It’s wrong that people who are physically, emotionally, mentally and psychologically vulnerable are served second-rate food. While some retirement companies are doing it brilliantly, others are not there yet at all – they’re not even focusing on it.

We decided to do something about it. As of now, we’ve integrated White Tie Health Services into the kitchens of eight Summerset villages, a private hospital and a clinical studies group.

Instead of real cooking, there was a lot of packet opening – and nourishing people’s wellbeing was not their top priority.

We started looking at what we could bring into meals to help people’s health. What everyone needs to know is that everything in age care is diet affected. Food really is powerful. When we create menus, we think about all the ways we can increase people’s immune systems, support their cognitive function and enrich their wellbeing. 

One of the villages we took over in March was giving their residents their main meal at lunchtime, triggering an afternoon of napping, followed by a light meal in the evening that wasn’t conducive to a good night’s sleep. We switched that around – and a few days after, a woman came to me in tears saying, “I’ve slept all night every night for the past three nights and it’s the first time it’s happened in years – usually I get up at midnight and have a couple of biscuits to get back to sleep”.

These kitchens had previously worked under a former multi-national based company approach. Employees had never met the owner of the company, so when I first go into the kitchen to meet them, they’re shocked I’m right there with them, getting my hands dirty.

Maggie set up the Foundation a few years ago to “create an appetite for life”. She originally focused on people in dementia care who were starting to lose their swallowing function.

She did a lot of work with texture modified moulds – so that a pile of peas looks like a pile of peas – but really, it’s pea puree. We’ve started the training for this with The Pure Food Co.

Maggie talks about how much value you have to put on the food in retirement villages. Improving the quality of food, improves quality of life. It’s about worthiness.

I’ve always aligned with the famous quote – the mark of a society is how it looks after their most vulnerable – our children and our elderly. The biggest threats to wellbeing and quality of life late in life is nutrition and social isolation. We encourage people not to eat in their room – they sit around the table and they enjoy food together. They’ve got to be wrapped up in a community to feel looked after and loved.

We got very lucky when our sous chef from our base kitchen in Gasson Street was after a change in pace and asked if he could set up our first village kitchen in Christchurch. I did question him initially – his training is in high end London hotels and beautiful events, but he said he really wanted to do it – and now I don’t think he will ever leave retirement villages.

For each of our sites, we use a local provider in that area so that there is no centralised ordering system – we’re actually bringing in the local produce. In our Karaka village we buy most of the vegetables from down the road in Pukekohe, making a huge difference to the nutritional value of the meals we’re serving. It makes sense for us to because if it’s seasonal it’s in abundance, cost-effective and it has the best nutritional profile.

People are getting caught up in ticking nutritional and budget boxes and forget about flavour and texture. It’s just about good, basic, honest food.

If nothing changes, it says we’re not astute enough to learn from our own indigenous culture in NZ of how our elderly should be revered and looked after. We put them in these retirement villages and then we basically give them the message that they’re not good enough and they’re not worthy of us providing beautiful food for them.

When we share what we’re doing with clients of our other catering companies, White Tie and Catering Dept – all of them have said “thank God, thank God, thank God”. We’ve also had some clients move into the village because they knew we were there and that we would nourish them.

It is really intense at the moment. We’re currently transitioning five new villages that we took over on March 1st. Three of them are in Auckland and we’re managing them from Christchurch.

Am I dealing with it all? Probably not this week. But I always remember a wonderful response from someone (Cakes by Anna!) who was asked what their measurement of success was. They said:

“Have I had a shower today? Have I done the laundry this week?”

The fact that I was home to put my children to bed or could spend all Sunday afternoon making a really great dinner are the moments where I know this is good and I can make this work. I also have an extraordinary husband who’s incredibly supportive and my two business partners who rule the world.

There’s a strong social drive in all of us. We always had dinner together and we always debated robustly. I can remember someone saying to my father how opinionated his daughters were – and he said, “God isn’t it wonderful… Imagine if they were boring”.

White Tie Health Services is the part of the business that I’m most passionate about because it’s feeding my social conscience. I want my work to nourish and nurture – because it’s just what makes people feel valued. We believe good food isn’t just for people who can afford it – and there’s a wider social idea in that for businesses to adopt and think about. It’s okay to make a profit! There’s nothing wrong or shameful about making a profit – but you cannot do it at the expense of people.