New Culinary Excellence Award set up at Orchard Care Homes

A new award scheme that recognises and gives credit to the cooks and kitchens of Orchard Care Homes, has been set up as part of the company’s national initiative to standardise an excellent food and beverage offering in each home.The first home to gain the Centre for Culinary Excellence accolade this month is Nesfield Lodge in Leeds, Yorkshire. The kitchen staff were praised for their dedication to the task of keeping their kitchen to the highest standards, ensuring their health and safety checks were in place and in delivering an enticing and appetising daily menu to the residents of the home. Comments Andy Savage, Food & Beverage Manager, Orchard Care Homes; “The importance of food and the kitchen team within care homes is undisputed. We are committed to providing the very best quality and service to our residents and our new initiative is a way of inspiring and motivating our kitchen teams to drive this.” To achieve the accolade of Centre for Culinary Excellence, each home kitchen must achieve eight benchmarks. These include FSA Food Rating - 5, CQC – Person centred dining experience, cooking fresh seasonal dishes from scratch, food and menu reflects the preferences of residents, HACCP – Safe and clean kitchen environment, catering with care for diversity, food themed activities for residents regularly undertaken and managing a defined monthly budget. At least one Centre for Culinary Excellence will be established in each cluster area of Orchard Care Homes, covering a geographical area from Yorkshire up to the North East. The designated centre will then act as a go-to centre to give support and training to those homes in its vicinity. The next region to be awarded a Centre is the North East.