By Summer Menegakis
For decades, senior living executives have treated dining much like other amenities such as fitness or activities — important to daily life but not consistently measured. Operators relied on intuition, occasional feedback and the belief that great culinary service was more art than science. However, as senior living communities evolve and residents and their families bring higher expectations to the table, good intentions are no longer enough.
We now have a clearer understanding of the profound influence dining has on healthspan and overall resident wellbeing, with diets rich in whole and minimally processed foods consistently linked to healthier aging. Dining is also the centerpiece of connection in senior living, offering consistent moments of social interaction that evidence shows are essential to resident wellbeing. As dining moves from a background amenity to a core determinant of quality of life, the need for structured quality assurance and continuous improvement becomes even more urgent.
This is not simply a shift happening within isolated pockets of senior living. I have witnessed this transformation throughout my career working with communities across all levels of care and price points. My conversations with senior living executives have evolved because industry leaders now recognize that culinary experiences have a direct impact on resident satisfaction and retention. Dining has become a strategic pillar, and operators are embracing formal assessment and systems of accountability that make excellence repeatable.
Self-Evaluation is Not Enough
Anyone who has ever tried to objectively assess their own work knows it is a challenge. We all have blind spots, be they habits we’ve normalized, assumptions we’ve rationalized or processes we believe are working because no one has told us otherwise. In behavioral economics, this phenomenon is called the “inside view bias,” referring to when we are too close to a situation to see it clearly.
The consequences of this bias are real. Consider the airline industry. For years, pilots assessed their own safety protocols and cockpit performance. It wasn’t until standardized third-party evaluations became the norm that safety outcomes dramatically improved. Pilot performance didn’t change — the evaluations got better. Clarity changed everything.
Decades of research and a growing body of evidence from the food service and healthcare industries show just how powerful structured measurement can be in overcoming internal blind spots. Continuous assessment does more than confirm whether standards are met; it creates a system of accountability that prevents small issues from becoming major liabilities. The pattern is clear — when organizations measure what matters, visibility improves, performance strengthens and both safety and quality improve.
The same is true in senior living. A dining services manager cannot accurately evaluate hospitality when they are the one that coached the team on service standards. A food and beverage director cannot objectively assess the quality of a culinary experience when reviewing a menu they helped design or tasting dishes prepared by a chef they hired. And no one can reliably judge food safety or sanitation when they are responsible for enforcing the very protocols they’re trying to evaluate.
The lesson is simple. Objectivity isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement.
Evaluators Matter as Much as the Metric
Not all evaluations are created equal. And not all evaluators bring the same level of expertise, precision or contextual understanding.
In professional kitchens, for example, chefs preparing for a Michelin inspection don’t trust just any feedback. They bring in external culinary experts such as restauranteurs who understand both artistry and operational discipline. Great chefs know that the evaluator determines the quality of the insight.
A high-quality senior living evaluator must understand the full ecosystem of service. They must be fluent in culinary assessment, able to evaluate food quality, presentation and consistency with trained sensory judgment, while also ensuring food safety and sanitation align with National Restaurant Association (NRA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expectations.
Evaluators must also understand physical environments, recognizing when facilities or equipment issues signal deeper operational weaknesses. Communities benefit most when evaluators have backgrounds in food service, restaurants, hospitality and entertainment and credentials such as a degree in food service management or advanced culinary training.
Great evaluators bring pattern recognition, an understanding of why something matters, and the ability to distinguish between a one-off event and a systemic issue. When the evaluator is skilled, objective and aligned with community goals, measurement becomes a powerful engine that doesn’t just identify gaps but actually reveals potential that the senior living organization may never have seen on its own.
Measure Over Months, Not Moments
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is relying on snapshots rather than trends. A single audit or survey may feel informative, but it is only a moment in time. In senior living, there is another dynamic at play: We serve the same residents every single day. Unlike restaurants, hotels or entertainment venues, where guests come and go, senior living has a stable, long-term customer base. This creates extraordinary opportunities to personalize service, learn individual preferences, track nutrition patterns and build genuine relationships. At the same time, it means that inconsistencies, whether in hospitality, menu execution or food safety, do not disappear with the next day’s guests. Rather, they accumulate, forming patterns that directly shape resident satisfaction, trust and long-term wellbeing.
Today, technology has made trendlines visible in ways our industry couldn’t access even a decade ago. Real-time performance dashboards, digital audits, and instant resident-sentiment tools are replacing static surveys and annual reviews. Satisfaction measurement has evolved into continuous sentiment tracking, allowing operators a live view of how residents feel today, not how they felt weeks or months ago. The new norm is immediate insight: not “How did we do last quarter?” but “How are we doing right now, and what is shifting?”
Equally important, outside evaluators must measure performance across months and years, not just during isolated visits. External experts are uniquely positioned to see patterns internal teams may normalize or miss, and to catch negative trends before they become embedded in the culture or costly to fix.
Organizations that treat measurement as a continuous process, not an annual chore, unlock deeper insight and faster course correction.
Measurement is For Learning — Not Scolding
Too often, businesses treat audits, inspections and evaluations as disciplinary events rather than developmental ones. That mindset undermines the entire purpose of measurement.
The most innovative companies in the world do the opposite. Toyota’s famous production system embeds continuous improvement into daily operations. Employees don’t hide mistakes; they surface them. Leaders don’t blame; they solve. Performance review isn’t a verdict, it’s a catalyst.
Senior living teams benefit when assessments become a roadmap for training, not a record of shortcomings. Trends in hospitality delivery can guide service-refresh workshops. Recurring food safety misses can inform sanitation drills. Variability in menu execution can shape chef-to-chef mentoring or culinary technique development. In other words, measurement tells you exactly where to invest in people so they can grow.
Trends Shaping Senior Living Today
Across industries, several major measurement trends are emerging, and they hold significant relevance for senior living. These include:
- Holistic performance dashboards — Organizations ranging from hotels to hospitals are moving from isolated assessments to integrated dashboards where hospitality metrics sit alongside operational and financial performance.
- Experience-to-outcome correlation tracking — Businesses are linking experience data directly to outcomes like retention, referrals, revenue and safety incidents.
- Rise of third-party evaluation — Across industries where impartiality matters, such as food safety, cybersecurity, finance and aviation, external evaluation is becoming the standard.
- Continuous, not episodic, measurement — Annual reviews are giving way to real-time metrics. Service quality is fundamentally dynamic; measurement must be too.
- Behavior-based coaching — Companies are using evaluation findings to build targeted training plans rather than relying on one-size-fits-all workshops.
Senior living dining teams can and must embrace these opportunities to leverage real data for performance improvement. When dining is measurable, it becomes consistent. When it’s managed with intention, it becomes a catalyst for growth. The future belongs to communities willing to look honestly, measure consistently, learn humbly and act boldly.
Summer Menegakis, COO of Phoenix Advisory Services and Cross Check Quality Assurance, is a senior living operations leader with more than 15 years of experience transforming dining and hospitality programs across healthcare and senior living organizations.