Paradise Palms: A Senior Dining Success Story

“A Senior Dining Story” is a series based off fictional events that help better demonstrate the pain points of any senior living dining operation. While the story is fabricated, the practicality of our tools is not. We hope you enjoy this story and the many more that are to come!  

A full dining room is the dream of many senior living dining directors. Having your residents eager to indulge in your chef’s creations brings peace of mind. While it may seem like an easy accomplishment, we’ve seen many communities fall short.  

What if we told you there are tools to achieve a full dining room with happy residents? 

Instead of just telling you about these tools, we created a fictional scenario to help better illustrate the tools in action and to show how they can help your business succeed.  

Paradise Palms Senior Living 

Mealtime - the heartbeat of Paradise Palms Senior Living, saw the dining room humming with conversation, clinking glassware, and laughter. A daily ritual that brought residents together. But in the back, the staff was frustrated constantly. 

The Problem 

“We’ve got three different meal plans and not a single system to manage them properly,” sighed Jason, the Dining Director, as he sat at his desk late one evening. His computer screen displayed an error message from their outdated Point of Sale system for the third time that week. “Online ordering crashes constantly, and don’t even get me started on meal plan tracking. It’s like using a typewriter in the age of smartphones.” 

Jason's staff was being stretched thin. Residents were getting frustrated, with their orders being late; dining credits became a nightmare to reconcile at the end of the month. Something had to give. 

The Solution 

Determined to fix this, Jason spent the weekend researching POS systems for senior living communities. One name kept surfacing: FullCount, as he browsed through reviews and testimonials. 

Jason clicked through FullCount's website and was immediately intrigued. Features like meal plan management, a resident portal, and online ordering seemed to check every box on his list of wants. He even found a case study about a similar community that had seen dramatic improvements after switching to FullCount. 

"This could be just what we need," Jason thought, and bookmarked the page. A week later, he was pitching the idea to the Executive Director Lauren, and to the community's board. 

"This system was built for communities just like ours," Jason said, walking them through FullCount's capabilities. "It's intuitive and resident-focused and solves literally every pain point we are struggling with. On top of that, their implementation team does training and setup with us, so we won't be left figuring it out on our own. 

The board approved it, and in one month, FullCount's team was on site, training staff and taking care of the transition smoothly. The change was immediate. 

The Result 

The residents loved the new online ordering system, which allowed them to make their food preferences from the comfort of their apartments. Reservations for diners became effortlessly managed through the portal so that each resident would find a table waiting for them at the time they wanted. The resident portal was such a hit that one could even review menus with ease and check balances. 

On the staff side, meal plan tracking was finally automated, freeing up the hours Jason's team had spent reconciling accounts. Servers found the system intuitive to use and even new hires picked it up quickly. 

Three months later, Jason sat in the dining room during lunch, watching as a resident, Ms. Turner, was placing an online order on a self-service kiosk. Across the room, another resident was complimenting a server on how quickly their meal had arrived. 

Lauren joined him at the table and smiled. "You really turned things around, Jason. This place feels like it's running better than ever." 

Jason nodded, feeling a rare sense of accomplishment. "It's amazing what the right tools can do," he said. "FullCount didn't just fix our POS issues-it made everything about dining here feel easier, better, and more personal. And that's what our residents deserve.” 

As the sun streamed through the windows and residents lingered over their meals, Jason knew Paradise Palms had turned another page-one where meal times were about connection, not complications. 

If your senior living community is ready to answer the needs of your residents, then learn more about how FullCount can help you achieve your goals.