Centre for Culinary Excellence Partnership

We launched a recognition scheme in late 2015 to give credit to the cooks and kitchens of Orchard Care Homes, and to push and standardise an excellent food and beverage offering across all our homes in the country.

Homes must achieve eight benchmarks of standards, which include FSA Food Rating - 5, CQC – Person centred dining experience and cooking fresh seasonal dishes from scratch. At least one Centre for Culinary Excellence will be established in each cluster area of Orchard Care Homes, with designated homes acting as a go-to centre to give support and training to other homes in its vicinity.

Diane Lilley, our Food & Beverage Manager and also a trained chef commented “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.”

“Our cooks are very proud of what they do and we want to empower them to share their experience and learning with each other. This is a way of enabling that to happen.”

Chef of the year launch