Free Download: The Senior Living
Menu Planning Template Pack
Four weeks of cycle menu templates for independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing — ready to adapt to your community, your residents, and your dietary requirements.
Download the Free TemplatesUsed by 300+ senior living communities across the U.S. & Canada
Undocumented processes
Planning systems built on memory or one person's spreadsheet don't survive staff transitions.
Rebuilt from scratch, every quarter
Without a cycle framework, menu planning becomes its own recurring project — one that takes time your team doesn't have.
Survey readiness gaps
Inconsistent menu documentation creates exposure during state surveys and CMS reviews.
Why This Matters
Menu Planning Shouldn't Start From Scratch Every Quarter
Good cycle menus reduce food waste, simplify procurement, and create the consistency that keeps residents satisfied and staff confident. But for most dining teams, the planning process itself is the problem — undocumented, inconsistent, and dependent on whoever happened to build the last version.
When a dining director leaves, the planning system often leaves with them. When a new team member joins, they inherit a process they didn't build and can't easily adapt. And when survey season arrives, inconsistencies in menu documentation become a liability.
A structured planning framework doesn't solve every challenge in senior living dining. But it removes one of the most persistent sources of unnecessary friction — and gives your team something they can actually hand off, audit, and improve.
WHAT'S INSIDE?
Included in This Template Pack
Everything you need to build and maintain a consistent 4-week cycle
menu, without rebuilding your planning system from the ground up.
Independent Living
4-Week Cycle Menu Template
Structured for communities offering resident choice across breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Includes fields for daily specials, seasonal substitutions, and dietary preference notation.
Assisted Living
4-Week Cycle Menu Template
Adapted for communities where simplified menu structure and dietary restriction tracking are priorities. Includes notation fields for texture modifications and therapeutic diet flags.
Skilled Nursing
4-Week Cycle Menu Template
Structured to support communities operating under CMS dietary requirements. Includes fields for therapeutic diet compliance documentation and meal pattern tracking.
Seasonal Planning
Seasonal Menu Swap Guide
A one-page reference for rotating proteins, vegetables, and desserts by season — so quarterly menu updates don't require starting over. Saves planning time and supports procurement consistency.
Self-Assessment
Quarterly Menu Audit Checklist
A self-assessment tool dining teams can run before each new cycle. Covers menu variety, therapeutic diet coverage, resident preference alignment, and waste reduction indicators.
Designed for Senior Living.
Not Adapted From Somewhere Else.
Most planning tools weren't built for senior living dining. They were built for restaurants, adapted for healthcare, or cobbled together from generic food service frameworks — and it shows.
Senior living dining operates at the intersection of resident experience, dietary compliance, billing accuracy, and family expectations. That requires a different kind of structure.
eMenuCHOICE works with more than 300 senior living communities across the U.S. and Canada. These templates reflect the planning realities those communities face — not a theoretical framework designed for a different industry.
Senior Living Communities Served
Care settings covered
Across North America
"We don't know how we could function today without eMenuCHOICE. It helps so much with their job… it's so good for the staff and residents."
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Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions About Senior Living Menu Planning
A cycle menu is a set rotation of meals that repeats on a defined schedule — typically every four weeks. It gives dining teams a consistent structure for meal planning, procurement, and staff training, while ensuring residents experience regular variety without requiring the team to build a new menu from scratch each week. Most senior living communities use a 4-week cycle as the standard planning unit.
Most senior living communities update their cycle menus quarterly to reflect seasonal ingredient availability and resident preference changes. At minimum, a full menu review should happen twice per year. Communities that track resident feedback consistently — through surveys or server observation — tend to update more frequently and see stronger satisfaction scores as a result.
An assisted living menu plan should account for common therapeutic diets including low-sodium, diabetic-friendly, heart-healthy, and texture-modified options. It should also include fields for individual resident dietary restrictions and allergen flags. While assisted living communities are not subject to the same CMS dietary regulations as skilled nursing facilities, state licensing requirements typically mandate that menus meet basic nutritional standards for resident populations.
Skilled nursing facilities are subject to CMS federal regulations — specifically the F-tag requirements in the State Operations Manual — that govern meal frequency, nutritional adequacy, therapeutic diet documentation, and resident choice. Assisted living menu planning is governed by state licensing requirements, which vary significantly. SNF menu planning requires more rigorous documentation, particularly for therapeutic diets and meal pattern compliance.
Therapeutic diet documentation in a cycle menu typically involves notation fields on each menu item indicating which diet types it qualifies for — such as low-sodium, pureed, or mechanically altered — along with a separate resident diet profile that maps each resident to their prescribed diet. For skilled nursing, this documentation supports regulatory compliance and survey readiness. A dining management system can automate this process at the point of ordering.