinds of things.

Yeah. You can even have, different accounts. So you could have your meal account. You could also have just like a a generic kind of gift card account that can be used across all the venues in a in a community, or kind of really, the the options are are limitless. We try to we try to tamp down people on on how crazy they get with it because, you know, the more you have, the more you manage. But, yeah, ultimately, it's it's pretty flexible to allow things like, I can only use this in the dining room, but I can use this across the whole campus, or maybe this is just for transportation or or whatever it might be.

Yeah. It's such a great feature, and that allows those operators who are, you know, budget conscious or, you know, revenue minded, however might be, to figure out new ways to capture that, you know, as opposed to, you know, hey, my I need to go to the doctor, so I'm gonna grab a Lyft or an Uber. Hey. I can schedule transportation with the community and pay half the price I would for a Lyft, but the community benefits. So definitely win win for both communities and residents.

Yeah. Exactly. Like, the community can can offer operate and get extra revenue, but at the end of the day, it's like it's it's the ability to offer more service to the residents, which is, at the end of the day, like, what we're all about.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, well, as we kind of wrap up this first part of the the podcast, when you're thinking about next year, you know, it's basically the end of October. We're starting to everybody's starting to think about budgets and twenty twenty five strategic planning.

What kind of features and innovations, are you guys at Eming You Choice specifically kind of looking at or thinking about to support these kind of changing needs of operators and residents, as we look at next year?

Well, I always have a lot of ideas, and I try not to let my my head go wild with with ideas being being sort of the the technical founder of of the company. I always have a lot of a lot of projects in my head that I'd like to work on.

But just sort of, like, responding to, customers and prospects and and what we're hearing out there. We really invested a lot of time, and, you know, just invested a lot this year into, like, improving the user experience within within the platform.

It's always been amazing to me how much progress you can make. Just kind of, like, one step at a time if you if you just keep going, like, over a year or two.

Like to tell my team that, you know, if you if you use the app like it was two years ago, you'd think that it was crazy that we ever lived like that. You know, and and two but two years ago, it was it seemed good. But now it's now it's just that much better. So I'd love to continue continue doing that kind of stuff because it always helps.

It helps our team. It helps the the residents. It helps the the operators. It helps everybody.

I'm also really interested in in expanding some offerings around recipes, nutrition, production management. You know, I think we're really good on the execution side of things. Mhmm. But we're hearing more and more about, more like things on the production and and recipe side. We have this product called Fresh Menus.

It offers really great dietitian approved menu cycles, including the recipes and the extensions.

But I'd like to sort of expand more around the capabilities of that, so they'd be more flexible and and offer more more solutions. And then finally and there's other things, but just off the top of my head, like, finally, integrations are are something that we're always focused on. So we really like to work with with friends and partners in the industry to enable interoperability and, you know, avoid double entry and things like that. So that's something we're always looking to to continue to to press on.

Yeah. You know, and having worked with you guys on the operation side in the past, it one of the things I've always appreciated about your guys' approach to working with customers is the the road map is always open for discussion, if that makes sense, where you're like, Well, let's hear your idea. Let's see if it fits in what we're doing and what we can develop.

And getting that customer feedback makes it so much more user friendly on the front end. So I thought I'd share that because it it's always one of those things that with with other technology and software providers, I've not always experienced that. So that's a nice, addition to to the conversation, I think.

Yeah. Not not to get too sidetracked off of Breton experience, but, I think, all the panelists that we'll talk to, I can think of, you know, specific features that they've thought of and we've talked about and we've ended up adding, that have been helpful to them. But then at least two or three other customers will tell me, like, oh, this is such a great thing. And, you know, it's it's the idea came from Paige or Kim or or Katie. You know? So that's that's sort of the I really enjoy that part of of our community and and our customer base, so we'll definitely continue to do that.

Awesome.

Well, Matt, thank you for this one on one letting me kinda pick your brain about, you know, resident experience. And so, let's bring in our panelists.

Yeah.

All right. So I want to now welcome our operator panelists to continue this conversation on improving resident experience with senior living point of sale. So let's start. Joining Matt and I, we have Katie Tibbetts from CHRISTUS Senior Living.

We have Paige Hoffman from Cordia Senior Living, and Kim Ben Dixon from the Waters.

Ladies, thanks for joining us today on this live episode of tips from Trestle.

Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So, Paige, I wanna start with you.

A lot of people see technology as kind of antisocial. Right? It's a way to kinda hide behind your screen, if you will.

But when it's designed in a way that meets, is meant to engage and connect with people, it can really lead to a better customer service experience. And so what are some ways that you and your staff, and resident interactions have been affected by using eMenu Choice?

Yeah. Absolutely.

I think we make the mistake of thinking that technology makes us antisocial because we think of social media. Right?

Right.

And the big differentiation there is that, working with a technology that was designed for properties who believe in community gives us the opportunity to really place that that purpose in community.

Some of the ways that we've found that using this POS system has been helpful for our connections with our residents.

First and foremost, like, seeing resident names and faces right on the screen.

This is helpful because it's time and time again, our residents say this is what makes me feel valued. This is what makes it feel like home.

All of the staff know my name, but it's helpful when we get a new employee. Right? They've got a hundred and thirty or so residents to learn. And it's so much easier when you've heard the name Shelly a thousand times and then you go, oh, she's sitting at my table. Let me introduce myself.

Or or me. I work remotely, and so I go six weeks at a time and we might have two people move in. So, if I see someone in the hallway and I know their name is Shelly because I've seen them on my my tablet as I was helping with the menu choice or something else, I actually take the time to go. I saw you and I I recognize you. Let let me introduce myself.

Yeah. That's such a great feature. And I know having worked and seen other systems that it's not nearly as friendly to learn those residents without the the face and the name and all of those details about them.

Absolutely. And we have multiple departments. Right? It's not just our dining team. We've got our concierge team, and and it comes up in our spa. So when we have every department getting used to that same resident with the same name and the same face, it really makes for a cohesive environment.

Yeah. I love that. That is so great.

Yeah. I I I love that story and and, with the brisk of making it, more about me, which I don't want to. I just have to share a quick story.

But back, when we were when we were just with our founding partner, Lynblumston, it's a a care center in Saint Paul with with two hundred and forty beds, and they have, thirteen different neighborhoods where the the residents are. And the CEO of Linkbloomston, once a week would serve breakfast to the residents. And so one of the reasons why we have pictures, any menu choice, is so that Jeff could go to those residents and greet them by name. And it was really, an moment for for them, that, you know, we were onto something way back ten years ago when when we were just kind of using this as a as a ordering system in the nursing home. So, love that story, Paige.

Thanks. Yeah. And it's not it's not just the resident now. Right? It's evolved. If we have, if we have a resident who makes reservations and they put their daughter's name in, our server says, oh, you must be married, so and so's daughter.

And so now the family is feeling, that somehow we have the secret knowledge about about the history because we're really that close.

So so it really does reach reach beyond.

Yeah. Love that. Very good. Katie, I'll move on to you.

Wondering if you wanna highlight, some of the ways you made your choice has reduced, friction and room for error, against, like, your previous process that you were using.

Well, just to dovetail on what Paige said, it also helps with name, similarities. So if you've got an Alina Johnson and an Eleanor Johnston, their pictures are there, so that tells them apart, and we're not getting the wrong charge put on the wrong resident bill. That certainly makes for happy billers and happy customers.

You know, an another way is that we've just been able to offer so many other flexible options for people and, ways to run reports and verify things.

I think there was a lot of stress on everybody when we were doing things in a more manual way because we have such a variety of meal plans and, included meal options and and a la carte meal options, and it was really hard for the kitchen to know how to address each one of those. And they were having to write down lists of people that were coming in for meals and relying on, you know, Mary one zero four. Well, we have multiple Marys and room multiple one o fours. How do we know which Mary that is? So by implementing a menu choice, we were able to, set up everything on the back end with all of the varieties of meal plans that we offer here and all of the varieties of ways that residents are charged or not charged for their meals, and now all the kitchen has to do is serve food.

That's all they have to worry about. All our servers have to worry about is serving meals and greeting customers. And now our biller gets a very reliable report at the end of the month of who gets to get billed that they get an import into our billing system because of those integrations that Matt was talking about, which we value so highly.

So that has really reduced a lot of friction amongst all the departments, and it's made our billers so much happier because they're not getting wrong charges on the bill all the time.

We even had one lady that was always calling us saying, I had lunch on Thursday, and no one billed me for that, and, which I always thought was adorable.

