As Director of Culinary Programs at Acts Retirement-Life Communities, Jon Addess oversees foodservice operations in sites across the United States ranging from Independent Living through to Skilled Care.

Here’s how his MealSuite system helps him and his teams across 28 Acts locations integrate their front and back-of-house, while managing their operations for success.

What operational goals has foodservice technology helped you achieve?

“One of the main things technology has done is it has helped us integrate all our areas in our food service operation with all our levels of care.”

“It's helped all levels of care – Skilled care, Independent Living and ILU – so it's all integrated together. And that's what really good about technology, nothing is siloed anymore. The back of the house isn't only the back of the house, the front of the house isn't only the front of the house, so technology has helped us integrate those areas and help each of those areas understand each other better.”

Would you say that MealSuite helps support your operations from end-to-end?

“Yes, MealSuite does help us support our operations end to end. And when I think of end to end, I think of just what I said before – front of the house operations, back of the house operations, resident satisfaction, all levels of care. And MealSuite has helped us and have been a good partner in that. On top of that, MealSuite has helped us advance technology – when we've had a request that will help us, MealSuite has certainly put it on the roadmap and they've helped us a great deal with helping our operation end-to-end. So even if the technology doesn't exist, MealSuite helps us make the technology exist.”

What would you say to someone who's considering MealSuite for their community?

“I would say, what's important to understand is MealSuite is not a restaurant company that you're trying to massage into a healthcare environment. MealSuite is a healthcare company that understands the restaurant side of the business.”

“And that's a very important distinction – a lot of companies out there that are restaurant POS don't understand senior living in that environment... And that makes it really important when we're trying to push out POS. We are restaurants, but we're also senior living and we need a company that understands that part of the business. And MealSuite understands that.”