Driving engagement and personalization in senior dining

In senior living communities, enhancing the dining experience you offer may come down to finding a way to boost engagement while accommodating a range of dietary preferences and needs. Pairing an engagement platform with a diet-aware ordering system can help.
Digital tools are transforming how senior-living residents shape what’s on their plates — and satisfaction scores show it. Resident engagement platforms — Uniguest Community is one example — can put menus on TVs, tablets, and community apps to let residents preview specials, vote on entrees, and receive allergen callouts. Interactive bulletin boards and POS integrations can make ordering and billing seamless.
On the ordering side, facilities can use systems that provide choices that ensure each resident sees options suited to their preferred diet, texture modifications and allergies. CBORD’s NetMenu Selective Dining, for example, makes it possible for residents to order in advance or tableside on mobile devices that automatically filter choices according to a resident’s criteria. This can help reduce errors and boost resident confidence that the order they receive will meet their specific needs.
Having such systems in place builds an operation’s data trove and, in turn, their power to measure waste and set more accurate demand forecasts. This can help a kitchen more accurately plan production and, ideally, determine where there is room for flexibility to get residents more engaged. For example, a community with flexibility around meal options could put out a pre-Christmas poll on mobile devices to weigh interest in roast turkey or prime rib for the holiday meal.