But now she gets billed.

So, hopefully, she's as happy.

I'm not sure.

One one thing that I think is is important to highlight with that is, it it's it's it's transparent to other residents who's on what meal plan. Right? I think it's really, like, having it all be automatic. You're not going up and and saying to one person, oh, now you're then you must be you're an elderly waiver.

Right? You know? And it's just, like, avoids that, like, impersonal and sort of privacy, yuck, that you can have at the the tables there where it's all kind of behind the scenes. Everybody just sits down and eats.

They don't have to, you know, pay for it at the time because it's all going on accounts or whatever. It just makes that whole process a lot easier for everybody and and, I think a better experience.

Absolutely. When you think about that resident, like, engagement and making sure that everyone has that dignified experience, what you're talking about, it's a huge, huge piece. And being able to manage that electronically or digitally makes a ton of sense.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Thanks, Katie. Kim, moving on to you.

What processes were you using, before you rolled out eMenu? And, like, have the residents, commented or noticed any service changes, since you went to, like, a tablet to printer process?

Yeah. So before eMenu, we were with a different POS system.

And we had one terminal in the dining room. So we'd have, like, three sir three to five servers standing in line waiting to enter the orders in.

So now with e menu, we have every server has a tablet at the table. They can enter the order in right there.

They can ask the residents any questions pertaining to the order and send the order to the kitchen right there from the table.

And it's it's so much better than them having to sit and wait in line. And we've had residents actually comment that service is much faster than it used to be now.

And I think that has a lot to do with it.

Yeah. I this makes some it's huge difference. I remember my first point of sale system being just like that, and it was infuriating as a manager to just be like, do you guys need to be on the floor? But, no, they've gotta put their orders in. So, Paige and Katie, I'm curious, from your perspective, have you seen the same kind of results with your service times being improved using the menu choice this way?

Absolutely.

On our end, kind of in two ways. We we see the services improved because they're getting more face time with servers. Right? So they're actually getting those things in. We're entering orders, and then they're immediately going back to the kitchen.

I'd say on on the service time, we're we're better able to track the data for how long things are taking. So in some ways, we're able to, add to actually validate whether or not it's actually taking as long as a resident might say.

Okay.

You know, which is part of it.

I'd say the other thing is that, we're able to better stagger our dining dining room now, because we know exactly when things are getting in instead of having full quarters of of fifteen because they're standing in line.

Katie?

Yeah. Well, I think our experience was similar to Kim's where we had a, the point of sale software I use with air quotes.

It was one terminal, and it definitely bogged things down. And having each server have their own tablet has certainly streamlined things, and, the fact that eMenu allows for coursing has also helped as well. So we can get a salad or a soup out to the table right away so they feel like they're seeing progress in their meal, and, we're able to differentiate the things that are going to the hotline versus things that are going to the expediter versus things that servers are preparing.

So, you know, there's there's always something happening at the table even if their hot meal has not arrived yet. They feel like they're being serviced and we're there's I've definitely we, do a resident satisfaction survey here each year, and we're definitely seeing improvement in dining service numbers as a result of that. And it's easier to train the servers on the system too, which is also enhancing the happiness of our residents. They aren't frustrated by ill trained staff that we're, taking forever. Yeah.

Yeah. We, I'll go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say, I like listening to the three of you talk about this gets me really excited because for my entire career coming from hotels and restaurants into senior living, I always was confused by why isn't this being run like a restaurant, right?

Like we figured this out. Like, let's just do what we're doing over here. And every single one of you have talked about using the menu choice exactly how a restaurant would use their point of sale system and being able to course meals and makes the speed of service more efficient. And so it's just really exciting to hear that we've got operators out there making it happen the way it should.

With the tools. Right?

That's right. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

I was about to say good tools can do.

Yeah.

Yeah. We we we talked to folks in the sales process and, not not often, but every once in a while, there's some pushback on, like, do we really need a tablet for each for each server? And, you know, usually, the the conversation that we'll have with them is, you can certainly set up a computer or an iPad in kiosk mode, but we'll, just about guarantee that you're gonna wanna buy more, because once the server is realized they can take it to the tables, it's just it's more efficient for them.

As we've talked about, they like showing the pictures with the residents and the food, and it's it's just all around, better. So even the people that think that the kiosk is where they wanna go, pretty quickly, they switch to the individual tablets at the tables.

