Dining has become one of the great differentiators among senior living communities as they strive to attract residents—including younger residents—who are seeking new experiences and social engagement opportunities by way of all things food related.
That’s inspired the senior living design community to rethink not only how a main dining room might look and function, but also how to introduce innovations like demonstration kitchens and wine-tasting rooms (perhaps with room to make wine).
The effort answers a key goal of bringing residents and their loved ones—as well as their interests and hobbies—together.
“Humans thrive around food and the experience of it,” says Eric Krull, principal at THW Design (Atlanta). “It’s changed the way our firm approaches design.”
Environments for Aging held a roundtable discussion on dining trends with Krull and Lisa Warnock, principal at Thoma-Holec Design (Mesa, Ariz.), and Amber Caton, design director at Wegman Design Group (Naples, Fla.)—each representing the winners of EFA’s inaugural Dining Competition.
The EFA dining supplement download is now available here: https://efamagazine.com/events/dining-competition/
The group discussed how their firms are approaching dining projects with clients, the best practices they’ve identified recently, and where they see these spaces going next.
Variety in senior living dining venues
From a high level, while dining spaces have been an area of focus for several years, investment in them remains strong, Warnock says.
“I’m not seeing any slowdown in the request for as many dining venues as can fit.” On average, she says, that translates to a 100,000-square-foot independent living, assisted living, memory care community housing no fewer than three venues, with additional spaces dedicated to memory care.
And while there was a long-held tradition of offering more formal dining venues, Warnock says Thoma-Holec’s recent post-occupancy evaluations have found a shift in resident preferences toward more casual settings.
“Residents tend to find the nicer dining a bit too fussy, or it just isn’t necessarily an everyday dining venue for them,” she says.
On the design side, that’s translated into more bistros and grab-and-go options growing in square footage. These spaces also have dedicated kitchen equipment, too, like pizza ovens.
“Actual cooking is happening in them, not just bringing in pre-made, pre-wrapped foods,” Warnock says.
How those spaces are sited within a community varies, but the delineation between them is what’s become a key priority,” Caton adds.
“[Clients] want all these different venues. So even when it’s a large dining room, they want different venues within that.”
Demand for outdoor dining options in senior living
Another element of variety within dining comes from a growing use of outdoor spaces, as well, Krull says—a solution that not only lends to the overall dining experience and gives residents choice but does so much more economically.
“It’s not uncommon for us to create what I’ll call ‘the craft brewery experience,’ where you create an outdoor room and extend the dining space to have more area that doesn’t cost you $300-$500 per square foot,” he says.
The result is a space with perhaps some tensile structures and other shading solutions, food truck parking, and/or a recreational area for pickleball and axe-throwing—not only serving residents but attracting their family members, too.
“You can have all these experiences. We’re talking about an intergenerational community, not an 85-year-old community,” Krull says.
Meanwhile, other new models are being introduced to embrace the desire not just to eat, but to learn and have an experience while dining.
For example, demonstration kitchens continue to be popular in senior living, and Warnock adds that a recent project she completed took the concept a step further by creating a private dining room that was en suite to the kitchen. The approach essentially takes down the traditional viewing wall and opens the space to allow chefs to cook and walk the food directly to the dining table.
Communities are also embracing partnerships with celebrity chefs for menu creation or even creating secondary locations for well-known local restaurants.
Senior living dining operations and staffing
As more venues are considered and programmed, the panel agrees that the biggest challenge facing communities today is ensuring the necessary staffing to make them operational.
“You can’t fully staff four different venues, from the bar to three dining venues; it’s impossible. So it takes a careful design of flexibility so a space may be one thing at 6 p.m. versus 8 a.m.,” Krull says.
Beyond flexing space use throughout the day, Caton adds that designing to support staff members in serving multiple functions helps, too.
For example, on a recent Wegman Design Group project, a reception desk was extended to share space with a café. The result is that the staff member welcoming visitors and residents could also be the one to make them a latté.
“Designing to make that easier for staff is really important,” she says.
Additionally, dining venue hours are being extended—frequently taking an all-day dining approach—instead of designated times, Warnock says.
That means spaces don’t need to be designed to house all residents at once, which lends itself to carving out those separate, smaller venues, and having staff members jumping between them.
To make it work, Warnock recommends planning venues to be in proximity to one another. For example a bistro at the center, fine dining to one side and sports bar to the other with a centrally located commercial kitchen.
“We want to keep them close to each other, so you’ve got that flexibility to allow residents to choose, which is the whole reason we do this. You don’t want to mandate that they have to eat in the bistro at lunch and can only eat in the fine dining at night,” she says.
Caton also stresses the importance of having such conversations during programming to help address current issues, such as staffing, as well as plan for potential future ones.
“Designing with flexibility in mind really helps. We meet all the programming needs we know they have now, but they don’t know what their staffing issues will be in two years. Maybe they’ll have all the staffing in the world and it won’t be an issue, but we want to make sure they get by now,” she says.
