Cheryl Lucas, Principal with Lucas Partners, is a consultant to all levels of senior living, from independent to skilled nursing. She is also the former Assistant Vice-President of food and beverage at Classic Residences by Hyatt. (www.lucaspartnersllc.com)
What is olfactory impairment and what causes it?
That in very simple terms is the diminishing sense of taste and smell. It’s a normal process, it’s enhanced by the environment, it’s enhanced by chronic diseases, it’s enhanced by pharmaceuticals. But it is very common in retirement because by the time seniors come to us, they’re pretty heavily medicated and they’re struggling with numerous chronic diseases—diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, all these things contribute to this. And so the food service has a pretty hefty task ahead of it to provide really wonderful food for people so that they can continue to enjoy food as long as they live. I always believe that I like to have my residents be my partners—it’s so much better. It’s a dialogue. You really do need to listen to what they have to say. And it’s about an educational process. You’re educating your operating team, you’re learning from your residents and you’re educating your residents. It needs to be very much an organic kind of relationship that grows and develops.
How does olfactory impairment impact seniors’ eating habits and health?
They are a nutritionally at-risk group to begin with, and they may not necessarily be eating healthy when they come to eat with us, and they also have their own taste preferences—foods that they love. So we are really having to, as I say with the dialogue, help people understand how to eat better because getting people to eat and getting the nutrition into their bodies will help them fight these chronic diseases that they may have. We are very heavily medicated as a society. Food is medicine. Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food,” so we need to think about how to better use food in our society to help people. It’s not just comfort. Having the opportunity to be in control of someone’s dining habits for the remainder of their life is a huge responsibility, but it can be so rewarding if we really look at it. But it needs to start with [those who are] nutritionally at risk.
What bad eating habits do these residents develop, and how can we compensate for their olfactory impairment so that they will eat better?
They tend to over-utilize salt. One of the toughest things in a retirement community is watching people use the salt shaker. It’s horrible because people associate flavour with salt or sugar. It becomes incumbent upon us to come up with some interesting flavour dynamics. It becomes a creative process for the culinary team to design different flavour profiles that will trigger the little bit of taste that’s left. Many times it’s even triggering the memory, which is just as good because we all remember what a great steak tastes like, we all remember what wonderful peach ice cream tastes like, and we can associate those flavours and those textures with what we’re currently eating. So it becomes a real creative process to do this for people, for example, that have hypertension and are on different types of diuretics. That is pulling all the moisture from your body, and it’s pulling all the salt from your body, and so what are we going to do? We’re going to salt more so these flavour-dynamic tricks of ours can help them enjoy flavour without putting their hypertension at risk. Same thing with diabetes. There are ways to be very, very tricky with a little bit of spice and a little bit of sweet so that you do not need so much sweet. It’s called flavour layering in culinary terms. Many times chefs refer to it as layering many different flavours that will help to create a different flavour profile.
With the advent of all the natural products and the minimally enhanced products today, I’m a great proponent of natural ingredients in food. A beautiful, wonderful piece of poultry where it has not received hormones, where it‘s minimally processed, still has that great umami flavour, so I strongly recommend people go in that direction. Organics, anything that you can do. And there are plenty of providers today that have these products available. They’re not just available to a very few. I would definitely say that in lieu of being able to produce some of your own enhancers, I would look to that organic natural market.
What is the most important thing that retirement residences can do to improve the dining experience for their residents?
First of all, let’s make it an experience. We talk about the dining experience—what does that really mean? People walk into a room with a lot of tables and chairs, they sit down at a table, they get a menu, and they order food that is brought to them. That’s not an experience; that’s eating. They could do that in their own kitchen. They’re coming to us because we’re going to help to enhance their life . . . We want to keep them vital and as engaged in life as we can. That’s why they’re coming to us—to live with us—so that means creating an experience that means that our chefs need to be really educated both externally and internally. We need to really look at the customer-service aspect of what we are doing. There is nothing worse than a server who simply doesn’t know what’s on the menu, doesn’t really care, just wants to drop the plate of food in front of you. There’s a conversation to service that as responsible operators we should be enhancing. We should be teaching. A lot of what I do today is helping people understand their core values so they can live them when they go out into the dining room, so they understand what food is about and they’re comfortable talking about the food. Comfortable serving someone in a way that makes them feel really good and not just bringing food to the table. So definitely I would say creating an experience that people can remember, not just creating a room where people eat but creating an experience. And training everyone—cooks, chefs, servers. Everybody should really understand it and live the company vision. It shouldn’t just be a statement that’s nicely framed and attached to the wall in the break room.
What advice do you have for retirement residence executives as they plan their food service operations for the next
five years?
I would say first invest in your people. The first thing you need to do is educate. They need to really understand the deep process of aging. They need to understand the nutrition of aging, and they need to understand that this is a wonderful—for customer service—opportunity for us, and it is a wonderful experience that can be shared by everyone.
I think the next thing is to design interactive spaces, multifunctional spaces, not just rooms where you go sit down at a table. We have the opportunity to bring aroma and beautiful visuals of food right into the dining room. There are so many new projects today that have open cooking areas where staff can teach and residents can actually interact, where they can be dining and the food comes to them as quickly as possible. Another thing that I think is so important in maintaining flavour is how quickly the food comes to the resident. Has it been cooked and been sitting in a steam table for an hour, or is it cooked when they order it and brought to them? There is so much that we can do to create these multifunctional spaces that really create lifestyle in a community instead of just pretty rooms that are empty for many, many hours of the day, and then they come alive for two hours at dinnertime or for an hour and a half at lunchtime. These should always be the heart of the community. I would say very, very, very important.
And I think the singular most important thing is training. Train your people, because with that training they are the people that are enhancing your brand, they are the people that are protecting your brand. And if you want to grow your brand, you have to grow your team. And ultimately these people will work more efficiently for you, they’ll work better for you, and it will have a direct impact on your bottom line. If you want to grow the brand, you have to grow your team. You should have a variety of things. Today we are bombarded with flavour in the marketplace . . . and it’s very interesting to see. Living in Florida, I see many different age groups dining, and it’s fascinating to me to see the number of people in restaurants, the number of people who are in their 80s who are dining on wonderful ethnic foods. In the education process for your chefs, they should be looking at the cuisines of tomorrow. They should be looking certainly at Asian cultures and Mediterranean foods and at all the different varieties, because these diets are actually healthier than the good old-fashioned American diet that we are so accustomed to. And it’s wonderful because we have now a new group of customers who have already experienced this and who would love to see it in their food today.
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