William Rikard’s routine included working out at the Y four or five times a week. As someone who had played football in college at Davidson, he always thought of himself as athletic with a reasonably good diet. But in January 2020, his life changed in an instant. “I had showered and was getting dressed at home after my workout. In the process of putting on my pants, I blacked out.”
After testing and evaluation, Rikard was scheduled for open heart bypass surgery that June during COVID. He faced being in the hospital with no visitors, and then coming back to recover from surgery in the house in Charlotte where he and his wife Janis had lived for decades. To complicate matters, Janis had been injured earlier in a staircase fall, and their son-in-law was in the late stages of colon cancer. Rikard knew something had to change in their living situation.
“Fortunately, Janis’s mother had moved to Southminster, and we had gotten onto the future residents’ list through the Compass Club. Being on that list when a unit in the North Terraces unexpectedly opened up made all the difference in how quickly we could pivot and move to Southminster,” Rikard said.
Live Younger Longer
Once at Southminster, Rikard became a culinary evangelist. His heart disease and recent surgery inspired him to read everything he could get his hands on to understand exactly how his diet had impacted his health and why his 35-pound weight gain had crept up on him.
“I still think like a trial lawyer, someone who assembles all the facts and then advocates to get a specific outcome. Sodium was my big ‘bug-a-boo,’ so during a group session about food service at Southminster, I asked ‘How do we know exactly what’s in the food we’re eating?’” He specifically wanted an ingredient list. As he continued educating himself, Rikard was inspired further by the book “Live Younger Longer: Six Steps to Prevent Heart Disease, Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes and More” by Stephen Kopecky, M.D. He even organized a study of the book for Southminster residents. “Most residents are not going to be as much of a zealot as I am about healthy eating,” Rikard said, “but anyone can make small changes to help them Live Younger Longer. It’s very emotional for me, and every morning I get up feeling so grateful for being healthier physically.”
As he advocated to Southminster management for a “full-hearted, full-throated” commitment to educating residents and giving them more input into culinary choices in their dining venues, he found Director of Culinary Services Brittany Muthard eager to listen. Muthard said her biggest challenge is striking a balance between healthy menu options and comfort food people really want to eat. The challenge is magnified by the huge group of constituents they serve. Southminster serves about 20,000 meals a month to some 500 residents and 300 staff members, along with handling 40 catering events monthly, on average.
Brain Health-Inspired Eating
“One of the first things I remember talking about in our residents’ forum was allergens,” Muthard said. “People came out of the woodwork talking about what they were allergic to, and we want to ensure we have options for them.”
Especially among the younger generation of residents, healthy eating became a growing topic of conversation, quickly sparking change and innovation. “One of our newest residents is very intuitive about what’s going into his body. For example, he wants us to save salmon tails for him because they have more omega-3 fatty acids,” Muthard said. “Our brain-health inspired eating options, featuring a colorful rainbow of foods, have been available for almost a year. With choices such as Summer Chicken White Beans and Pesto, and a Salmon Grapefruit Salad, a favorite among residents, brain-health menu choices routinely rank as 1st, 2nd and 3rd best sellers.”
A Collaborative Culinary Committee
Southminster is always eager to make residents a driving force in life on campus through more than 20 resident-driven committees in charge of giving input into everything from landscaping to facilities. Joanie Heidrick headed the Culinary Committee for more than five years, focusing on giving residents a voice in culinary decisions. She was recruited for the job based on her lifelong home entertaining expertise and travel focused on wine and good food in California, Texas and elsewhere.
“Residents can bring us a suggestion or issue. The head of the committee gathers details and brings it to the entire Culinary Committee. It’s a collaborative and more productive way of approaching culinary change, far beyond one person just saying, “I want this and this and this,” Heidrick said. The Culinary Committee is made up of nine residents who meet monthly. The Executive Chef holds a monthly menu meeting to evaluate input after each committee meeting. The results of constructive criticism by residents have produced an amazing array of enhancements. One of the most appreciated is Meal Suite—a new menu approach showing specific nutritional information with calories, allergens and ingredient disclosures.
“There have been constant improvements with a focus on making our culinary landscape better for everyone,” Heidrick said. “We‘ve gotten to a good place characterized by variety, menu changes, a hot bar every day, rotating soups and more.” Southminster even finds ways to refine and improve systems such as picking up take-out meals and how residents receive information about available food choices.
Heidrick’s journey as a Culinary Super-Ager has inspired her to change her own habits too. “I am totally dairy-free, no cheese, only almond milk, etc.,” she said. “Being able to see every ingredient in every dish on the menu is so helpful. There’s no doubt that living in a community makes it so much easier to watch your diet. Southminster spells it all out for us, and we also learn from each other.”
Dedication to locally grown, farm-to-table ingredients is also an important part of Southminster’s ongoing culinary commitment. The campus has its own resident-driven garden with 14 raised beds that historically produce 3,000 pounds of produce per year. Eighty percent of harvests are used in food served at Southminster. As a home gardener himself, newly arrived Executive Chef Kris Dietrich is on the forefront of freshness and supports the community’s earth-friendly practices, including replacing plastic and Styrofoam take-out containers with reusable, Green-to-Go containers and encouraging residents to contribute to the culinary team’s composting efforts.
Since part of being a Super-Ager involves being highly social, Southminster has also addressed ways to facilitate meaningful interactions with other people. All its dining venues, The Promenade, Oak Leaf Grille, Lola’s Bar, and dining rooms in Embrace Health, (assisted living and skilled nursing), offer community tables. It’s easy to spontaneously sit at a community table to meet and share a meal with new friends. “You can ‘do dining’ anywhere,” Muthard said, “but at Southminster, dining is different. I take a lot of pride in the changes we’ve made, and the way people have appreciated our evolution.”