Best practices in senior living dining design
As for the basics of dining design today, Warnock says it starts with seating. “We always design at least three different types of seating in dining venues,” she says.
Additionally, she says it’s important that the approach accommodates both different body types and personal preference—for example, chair versus booth. As for those chairs, Warnock says she pushes for options with casters on the front two feet, which make it easier for residents to pull out chairs regardless of arm strength.
And overall, she says, it’s important that the pieces are of a high quality to endure daily wear and tear.
“If there’s anywhere we really try to make sure the client doesn’t value engineer us down too much it’s in the dining room furniture. We really want the right chairs—they are the workhorses of the community and, in assisted living, can be used three times a day, every single day.”
Chair height, specifically, is an important detail in bar spaces, adds Caton, where counter-height is currently the best option with the use of a sunken bar. The solution allows communities to avoid the use of stools, which can be unsafe and/or unwieldy for residents, while still having the bartender at eye-height to the resident seated at the bar.
And in those bar spaces, Caton says she’s starting to see more media integration. Where once installing multiple TVs was seen as a negative, now communities understand the appeal of having sporting events on and drawing residents out of their rooms.
Lighting and acoustics strategies for dining spaces
Meanwhile, Krull says both acoustics and lighting are top of mind in dining design, as well, to lend a more hospitality-driven touch to spaces.
For example, while the instinct of owners might be to choose hard-surface flooring for its cleanability, carpeting will offer both acoustic qualities and detract from an institutional feel.
Lighting recommendations start with LED bulbs that are at least 90 on the color rendering index, Warnock says.
Next is layers. “We do a lot of layers: ceiling coves, down lighting, chandeliers, sconces. The more layers of light you can put in, the more comfortable the light will be for residents,” she says.
Meanwhile, establishing spaces that are authentic to the community and surrounding area without feeling overtly themed is a careful line to walk in senior living dining design.
That was especially challenging for THW’s Corso Atlanta project, which is inspired by Parisian architecture. However, in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, home to many chateau residences, it’s fitting.
“We as designers try to make sure we’re connecting the architecture and the program experiences on the interior as well as the exterior. I think that’s how you get away from dropping something down that doesn’t feel authentic,” Krull says.
He adds that the process should involve looking at the local vernacular in a five-mile radius to understand the environment where the future consumer is coming from.
For renovations and repositions at existing communities, Warnock says that residents can be involved in the process, as well. She shared a recent project where a resident committee dug deep into historical archives and through listening sessions with the design team helped inform how dining venues were branded all the way down to the graphic design.
“There’s a fun opportunity to engage with residents,” she says.
And the process of establishing a brand and fully pulling it through into details such as graphic design is a critical way to ensure success.
“It’s really important to have that branding element. It’s a restaurant, so treat it like a restaurant,” Caton says. “You pull it off so much better when it’s not just a theme for a room. When it’s a brand, it goes with the signage, it goes with the menu,” she says.
Future senior living dining trends
While there’s a lot of food for thought when it comes to dining design, the panel agrees that projects shouldn’t be planned without a kitchen consultant on board to understand the program and iron out details like venues, hours of operation, and the overall business plan.
“Once they know how that’s going to flow and operate, then it makes all the fun of what we all do as designers that much more important. And you know it’s actually going to stick. You can wrap the architecture and interior design around the program once you know what’s financially feasible,” Krull says.
Key is also the location of the commercial kitchen. Due to the high cost of kitchen equipment in general, it’s recommended to ensure the main kitchen has great access for delivery and waste disposal but also to all the dining venues. This can be either with immediate proximity to the venues themselves or to elevators that will serve staff transporting food to higher floors for spaces like rooftop decks and lounges.
“Probably the most important part of all the initial programming is getting the food service and kitchen exactly where they need to be, and everything else revolves around that,” Warnock says.
Part of figuring out the puzzle is ensuring that staff traveling with food and other materials never cross a residential corridor to get to and from a venue—a frequent shortcoming to many plans that’s bad for resident experience and safety.
“That must never happen. It happens all the time, but it should never happen,” Warnock says.
Looking toward the future, and with the knowledge of the staffing issues the industry is facing today, the panel agrees that technology like robotics and artificial intelligence will likely be another key to the planning process.
While some solutions, like robots that bus or deliver food to tables, have already seen adoption in senior living dining, they expect more robust technologies to be explored—for example, a robotic assembly line for meal preparation.
“I’m sure technology will take over. The quality of the food, I question if it’s going to be there,” Krull says.
However, with a thought toward self-serve wine and beer dispensing systems, Caton sees how there’s potential to use technology to contribute to residents engaging in dining, as well.
“It provides this whole other experience … there are cool things that can come from it,” Caton says.
Jennifer Kovacs Silvis is editor-in-chief of Environments for Aging. She can be reached at [email protected].
For more on dining trends, check out this article on the food service venues that were winners in the Environments for Aging Remodel/Renovation Competition.
