By: Laura Pratt
Healthfulness, local food, innovation and value are a few factors powerfully influencing the non-traditional foodservice segment today. But while the trends reflect traditional foodservice, this landscape suffers the unique burden of fiscal restraints that impose a limit on its expansion and innovation.
With descriptors such as “variously institutional,” “commercial” and “near-to-home,” the non-traditional foodservice market provides service to a range of institutions. From university and college campuses, to hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes and workplace cafeterias, this category is a collection of establishments where food is served to large groups of people who often eat many of their meals in one institution.
Know Thy Customer
While a restaurant is a “special-occasion place,” the non-traditional category caters to a market whose customers are fed daily. “[So] the biggest thing with this segment is an interest in healthy food choices,” says Sandra Matheson, president of Oakville, Ont.-based Food Systems Consulting Inc., which consults for traditional and non-traditional foodservice clients, including universities, hospitals and government agencies. “People are paying more attention to having vegetables, fresh ingredients, protein, reasonable portion sizes.”
Proximity to other people is important in this foodservice environment, too. In fact, some new seniors’ supportive housing projects are being built with “tea kitchens” only — limited-cooking environments that encourage residents to go to the dining room and partake in on-site social offerings.
Many retirement communities also feature food clubs, where a movie night showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, for example, might be complemented by the culinary accompaniment of an Indian meal. “That tells us that the social aspect of eating has become much more evident,” Matheson says. “People are understanding that, living alone, they need to seek out social encounters, and one of the best times to do that is mealtime.”
Meanwhile, mealtime is often in flux in non-traditional foodservice. “People are always eating,” Matheson says. “So one of the challenges for operators is to have things available throughout the day.” Thankfully, an interest in raw, cold and hand-held foods has heralded the replacement of salad bars with “cold bars” featuring vegetables, dips and ethnic breads that can be left out for long periods of time.
Consider Costs
But before food can be served at institutions, managers must first consider capital investments and operating costs. These financial realities have led to dynamic changes within the industry, says Barry Telford, SVP Healthcare & Education at Sodexo, an international service provider whose Canadian headquarters are in Burlington, Ont. Such changes include the trend towards re-thermalization. In other words, a product is prepared off-site at a facility that produces food and sent to an institution in a refrigerated or frozen state to be reheated for multiple end users.
This approach requires fewer staff and less kitchen space; instead, all the establishment in question requires is equipment to reheat food. The process leverages savings through purchasing and larger production runs. “There are real upsides to this,” says Telford. “The hospital doesn’t have the same operational cost structures or the same focus on labour it did before.”
Such practices are necessary, says Matheson, considering that the cost of food has been on the rise since 2008, with a spike in the last year or two. More than that, in Ontario, for example, the minimum wage hike in June, from $10.25 to $11 an hour, is being felt down the line. “When minimum wage goes up, everything else goes up, too,” says Matheson, explaining that it’s especially hard for her company’s clients, who aim to offer at least $1 more than minimum wage to attract workers.
Add the $7 or $8 per-patient cost for daily meals in most health-care institutions, says Beth Hunter, program director at the Montreal-based J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and you’ve got lots of expenses and not many ways to raise money within the health-care realm for the adoption of local and sustainable fare. “Food is not considered an important central tool to building health, so it’s not a core cost that you can fundraise for,” explains Hunter of the non-profit that builds communities to develop people’s potential and contribute to the common good.
“Funding for hospital food is very limited,” agrees Sharon McDonald, president of Compass Group Canada Healthcare in Mississauga, Ont. At Morrison, the arm of Compass that provides hospital-based patient-feeding and retail and support-service business, the solution has been the introduction of Steamplicity, which replaces cold-plate retherm. “We’ve had challenges with this technology in terms of patient satisfaction and quality deterioration,” admits McDonald of the process wherein food is fresh-plated, sealed and cooked under steam pressure. But the program offers a lot of efficiencies, too. “[It’s] the healthiest way to cook food in terms of retaining the nutrients,” McDonald says. More than that, the Steamplicity system — which has been installed in 13 hospitals across Ontario — requires little equipment, it offers environmental savings by using less water and fuel than conventional food-prep systems, and it has significantly reduced food waste.
