Food-Service-Manual-for-Health-Care-Institutions

minimized. The type of meal service specified for a particular catered event will most certainly
vary. For customers with limited budgets, buffets can be suggested. For customers who desire
more elegant meal service, full table service with waitstaff can be provided.
Although the activities described above vary from one catered event to another, proper
food handling is always critical. To implement the guidelines discussed in Chapter 13, the operation
must provide transportation and holding equipment to ensure that food remains healthful.
A variety of such equipment is available on the market.
Aside from being an excellent means of service expansion, special-events catering helps
promote the food service department and enhance the larger facility’s image. However, this specialized
service requires dedication, creativity, expertise, and savvy marketing research.
Vending Operations
Vending operations are a popular alternative for meeting the needs of employees, guests, residents,
and outpatients on a round-the-clock basis in many hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Compared with cafeteria service, vending services are less labor-intensive and require little
space for the typical bank of machines. Vending machines maintain chilled food items at more
appropriate temperatures than when they are displayed for cafeteria service. Potential customers
generally are familiar with the operation of a microwave oven, the primary method for
heating food items purchased from vending machines. Wherever chilled or frozen foods are
vended, microwave ovens usually are provided. Some machines use debit card systems that
eliminate the use of coins and cash.
In planning a vending service, a number of options are available for how to control and
operate this type of meal service. The food service director can contract with a vending company
to provide selections ranging from snacks and hot and cold beverages to full-scale offerings
of hot canned foods, pre-plated convenience foods, sandwiches, pastries, snacks, and
frozen desserts. Vending space can be rented on a per-square-foot basis, for a set amount for
each item sold, or as a percentage of gross sales. Another option could allow the food service
operation to provide food for the machines and contract with the vending company to provide
other items (such as candy and beverages). A number of food service departments establish
their own self-operated services. This decision, however, should be based on careful analysis of
all capital and operating costs, along with close scrutiny of forecasted revenues.
Regardless of who controls the vending operation, food quality, equipment operation and
maintenance, and vending area sanitation are major concerns that mandate attentive planning.
Several factors must be considered, such as electricity sources, ease of restocking (review the
security measures covered in Chapter 14), environmental amenities (comfortable and aesthetically
pleasing furnishings), and waste disposal. If sanitation of the vending area is not a term
of a contractual agreement with an outside service, this responsibility must be assigned to an
appropriate department, such as maintenance or housekeeping.
Off-Site Meal Service
In addition to providing meal service to patients, residents, and nonpatients, many health care
food service operations provide services to market segments in their surrounding communities.
For example, off-site meal service to child care and elder care centers and to congregate feeding
sites (churches or community centers, for example) is not unusual. Meal service also may
be provided to home-confined individuals who require special diets or who cannot prepare
nutritious meals for themselves. Sometimes health care food service operations are perceived
throughout the community as the organizations best able to meet this need. As with catering
special events, responding to the needs of the community can have a positive effect on the operation’s
public image and that of the health care facility as a whole.
Of course, off-site meal service is another route to service expansion. However, as is true
of catering services, meal prices must be determined carefully to cover food, labor, and supply
costs and yet remain affordable for the customers. In many communities, additional funding is
Distribution and Service
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