Do your food servers and dining servers know they are crucial to your community’s success?

When a chef leaves his domain in the kitchen to enter the dining room to say, “Hello, I hope you enjoyed your meal today. I created the menu with you in my mind,” he touches everyone in the dining room creating a bond between himself and the seniors. Relationships begin in the dining room! Seniors may sit at a dining table with strangers and leave after the meal with new friendships beginning to form. Some may last a long time; some may develop into more than friendship.

Business deals are made over the lunch or dinner table. It’s where trust is built and new ideas are created. The dining table is the best asset for your community! It is a powerful tool and can be utilized to build friendships between seniors (who will invite their friends to come to live in their community,) and build friendships with coworkers, cementing a team of food servers that create a flow and ease when serving meals. Kind Dining® helps your food servers to attain that cherished level of friendship with interactive training because it works for everyone involved! Kind Dining encourages food servers to help each other, to work as a team, to be open and friendly with the residents and guests in your dining room. I designed this methodology with kindness in mind. It’s important that we are all kind to each other.

The habits we practice are noticed by others and copied, sometimes without realizing it. It is one of the better ways to learn. Food server-to-senior relationships and food server-to-coworker relationships also frequently require reconnections to company values in order to improve service. Refreshing your food servers with team-building skills through hands-on training is a great way to accomplish goals in the community dining room.

Our B♥ Kind® Tip: Remember, the service given has the power to build friendships. 

About Cindy Heilman

Cindy is the founder and owner of Kind Dining®, which she began in 2006. She’s traveled across the country and Canada working with and training senior living communities that want to create an exceptional dining experience for their residents and staff. In addition, she certifies select professionals in her Kind Dining® philosophy and provides tools, now in an eLearning format, that make learning stick and help people put insights into action. As a result of her work, clients often share their staff has a new sense of purpose, get along better and keep their focus and energy on what matters most. In fact, she wrote a book, Hospitality for Boomers on how to attract residents and keep good team members. In her free time, she enjoys walking Oregon trails and cheering on her favorite soccer teams, the Portland Thorns and Timbers.

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