Create Change
Universities and colleges are leading the charge in providing local, sustainable food. And their efforts, combined with those of local-food advocates such as chef/restaurateur Jamie Oliver, have influenced consumers who now demand better options. In turn, distributors have responded with enhanced relationships with produce suppliers and increased fresh and local offerings.
Still, says J.W. McConnell’s Hunter, enacting change in big institutions can be hard. In some cases, she says, the dietitians and food suppliers are the barriers to transformation. “They’re used to working a certain way, and making a shift means taking more time and changing practices that may be entrenched.” She points to local sourcing done by institutions such as the University of Winnipeg, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Dalhousie University in Halifax and Scarborough Hospital in Ontario as the exceptions. “We need these champions,” she says. “We want to take this to another level by better communicating what’s possible.”
The alternative is untenable since the sustainability of the food system is a critical issue. “We’re working to get more healthy, local and sustainable food into institutions and into supply chains. One benefit of local food is that it cuts down on the transportation impact of how far food travels,” Hunter adds.
The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation is further inciting change with this year’s implementation of its Institutional Food Program. The idea is to promote the inclusion of more local, sustainable foods in institutional settings such as hospitals, long-term care centres, schools and universities.
The organization received 20 funding applications for the program and selected eight to support. Each will receive up to $75,000 per grant and join J.W. McConnell’s learning collaboration training program. Quebec’s Centre de Santé et Service Sociaux (CSSS) des Sommets is one recipient. It will use the funds to provide local, sustainable food to the cafeterias, patient meals and vending machines of three long-term care facilities and a hospital.
In partnership with Montreal’s Food Secure Canada, the country’s national voice for the food movement, the Institutional Food Program will walk participants through the transition to procuring more healthy, local, sustainable food. Like-minded individuals from institutions who have led such change will offer insights into how they improved their menus to prioritize local food; how they track supply-side changes; and the role of institutional culture and personal relationships in making change.
Meanwhile, Sodexo’s new Expressly for You program shows how life-sustaining nutrition can also lead to meaningful interactions. The initiative includes the ordering of raw ingredients from approved, ideally local, suppliers and chefs — either Sodexo-supplied or hospital employees under Sodexo’s management — and preparing meals from scratch in clients’ on-site kitchens. Patients order meals such as turkey meatloaf or tomato and potato frittata from a bedside hostess who visits nine times daily. “Through those interactions, you get to know the patient, so there’s good relationship-building, social interaction and good, nutritious food. It’s a great combination,” explains Telford.
Greg Lawrie, RVP for Aramark’s health-care line of business in Canada, agrees that social interaction is a big part of the non-traditional health-care foodservice picture. He explains: “We wanted to find a way to more personally connect with our customers at the moment of truth — when they’re deciding what to have for a meal.” That wish evolved into the “spoken menu program,” a process whereby a foodservice team member visits the customer to take his order. “The menu itself didn’t change,” Lawrie clarifies. “Nor did the way we procured, prepared or delivered the food; just the way we interacted with the customer. Patients went from minimal control to [getting] the opportunity to ask questions and have a real discussion about their experience with foodservice staff at the moment of their meal decision.” After the change, patients expressed increased satisfaction with the overall experience, rating variety, taste, presentation and quality higher by between 12 and 17 per cent.
Of course, the food itself is important, too. “The top priority for foodservice in health-care environments is to contribute to a customer’s overall health and recovery, and the meals are essentially a part of their care,” says Lawrie. It’s why Aramark’s menu options build on the nutritional recommendations and special diets implemented by the doctors and nutritionists, before the issues of presentation and flavour are addressed. For example, a typical Aramark meal might be a baked salmon loin with lemon dill sauce or a lemon wedge and a side garden or caesar salad.
J.W. McConnell’s Hunter also places value on food’s healing properties. “Whether it’s schools where the food the kids eat is impactful on their development or long-term centres and hospitals where the food people eat when they’re sick or older is important, today we need to [look at food] as a preventative,” she says. “Non-traditional foodservice today is so much more than just one more dinner.”
