9 Ways to Boost Dining Services Revenue in Senior Living, Part 1: Integrated, Flexible Meal Plans

A fully-integrated Point of Sale (POS) system transforms the dining experience for your residents, offering a seamless and modern lifestyle. When you choose a flexible system with built-in meal plans, residents can effortlessly buy their daily coffee or enjoy a meal without worrying about bringing their wallet with them. By offering a variety of formats and pricing tiers for meal plans and ensuring convenient tracking and billing processes, you can significantly enhance your dining services income while boosting resident satisfaction.

The big benefits of flexible meal plans

• Increased dining program participation: Prepaid meal plans encourage on-site dining, leading to higher participation rates. Residents are more likely to dine within the community, knowing their meals, snacks and beverages are already paid for. This increase in participation can directly translate to higher revenue.
• Competitive advantage and market differentiator: Offering flexible meal options that cater to diverse dietary needs and lifestyle choices sets your community apart from others. This differentiation can attract potential residents looking for personalized dining experiences.
• Opportunities for various plan tiers and special perks: By providing multiple plan tiers with special perks, you can drive more revenue. Residents may be willing to pay more for enhanced dining experiences, such as gourmet dining options or exclusive events.
• Improved operational efficiency: Streamlined billing processes improve operational efficiency, making it easier for staff to manage meal plans and for residents to keep track of their dining expenses.

Tips to get the most out of meal plans

• Offer customizable options: Allow residents to tailor their meal plans based on their preferences and dining frequency. Options for plan formats can include...
  • Points-based plan: Breakfast and lunch are 2 points, dinner is 3 points.
  • Declining balance plan: Residents have a set dollar amount that decreases with each meal purchase.
  • Unlimited plan: Residents can enjoy unlimited meals for a fixed price.
• Provide adjustable tiers with special perks: Offer various pricing tiers that allow residents to choose plans that best fit their needs, encouraging higher spending for more benefits. Try something like:
  • Basic Plan: Standard meals with basic dining access.
  • Standard Plan: Enhanced meal options with additional perks.
  • Premium Plan: Gourmet dining, special beverages, and exclusive events.

  
• Make billing ultra convenient: Streamline the billing process for meal plans, making it easy for residents or their families to upgrade or adjust their plans as needed. Automated monthly billing is a great option, along with easy online access to see their balance and manage their account.

Use MealSuite’s Point of Sale system to implement flexible meal plans your residents and staff will love

Input meal plan parameters that work best for your community into MealSuite’s flexible POS system. We offer a breadth of customizations so you can design a plan that boosts income and foodservice satisfaction:

• Customization options: Meal plans in MealSuite are highly customizable, offering options that can be points-based, dollar-based, prepaid, or unlimited to suit each resident's preferences. Our meal plans can be tailored to cover a maximum number of items or a specified dollar value within each menu category per meal period. Any charges exceeding this maximum are billed directly to the resident. These plans can also be set up to automatically share between multiple residents in the same room.
• Time period resets: Meal plans can be reset on a daily, weekly, monthly a prorate basis providing flexibility in managing dining credits.
• Rollover capabilities: Unused meal plan values can be rolled over to the next period if not used in the current period, with customizable rollover limits to ensure residents get the most out of their plans.
• Diner categories for staff: Meal plans can be created for different staff categories, such as nursing, volunteers, and administrative staff, ensuring everyone in the community benefits from flexible dining options.
• POS locations: Meal plans can be used at various POS locations within the community, making it easy for residents to access meals wherever they are. Residents can also be restricted from using their meal plans in specific locations if you choose.
• Menu items and meal periods: Meal plans can be applied to different categories of menu items, for example, you can choose not to include alcoholic drinks. Also, meal periods can be customized (breakfast, lunch, dinner), allowing you to allow or disallow meal plan usage for specific meal periods.
• Automation for seamless service: When a diner with a meal plan is seated in the Point of Sale, the system automatically detects that they are on a meal plan, making for a seamless process for residents and servers. Our POS system also allows products to be automatically added to a diner's order based on the meal plan they have.
• Data insights: Easily track meal plan transactions of each diner to help you make informed decisions.
• Easy management: Meal plans can be manually credited and debited.
• Integration with EHR: Residents can be automatically assigned to, or taken off of, a POS meal plan via PointClickCare.

Integrating flexible meal plans with a robust POS system like MealSuite not only enhances the dining experience for residents but also drives revenue and operational efficiency for senior living communities. By offering customizable options, adjustable tiers, and convenient billing processes, you can meet the diverse needs of your residents while setting your community apart in a competitive market.

Click here to schedule a demo of MealSuite’s Point of Sale today!

Want to dive into more ways a flexible Point of Sale system can help you drive revenue? Download our free e-book: 9 Ways to Capture More Dining Revenue in Your Senior Living Community with a Flexible Point of Sale System

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