Our Center was designed by Kendal’s founders to promote social interaction. The central location of mailboxes, the library, the auditorium, and the craft rooms were all part of that. So was the centralized dining room, and the requirement to pay for a meal every day (or close to it) as part of the monthly fee.
At the moment, I would say, the dining situation is not working as the founders intended. Many of us are getting takeout meals frequently or exclusively, which negates much of the social benefit that the central dining room was intended to provide. Many residents are not sure how often they want to eat in the Center, if at all, because they feel uneasy at the prospect.
In this post, I would like to explore some of the reasons for this, and to point out some opportunities for improving the situation.
Who isn’t eating in the dining room? I’ll bet most residents have had days when they didn’t feel like eating in the dining room. Jan and I have certainly experienced that. For each person, the reasons can be different. Here are some common questions:
- Will I have an unsatisfactory social experience?
- Will I be unable (or unwilling) to contribute to the conversation?
- Will I end up at a table by myself because all the tables are full?
- My hearing is poor—will I understand what is being said well enough to participate?
- I’m an introvert—will I end up with extroverts and feel like I don’t fit in?
- I’m a single person—will I end up at a table dominated by couples? (We’ll leave a broader discussion of the challenges of dining while single for another blog post.)
Some of us defend ourselves ahead of time by inviting, and dining with, people we know will be friendly. Some of us bring a spouse who we are confident can handle the situation if we can’t. Some of us come when invited by people we already know, or come only to “themed” tables where we know what to expect, such as a women’s table, a storytelling table, or (on Sunday) a Quaker-hosted table. (Even more themed tables would be a good idea, we think. Do you have an idea for one?)
But many residents end up taking out food and eating at home because they feel uneasy in the dining room. That suggests we have an opportunity to improve our dining experience.
This is not the way it has to be. Some residents, especially new arrivals, may decide that ambivalence about eating in the Center is just part of the normal experience at any retirement community. They don’t see an alternative. Jan and I might have accepted that idea, except that we experienced how things were prior to Covid. We can report that things were significantly different then.
As far as we remember (and we’re not totally sure about this), relatively few residents took food out prior to Covid. Takeout food was available in the café, but we mainly remember seeing staff members taking that option.
The café itself offered a valuable alternative to the dining room. It was quieter, it had booths (which afforded a certain amount of privacy), and several tables for two (where you didn’t have to join anyone other than the person you came with, or to feel obligated to let others join you). And the larger tables often welcomed walk-ups if they had chairs available.
Back then, there were also “4:45s”. These were pre-dinner gatherings at someone’s cottage. The host would invite 5 or 6 people for snacks and drinks prior to going to dinner. A 4:45 was a chance to get to know someone in a relaxed, quiet setting before going off to dinner.
The 4:45s seem to have mostly disappeared, but perhaps they can be revived.
New opportunities with the new café. We are hopeful that the new café will provide at least the same benefits as the old one did, and perhaps more. It should be quieter than the dining room, and the expansive new windows will provide much more natural light. We hope it will be a pleasant enough environment that residents will be attracted to eating dinner there.
The new café will also take some of the space pressure off of the main dining room. It should be possible to remove some tables, making it quieter and more pleasant. The grill will provide new options (custom stir fry dishes, omelets, and the like).
Dining room sound level. We also need to mention the sound problem in the dining room. It’s really hard to hear people when the dining room is full. That’s especially true at the larger tables, where dining companions can be five feet away or more. Once the café opens, might we have more small tables in the dining room? Can sound deadening be added to the room? How about some big hanging banners? Many of us already have poor hearing, and the noise level in the dining room adds to the problem.
We hope that implementing some or all of these ideas will entice more people to stay in the Center for dinner.
None of this is to say residents should eat in the Center every evening. We should always have the choice of taking food home to eat, or just cooking for ourselves. But wouldn’t it be better we all felt easy about eating in the Center whenever we felt like it?
On the Kendal Journey 
As a former and still grateful resident of Kendal at Longwood, I would like to say that one of the best aspects of the Kendal Dining Room is the many tables for five. Immediately it presents the message that single diners are welcome. I have moved back closer to family, and am now living in an independent senior living complex where all the tables in the dining room are for either two, four, or six diners. The message here is that you would be more welcome if you had a partner…..
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We miss eating with you, Marty. I wish we could ship you a table for five!
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Hi George – We’ve talked about this problem often. I don’t believe we had the option of taking food out before Covid, so it wasn’t an issue. Sometimes I think they should just say that we can’t take out any more, but lots of folks would be really upset.
I think the cafe is the answer, mostly because there’s lots of large tables in there so single folks or a couple can walk in and find company easily. Since they reopened the grill in the cafe, it has gotten a lot more popular. I hope you’ll have that over there. I love your idea of themed tables. Could be music lovers, music players, jokesters, hikers, crafters – you name it. It’s great that you’re getting a discussion going about this…Debby Kern
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Thanks for providing that Crosslands perspective, Debby. Once the current construction is done, we look forward to having a cafe as inviting as yours.
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I received the following comment via email from Larry Daloz, Kendal at Hanover:
Man, did you ever nail it! Our experience is very, very similar—and our critique as well. Our Chair of the Welcoming Committee has long struggled with this, trying to remind people who were never here before Covid, of what used to be possible—and ought to be again. (Like you, we had a scant few months before everything shut down, but the same thing happened to us as to you.)
Anyway, I printed your piece out for the Chair to read. I know it will strengthen the case here as well. But it’s a daunting gob of toothpaste to get back in the tube….
All best,
Larry
PS: Just be grateful that your dishwasher is working. Ours blew up a week ago and they say we are looking at a month of eating off plastic and paper……
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I received the following comment via email from our resident Peter Buttenheim:
Hi, George,
Thanks for doing a Kendal Journey essay on folks’ going to the Dining Room for dinner — or not.
I suspect that you will get a lot of emails with many different thoughts about this issue. I hope that you will have time before the busy holidays to compile what you learn and share it with KRA, Food Service, the Administration, and the residents.
Let me jot down a few points:
1) TIME — I hate to eat early. On lovely days like today, I am still exercising or doing projects in the 5-6 PM hour. So, I may well go and take my meal away and eat at 8 PM or later….
2) MENU — Frances and I skip dinner a few times a month because the dinner menu is very occasionally “so-so.” Often, when that happens, we either eat lunch in the Dining Room or take away from the lunch offerings and skip dinner.
3) SOCIAL — Frances and I have lived here for 2 and a 1/2 years by the calendar, but, during at least nine of those months, we were away in New England. So, we are not Old Timers — yet…
We have found that when we go to The Dining Room to sit down, there are three different ways to attend:
* Pot Luck — Dine at a table where the staff sends us;
* Invitees — We have enjoyed being invited by a number of residents — older and newer — to join a table;
* Inviters — We have enjoyed hosting tables with our Lot 13 neighbors, new residents, and folks we have met in various activities.
4) 4:45s — We have only been invited to a few, and we have hosted only a few. I find them awkward, time constrained, and forced….
FINAL THOUGHT — My greatest wish would be to have a later dinner hour — for folks who hate The Blue Plate Specials like me — in The Cafe where people could sit and talk and not feel that they had to get out of the Dining Room so the wonderful high school servers could get home and study.
We could “bus” our own trays, and we could even run The Hobart Dish Washing Machine if Kendal were not so incredibly up tight about residents’ doing anything that might upset the insurance company….
Thanks again for tackling this sensitive and important topic!
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