I think that was us. I think we did that.

Was it? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't wanna I don't wanna call anybody out by name.

But yeah. I mean, it's it's, how how would you know unless you try? But it it really is a profound Exactly.

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I just think about, like, even, like, when you think about, like, a rural cafe, their servers have notepads they're writing on to take tickets to the kitchen. It's the same thing, just digitized. So Paige, since you were so willing to fess up there, I'm gonna just go back to you.

One of the things that I think is so, important is, especially maybe not necessarily just for independent living, but we think about assisted living and memory care is engaging families with what we're doing. And so what have you seen with, conversations with family members around utilizing information in the resident profiles that's made success for you?

Yeah. Absolutely.

I think it's to take words right out of the CEO's mouth. Right?

Our CEO has said over and over again, I can't believe how easy this is.

And I can be on the phone, listening to an adult's child talk about how the resident isn't getting or their parent isn't getting x y z. Right? They're they're not getting enough community. They're not sitting with anyone.

They're not eating enough. They're drinking too much. Right? Like, any of the above. And as we're listening to that concern, we can be typing on our iPhone even or our computer, and looking at what are the facts.

Are they really coming down? Have they been socializing?

Have they put in the last four days that they loved the food on the feedback option? Right? To us they're doing pretty well. But but of course on the assisted living side or, or really with any any health needs, we have very concerned family members who want to make sure that their family or their their resident is within dietary restrictions, or that they're getting enough food or or just keeping tabs to reassure them.

So we actually use that all the time. Our wellness director constantly uses it. Our CEO is on there all the time when she's got a family member in her office or on the phone. On the flip side, we really advocate for our residents to to have autonomy, make their own decisions.

So if a restriction and, allergy comes up and said that, you know, they're not supposed to have, that gives our servers the ability to say, hey. This this recipe that you're trying to order doesn't, you know, it contains eggs and and you've noted that you're not supposed to or someone in your family, your POA noted that you're not supposed to.

However, there's this other recipe that's very similar in flavor profile and texture and you'd love it and it it doesn't have eggs. Would you like to try that?

And then sometimes we'll see notes that they made that change. So, again, when our CEO is on the phone talking to that family member, we can say with certainty, actually, our servers made a change for them, and and they were happy with it, and we are taking care of your loved one.

Yeah. Those are such great examples of being able to, kind of alleviate family concerns because we all know that sometimes residents tell their families something very different than what they tell us. No. So being able to cross that bridge is very important.

Kim, I I think in talking with Matt, he had mentioned that you're using order histories, as topic of conversation with families. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that.

Yeah.

A lot of family will come to us. You know, they're concerned.

You know, my loved one has been losing weight or my loved one is gaining a lot of weight.

So we can use the system and look at their profile and bring up, here's what they've been ordering, and it'll kinda you know, it'll it'll show, hey. They're not ordering a lot of food, so they're not probably getting a lot of calories, or they're ordering heavy food, but it's gonna make them gain weight. You know? So that kinda helps family members understand some health ish health concerns with their loved one.

Definitely, helps with, sorry, helps with tracking tracking what they're eating, and are they eating healthy and things like that.

And I am I imagine being able to have those conversations lets the family get more insight into how things are going. You know, if there's not a lot of food being ordered, it kind of maybe triggers a conversation that they have with, the outside health care providers because we all know we're we're providing what our residents ask of us. Right? We're not trying to say you've got to eat more, you've got to eat less. That's not our place, really, right, with trying to meet residents where they're at. And so I can see how having that information and sharing it with families allows them to intervene how they see fit.

And if I could just dovetail on that, one thing that one thing that we have loved is the integration with our EHR.

So once nursing is putting in the dietary orders and we know what the dietary restrictions are for that person, it automatically feeds into e menu and shows up on the diet card without us even intervening at all, which has been a real game changer for our dining room and for compliance with offering food choices that, meet those needs. And if we are diligent and go through and flag our food with those, you know, the flags of the various allergens, etcetera, it'll gray the item out on the menu, and it won't even be a choice for them to order. So it helps diets. And then, a little bit of what you were talking about, Paige, talking with those family members in our memory care unit, the resident themselves may not be able to make a a cognizant choice of which of the two, specials for dinner they want, but our family has told us what does this person like to eat, what do they not, and we can all put that in the diet card so the caregiver placing the order for that resident can make an informed choice based on what that resident will probably prefer.

