Upscale dining options key to senior communities
When The Club opens later this summer at Lenbrook Atlanta, it arguably will be one of the more well-vetted dining establishments to hit Buckhead in recent memory.
At tasting sessions, residents of the Peachtree Road senior community helped select which dark, light and decaf blends will be served all day in the coffeehouse before it morphs into a dessert-and-drinks spot at night. Even the name, The Club, was chosen by a vote of Lenbrook’s 500 residents.
“The residents here have always created impact, and just because they moved here they don’t want to stop,” said Lenbrook’s dining services director Stephen West. “And food and drink is one of the areas they care about the most.”
Lenbrook is at the leading edge of change sweeping over what is broadly known as “senior living” communities.
Increasingly, experts say, food is becoming as important as level of care among people deciding which independent or assisted living community to move into — or whether to move into one at all.
“There is a large trend in senior living toward ‘destination dining,’” said Felicia Crawford, director of hospitality at Canterbury Court in Atlanta. “That means multiple dining venues, all with their own identities. So it feels like having multiple restaurants under one roof.”
At Canterbury Court, the four different venues run the gamut from fine dining to grab-and-go fare. Residents also can order room service. And wherever they choose to eat, icons recently added to menus help them identify vegetarian, gluten-free and healthy eating options.
“As the younger generation starts coming in, we’re seeing they’re very health- and wellness-focused,” Crawford said. “Besides still having lots of choices on where to eat, they want to know what’s in various items and is it nutritional.”
Indeed, here come the Baby Boomers. Some 10,000 of them are turning 65 in the U.S. every day now and for a large swath, deciding on their next, best place to live is of critical importance. In Georgia, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 comprises just under 24 percent of the population, according to the most recent Census estimates.
For many of these Boomers, mobile lifestyles, increased societal focus on healthy and socially conscious eating and even the proliferation of cooking shows on TV has acclimated them to a wide variety of dining options. Those expectations aren’t about to disappear just because they’re moving into senior living.
“Most people here are well traveled and used to having the best choices,” said Jeanne Gambrell, a three-year resident at Lenbrook and the current resident co-chair of the dining committee. “They don’t want to change.”
“This is not a shy group,” Barbara Ramos, who recently rotated off the committee after five years, confirmed with a chuckle.
Is it any wonder, then, that this isn’t your grandfather’s senior living dining room of even a decade ago?
“Back then, you would’ve had one dining room and maybe a couple of choices on a sheet of paper that you would have to circle what you wanted the next day,” said Bruce Rosenblatt, founder of Senior Housing Solutions, a senior living referral service. “Now, it’s night and day. It’s all waiters and waitresses, fine dining and multiple venues.”
Spurred by a growing market of seniors with honed palates and a willingness to speak up about it, senior living communities are adding open kitchens, brick-oven pizza venues and gluten-free and organically grown menus for residents, said Harris Ader, CEO of the Senior Dining Association, a professional organization of food service personnel in the senior living industry.
At Allegro Senior Living, some new communities will get rooftop or poolside bars, said vice president of dining services Mark Krystopa. Elsewhere, they’re incorporating more happy hours and “things that would be seen in a nice restaurant setting,” including omelet stations, wine carts, even Bananas Foster stations.
