Located amidst the Hampshire countryside, Shedfield Lodge is more than just a residential care facility – it’s a place of comfort, community and expert support for those living with dementia. The award-winning home provides tailored care for around 35 residents that are facing varying stages of mid to late-stage dementia.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Andrew Geach has owned the site for over 23 years and is proud of the continued legacy of care excellence and heartfelt dedication to enriching the lives of residents.
As the team at Shedfield Lodge know well, mealtimes are of utmost importance to residents to ensure good nutrition and an excellent dining experience that supports both health and wellbeing.
“It’s a big family here – everyone from the staff to the management – we are one big family looking after people living with dementia. We must be their eyes and ears, and tastebuds at times.
“Food is a massive part of everyone’s life, whether living with dementia or not, and it’s a massive part for everyone living here – mealtimes are the most important part of the day.”
However, this doesn’t come without its challenges – serving three meals a day that meet the varying and complex dietary needs of individual residents – coupled with sector-wide cost and labour hardships - is an everyday occurrence. Let’s look at how Shedfield Lodge, that prides itself on a superb dining experience, delivers the highest standards with the help if its partner, apetito.
Making the Move
After taking on the home, Andrew chose to partner with leading care home meals producer, apetito to ensure a high-quality and nutritious meal offering for residents.
“I first moved to apetito about 17 years ago. I believe that we were one of the first ever care homes to work with apetito, as the business was quite new to the care industry.
“When I first heard about it, I wasn’t sure as I didn’t think that frozen products were suitable for the residents living here. However, it wasn’t until I went to Trowbridge to visit the main site and watched the meals being prepared by the chefs and saw, and tasted, the wide variety of food- it really won me over. And I’ve never looked back since!
Maria Willis, Care Home Manager, also feels positively about the long-standing partnership between Shedfield Lodge and apetito during her time at the home, saying:
“I first started at Shedfield Lodge in 2011 and we’ve always used apetito since. I think that speaks volumes, there is a very strong partnership there.”
Enhancing the Dining Experience
Making the switch to working with apetito allowed Shedfield Lodge to enhance the dining environment for residents by converting their previous kitchen space into social spaces for mealtimes Andrew explained:
“When I originally took on the home, we had one chef who used to arrive at six in the morning to start preparing the vegetables for the day’s meals. The preparation work was very time-consuming, and we had to have three kitchens – a prep kitchen, a wash kitchen and a larger kitchen.
“I’ve now managed to make the larger kitchen into a dining room which has created more space within the home. Since we’re dealing with residents living with varying levels of dementia, I don’t want everyone to have to be in one room at the same time. Moving to apetito allowed us to create additional dining spaces throughout the home and more room for everyone to enjoy their mealtimes.”
Supporting Quality Mealtimes
Andrew shared how the wide range and variety of meals and desserts available from apetito support his care home to provide a high-quality offering to his residents, with options for every occasion.
“There are many ways I have enhanced the running of my home over the years and apetito is one of them. The consistency of the products is very good and the variety of meals is mind blowing. I have tried most of the meals myself, and I can’t tell the difference between it and restaurant food.
“When I first visited apetito, I made a joke: “I bet you haven’t got Haggis!” And lo and behold, there was Haggis on my plate! It was as good as any haggis I could have anywhere else.”
Maria and her team also receive ample positive feedback from residents during mealtimes, providing peace of mind that they are always serving meals that residents love.
“We’ve had great feedback from residents, and they enjoy that they get great variety and choice. A lot of our residents have their favourite foods that we serve daily – they particularly enjoy a Friday fish and chip day!”
The nutritional content of the meals is also of great value to Shedfield Lodge, and how easy apetito’s service makes it to cater for a wide range of individual dietary needs. The team can curate bespoke menus so that they can be sure residents are getting the nutritional intake they need. Andrew shared:
“We are here to provide our residents with nutrition. Sometimes we might get a resident struggling with weight loss, and so we phone up apetito to discuss the specific nutritional requirements for that resident and it’s done – within a day we know that we can have a suitable meal for them that meets their needs.
“It’s much easier for our Chef to deal with residents on an individualised basis as the apetito solution handles it much easier than if we were cooking ourselves from scratch.”
Home Manager, Maria reflected Andrew’s sentiments and find it supports her team to provide the best care possible with peace of mind:
“Using apetito means that we can make our service more individualised and tailor it to our resident’s needs. Most of the pressure is taken off us as all the nutritional information is ready provided per portion, and it’s got all the nutrients needed for our residents to have a balanced diet.”
At first, it can sometimes be a challenge getting family members on board with the service. But through utilising the supportive and dedicated relationship built with the apetito team, it’s easy to bring families along on that journey explains Andrew:
“When you explain that it’s a frozen food solution, quite often their initial reaction isn’t a good one. However, we can sit down with them – whether it’s Kelly, our Chef, or Maria, our manager, or any other member of the team – and explain exactly the offering and service that apetito provides and it soon puts their mind at ease.
“I know that I can pick up the phone at any time and have one of the apetito team come out to do a tasting with families too – which we’ve done on numerous occasions over the years.”
Catering with Confidence
With compliance being an imperative part of care home catering, Andrew’s team are delighted on how easy and positive the inspection process is when working with apetito:
“Compliance is another positive of working with apetito. For example, last week we had the kitchen inspector knock at the door unannounced and because we have apetito, it’s a lot easier for them to come in and see what we’re doing - it’s a lot quicker and they spend a lot less time in the kitchen.”
And not only is the process much simpler, but the outcomes have been reflective of the strong partnership built together:
“Ever since working with apetito, we’ve had a 5* compliance and we know that we just don’t need to worry about the compliance side of things.”
Combatting Cost and Labour Challenges
When considering the wider commercial issues, by having apetito in place, Shedfield Lodge has not only been able to manage their costs better but has felt less impacted by sector labour shortages.
“We get a breakdown from apetito on costs, and they let us know how much we are spending per day per resident. For the financials and for planning into the future, this system is really good for us.
“Similarly, when faced with labour challenges, apetito is amazing - it is one of the real pros of the service. Back when we had a chef, if they phoned in sick then we had a problem; you’ve either got to go to an agency or ask one of your other team members to step in – usually our Manager. They’d then have to spend the whole day cooking, which is a problem.
“If our chef phones in sick now, then my whole team is already trained on the system thanks to apetito coming in and providing dedicated training for them. Obviously from a business point of view this is great, because I don’t have to spend time phoning agencies and my Manager doesn’t need to spend all day in the kitchen peeling, prepping and cooking – it’s a much easier solution.”
Lasting Partnership
“I have been asked numerous times over the years “are you going to go back to having a chef?” and I’ve dismissed it every time because there are too many pros to using this service that outweigh the cons.”
After having apetito in place for over 15 years, the benefits of the service are clear to Andrew and his team – and the partnership continues to grow from strength to strength.