The hospital’s new menu options will include artisan pizzas, hamburgers, made-to-order omelets and more.
Executive Chef John Belcher, Food and Nutrition Services (FSN) Manager, couldn’t be happier that he and his team of 35 personnel will soon be moving into the new hospital and with good reason.
The department’s 70-year old footprint was small and inefficient, making preparing healthy and nutritious meals for staff, patients and visitors a challenging task. For example, to get in the walk-in coolers, he and his staff would have to step up into them, grab what they were looking for and carefully step back down because there was no room to turn around. What he affectionately calls “the racetrack,” the walkways around the outside of the kitchen, is so narrow that if two people are walking towards each other, someone has to step aside to make way. If a staff member needs something from the storage room or freezer? They have to walk outside and across the parking lot to retrieve the items.
Belcher, who’s been with the company for 25 years, takes it all in stride. “We learned to adapt,” said Belcher.
Adapting will no longer be necessary when he and his staff move from their 3,000-square-foot space into the new hospital’s 6,300-square-foot state-of-the-art kitchen. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that the freezer is in the kitchen,” he joked.
It’s not just the indoor freezer that is his cause for joy. The new space will be quite a step up for the FNS team, as well as for patients and guests. There will be private service elevators near the kitchen to whisk food up to patient rooms in a timely manner and a convenient loading dock and dry storage area to streamline processes and improve workflow. The “racetrack” is wide, with plenty of room for staff to navigate.
A new vector oven will cook twice as much food in the same amount of time as traditional ovens and can cook three different food items at different temperatures simultaneously. Five Combi ovens will allow his staff the option to roast, steam, smoke, cold smoke or air-fry food, all with the touch of a button. Two pizza ovens will allow staff to create artisan pizza from scratch in minutes.
“The staff are in heaven and can’t wait to get started here and do amazing things,” he said.
While his staff is excited to flex their culinary muscles in the new kitchen, there’s plenty of changes that front-of-house guests will celebrate.
Guests will enjoy a dining room with seating for 150, a new made-to-order grill station, as well as a barista station, salad and dessert bars and an area for a new fangled vending machine that serves hot meals, like bbq pork bao or White Castle classic cheese sliders, 24 hours a day. The expanded dining area also features an outdoor courtyard for guests to enjoy.
“We’ll be able to offer menu items we’ve never had before like hamburgers, made-to-order omelets, chicken sandwiches and more, whatever Chef Garrett Heiss comes up with,” said Belcher.
Once operational, it’s anticipated he and his team will serve approximately 1,200 meals a day to patients, guests and staff, as opposed to the 750 meals a day they currently serve.
The food is so good that Belcher has built up a following of local residents who dine at the hospital. “Even though we’re a hospital cafeteria, we’re open to the public, diners can stroll in and have breakfast, lunch or dinner,” he said. “We have a steady after-church crowd that regularly comes in every Sunday just to gather and eat.”
When the new hospital opens its doors, the cafeteria will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will be serving breakfast daily from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., lunch daily from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner daily from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. In between, the bistro will be serving up coffee, drinks, hot sandwiches, pastries and some grab-and-go healthy drinks.
“We’re going to have a 30-day rotating menu for the buffets and we’ll have meal options under $5, $6 and $7,” he said.
Belcher, whose background is in hotel restaurant management, said his goal is to change the perception of hospital food as being bland or boring. “We implemented new recipes and new food items and it’s taken off and we’ve never looked back,” he said. “I track the data from customer surveys and we are consistently among the top kitchens at Baycare.”
He credits his staff, many of whom have been with him for more than 10 years, for the success and looks forward to the move, and all the new cooking gadgets, to continue to provide delicious and nutritious meals to all who enter the hospital’s doors.