It's been really helpful.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I Love it. Kate Katie, just, to to continue, I wonder if you could highlight, how some of the flexibility in the meal plans, have brought in maybe light light eaters, or people that you wouldn't see in the dining room as much, to have those experiences with with their, with other residents in the community.

Yeah. Sure.

I I know when you were talking earlier, Erin, about the a middle market, a variety of of offerings here up to, you know, higher end units with a lot of accommodations and a lot of amenities, and then we have lower end units that are for our budget friendly customer. They don't come preloaded with a meal plan. Meal plans could be purchased separately, and we were not finding a very high adoption rate on the meal plans. They were a little cost prohibitive.

But then the residents also were not coming out of their apartments and joining their fellow residents in the dining room because our a la carte meal prices were too high for them, especially for those with lighter appetites where maybe they only wanted to get half of a sandwich and a bowl of soup. There wasn't really an option available in our the old way we were doing things for them to be able to have that type of light meal option. So with eMenu, we were able to create a a light meal option for our independent residents that are on those, you know, those lighter appetites. But then also we were able to really look at our the way our meal plans were structured, and we were able to offer a prepaid monthly meal plan that is a significant reduction in per price price per meal cost so the resident can feel good about coming into the dining room and only ordering that half a sandwich and that soup as part of their monthly meal plan.

And they know they're not paying for this gigantic meal that they're never gonna eat and throwing away a bunch of food. It makes them feel better. It makes us feel good because we're seeing our residents get you know, come and socialize with their community, which is so important. I know a lot of us after COVID, it was very isolating.

You know? A lot of residents hide in their apartments. And as people are coming out, we wanna find ways to encourage them to come out. So making sure that they felt included in what we were offering was important to us.

Yeah. It's such a great point about the socialization because we know that social isolation is a huge health impactor for seniors. And that's one of the reasons they move into a community. Right?

And so it when we think about food and dining, it's a social experience really when it comes to senior living. And so I love that it you're able to find a way to use your point of sale and work with e menu choice to develop not just something that maybe helped you from a revenue perspective, but really was about how can we get our residents more engaged in the community? How can we bring them out and start to build a bigger social, kind of umbrella for them with with what we're offering. So it's such a great, great story that you're telling, Katie.

Kim, I'd I'd love to talk to you a little bit about, how the integration with your health records has really affected your internal processes. Right? Like, Katie talked a little bit about the the ERH integration, but I'd love to kind of know a little bit more about what you're doing around resident safety and and how that compared to what you're doing pre e menu choice.

Yeah.

So we work with ElderMark, and I love that ElderMark talks to e menu. Our previous POS system did not talk to them. So, this is huge. It's a lot less work, in the back office with residents being entered into the system. They're automatically entered.

Any allergens, special diets, everything is integrated over.

So when we're setting up our menus, one of my favorite things is that we can actually attach allergens to food items.

This is a lot of our servers are teenagers. So, you know, a lot of room for error there. Yeah. And so with, items having allergens attached and the allergens attached to the resident's profile, they can't order an item that they're gonna be allergic to unless it's removable from that meal. So it's huge safety, which is wonderful.

Now do we have every single allergen attached to an item? No.

Yeah. There's so many out there, but the nine top allergens are listed to every item.

So that is huge, for safety for our residents.

Yeah. It's a huge thing. I mean, I know that families are curious about that. Residents get concerned, especially if they've dealt with it for a long time.

They always they go into a restaurant and they get nervous about it. So being able to know that when they come into your communities, that if they share it with you and they put it in the system, that they know that there's that kind of safety blanket, if you will, of, knowing and that all the staff know. It's not just the care staff know or the managers know. It's literally anybody that looks at my profile will know that, hey, I can't have dairy or I'm I need to be gluten free because of celiac.

So I love that. So, as we wrap up here, there are a couple of questions from our audience that I wanted to ask. Probably more for Matt, but please feel free, ladies, to jump in if you've got anything with this. So, the first question was, are there any changes to e menu choice options for those with higher PRDs?

No. And there's there's no real changes within within the system itself. It's really just how you set it up. So, one of the things that we focused on from the very beginning, before even the the platform was available to to outside communities was flexibility.

Because where we started, there was, this large care center. There was also two, two apartment buildings on the same campus. One of the apartment buildings was all elderly waiver and the other was was all private pay. So, within one campus, we had, like, a pretty good cross section of the middle market that we were talking about, including skilled.

And in the in the skilled, area, they were doing, preorders. They were ordering ahead. That's the first process that we built was was, two hundred and forty residents ordering lunch and dinner during breakfast time. Then we'd summarize all that up on the, order grid. And, you know, really, the app was only supposed to be a picture of the food items. And then I went to the nursing home and saw how they were doing it on paper, and I was like, we we can't keep doing this. So so then we we sort of built the let's do the math for him.

And then next door was, you know, kind of a a restaurant, like, process with with the apartment building. So all that stuff was built in, really. The only thing that changes is is how you set things up, how you set up your your meal plans and your sections to charge for different things, and, frankly, the the offerings that you have and the prices that you have. So great question.

Yeah. No. It makes perfect sense. And so, and ladies, you may have some more information on this, but one of the questions was, can the system be used for associate meal tracking?

So I'm gonna ask you ladies first. Do any of you do that with e menu choice? And I love you. If you do, to please kinda tell us what you're doing.

We do at the Waters.

Some of couple of communities do free meals for staff and some are, pay.

So at the communities that they get free meals, we actually set up each department as a resident.

And so that and then they order the meal. They get a thirty five percent discount off the price.

And at the end of the month, our business office runs a report, a department meals report, and that dollar amount actually goes into the financials of that department.

Ah, I love that.

So it's not coming out of culinary's budget.

Yes. Because everyone's like, you're gonna have culinary culture.

I am so excited. That is so good.

That's And and then the way we do it where they don't have the free meals is, we still have the department, but we also have a staff resident set up that gets a thirty five percent discount as well. And then they're paying by credit card when they order the food.

We yeah. We've done something extremely similar to that in our community as well.

We have a discount for if we have a cafe as well as our formal dining room, and so if, staff wanna go and buy something from the cafe, if it's over a certain dollar amount, they get a dollar off, and, we were able to set that up easily with a discount button.

And then we also have what you were talking about, Kim, with where, departments are able to, get food from the dining room, but then we could charge it back to their department. So we've done the same thing where we've set up a department as a resident, so that if, the staff know that if so and so from activities comes and orders some coffee cakes for the resident activity going on, we could charge that back to the activity department, very easily and transparently with a super simple report at the end of the month. It's been a big a big game changer. I keep trying to make sure that the kitchen understands, you know, you're when the higher ups are scrutinizing your food costs, it's important for you to be getting credit for all the meals you're providing.

So everything that you send out of your kitchen needs to be put in here, and then whoever's taking it needs to be charged for it. So however it's getting distributed, it's been a lot easier to get people onboarded with that idea knowing that, oh, wait. You're right. I don't want all of this food I'm giving away to the activities department to be taken out of my budget.

So it's been a real game changer.

Yeah. I was just doing a a training with executive chefs and dining directors couple weeks ago, and we had a long in-depth conversation about KPIs and how executives and c suite look at your department. And what you're talking about is so important for them to understand that, hey, You'd be surprised at the the the service creep and spend that you just take on the chin by doing that.

So Yes.

Employee meals too. If we give every employee a free meal during their shift, even those meals should be recorded, and then we document it as a free meal per staff. And then it goes to a staff benefits GLO instead of under the food service GL.

Yep. Absolutely. So, Matt, I've got a bit of a variation of this that is perfect for you to kinda wrap this whole conversation up. So is there a way to set up employees not as residents or with unique profiles?

Yeah. I I I think the question is, and answering the q and a if I'm if I'm not answering this right. But, I think, Kim and Katie are talking about, like, anonymized staff meals almost where they kind of go into a bucket. Yeah. But, certainly, we have a lot of, a lot of communities. I can't remember, Paige. Are are y'all doing buckets or are you doing individual staff meals?

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the above.

And I didn't answer because I didn't wanna repeat thrice.

But, so the at Cordia, we do a free staff meal every day, and so that's the anonymized staff. That's a bucket that goes in just to track per meal.

But anybody who wants to order anything else, so if an if an employee wants to order something else, they have their own profile under the employees, I think it's called the neighborhood any menu choice, right, but it's its own separate thing that's not in our residence.

We actually have an employee's tab and they get their own profile. So first name, last name, picture, and then they can order right through that. So if I don't like the free meal option and I wanna order off the rest of the menu or if I want to order something extra, I order the way a resident would, and it goes under my profile, and I can pay for it. We have our credit card option set up or cash option set up.

And then we've got those folks who are, like, salaried or on our leadership team that we actually do a monthly statement for them the way we do, we do it with our residents.

So they can use the POS system to access the snacks at our concierge store or they can order, and and that gets charged that's their account, and then they get a printed monthly resident, monthly statement the way that the residents do that they pay. And then at the very end, we also do we have departments that are their own profiles.

So when our marketing person is doing a tour and they go to lunch and they sit down, they actually say charge this to marketing. And then our marketing person signs for it so that it's accounted for when our accounting is going through at the end of the month that, yes, our marketing person did sign, and this is her. And so that should be charged to the department.

Perfect. Well, I I couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for Right. Thank you for taking an answer from me.

Yeah. It's we've we've got all the tears. Right?

I'll just add I'll just add one thing to that, because, I'm not sure I'm not sure if you're doing it yet. I know, Paige, you're you were talking about rolling out, self ordering. But, self ordering, for staff is really popular among the communities that are using the menu choice. So every staff member can have a profile, like Paige was saying. But you can also, you can also open that up to what we call individual access where they can log in to the portal. The residents can do the same thing, of course, but it works really well for staff because they're, usually a little bit more comfortable with technology, in general. But they can log in, place their order, place it for pickup or for a certain time or whatever it might be, and use those same features that that residents have.

Yeah. We have a pilot program.

So Yeah. Yeah. We're launching our pilot program for self ordering, at the beginning of the year. So that's our exciting next move.

I see. Yeah.

If if we were doing having this conversation to a commercial food service audience, they would not be surprised to hear any of this. And so it is so, like, rewarding to know like I said earlier, to know that with the right technology, you can run a food service operation like you're supposed to and not pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets like we have been for the last ten years.

So it's just And allergy whiteboards.

Can we mention the allergy whiteboards? Yeah.

I still see those. It's pretty frustrating.

Paper die cards.

Paper die cards.

Thank you. Yes.

The eight and a half by eleven pages with the big picture of the resident and, like, twelve, fifteen, twenty point font where they type everything up that's six months old.

Yeah. Not not good. So well, everybody, thank you so much for being a part of this. We had someone ask for, if they wanted to reach out and talk with any of you individually. So, ladies, I'll I'll let you go. So, Katie, can you tell everybody how to contact you if they wanna have a one on one conversation?

Yeah. Sure. I I'm open.

My my email address is, k tibbets, which is my first initial and last name there on the screen, at Christa, c r I s t a, dot net. And, feel free to reach out, and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Yep. Paige?

Easiest way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn. Paige Hoffman. I, just about finished posting my, LinkedIn to there. It's in the chat now.

Alternatively, if you're not on LinkedIn, you can email me. It's, p hoffman at cordia dot biz, which is b I z.

Perfect. And, Kim?

Email would be best. So my email is k bendixon, first initial, last name, at the waters dot com.

Awesome.

So, well, this has been, like I said, a great conversation and so many great takeaways from this discussion. Thanks for joining us today.

Matt, I'm gonna give you the opportunity. Can you tell everyone how they can connect with you and learn more about e menu choice?

Absolutely. I I knew Paige was gonna say LinkedIn.

Try to connect with me on LinkedIn, and I promise within two months, I'll have to check my messages and and get back to you. No. Honestly, the the best way to reach me is is, through email, m a t t at email u choice dot com. I'd be happy to to chat about this or or anything else.

I really enjoy conversations like this. So, I'll I'll drop it in the chat too before we there we go. They got me. The teams got me. So, yeah, for sure, email, and, and I'll put you in touch with the right person on my team, if if, I'm not the one.

Perfect. Well, thanks for sharing, Matt.

And for those of you that are here live, we'd love for you to go follow, like, and subscribe to tips from Tressel on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. So, and again, a big thank you to eMenu Choice for sponsoring the podcast and for helping put together this really awesome live episode. So, everyone have a great afternoon, and thanks for joining us today on this live episode of Tips from Tressel.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Tom.

Thanks, Matt. Bye.