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Jim Krueger of NewBridge delivers food curbside from LJ's Tavern as part of a new senior meal program.
To many, “senior meals” equates to “Meals on Wheels,” food delivered by volunteers to shut-ins.
Often overlooked are congregate senior meal sites, where seniors travel several times a week and dine together, to get a little companionship along with nutrition.
When COVID-19 strictures meant no more group dining after mid-March, restaurants were not alone in closing. Senior meal sites shut down, too.
At the same time, demand for senior meals went up. “We knew older adults were unable to go to restaurants and were hesitant to go into grocery stores,” says Jim Krueger, executive director of NewBridge in Madison.
NewBridge, created in 2018 with the merger of the North/Eastside Senior Coalition, West Madison Senior Center, South Madison Coalition of the Elderly and East Madison/Monona Coalition of the Aging, had used a catering service for its congregate meals. It had also offered a program, My Meal My Way, where seniors could order a meal and dine in at the Cranberry Creek restaurant or visit the salad bar at Festival Foods.
But the caterer was not equipped to shift to an all takeout and delivery model; Cranberry Creek shut down temporarily due to the coronavirus; and salad bars were a thing of the past. Meals on Wheels was overwhelmed, Krueger says.
Then NewBridge connected with John Kavanaugh, who owns LJ’s Sports Tavern and Grill, 8 N. Paterson St., and his father — also John Kavanaugh, who owns Kavanaugh’s Esquire Club, 1025 N. Sherman Ave.
Krueger remembers the senior Kavanaugh saying “How can I help?”
Since May, the two restaurants have been cooking senior meals for NewBridge and packing them for curbside pickup at the restaurants, or delivery to several other pickup sites across town.
Mondays, meals are cooked at the Esquire Club and delivered to Mt. Zion Church, 2019 Fisher St.; Wednesdays, meals from the Esquire Club are available for pickup at the restaurant and delivered to the NewBridge west-side office on Raymond Road; and Fridays, meals from LJ’s are available for curbside pickup at the restaurant. Also on Friday, the Esquire Club cooks meals that are delivered to the homebound only. Transit Solutions has been helping in delivering the food to the west side and Mt. Zion.
At the Esquire Club pickup on Wednesdays, “we are serving 180-200 people,” Krueger says. Homebound delivery amounts to 40-50 people. “We’ve seen a 20% increase in the number of meals.”
Meals are no-cost and available to Dane County residents 60 and older. Dane County gets federal funding that covers about 50%; senior donations for the meals cover about 23% and the rest comes from local municipalities and senior-center fundraising.
“We waived the income restrictions during COVID-19,” Krueger says. “Seniors are appreciating that because many of them feel like they can’t go out.”
The Esquire Club was always open for takeout, says Kavanaugh, but lunch business especially has been “soft” and cooking for NewBridge meant he could keep more staff employed.
“We try to be creative with the menus,” says Kavanaugh, while keeping the fare appealing to seniors and adhering to the program’s nutritional requirements — a protein, potatoes or rice, vegetables, fruit and a roll. Some entrees have included roast pork and gravy, beef tips, chicken and turkey. “It’s hard for a single person or older folks to cook a roast or a turkey,” Kavanaugh says. “It’s a nice thing for the seniors and it works out well for us.”
Although Cranberry Creek will be reopening in July, Krueger says NewBridge isn’t ready to sponsor in-restaurant senior dining, and Cranberry Creek doesn’t want to do the program as takeout only.
Meals need to be ordered in advance, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri., with orders due by 10 a.m. the week prior to the pickup. Call 608-512-0000, with ext. 4006 for meals to be picked up and ext. 2001 for home delivery.
Angela Velasquez, aging program specialist at the Area Agency on Aging of Dane County, notes that senior centers in other communities are also partnering with restaurants — Oregon with Ziggy’s Barbecue, Mt. Horeb with Fink’s Restaurant, and DeForest with the DeForest Family Restaurant. These were already in the My Meal My Way program and it was easy to make the switch to carryout. Those restaurants were also “able to scale up quickly to meet the additional need,” says Velasquez.
The additional need has been considerable. Dane County overall served 4,719 more senior meals in April 2020 than it did in April 2019, and 9,555 more meals in May of this year compared to last. All together, Dane County provided 30,130 senior meals (home delivery and curbside pickup) in May.
Still missing, of course, is the social component provided by meal sites.
“Senior congregate meals will be the last thing to come back,” says Velasquez. Some in-person dining might start returning during phase four of the Forward Dane plan, she says, with small groups to start “at the very earliest, September.”
Some communal meal sites offer better opportunities for social distancing than others. “There could be multiple seatings in some,” Velasquez says. “It needs to be a site-by-site careful plan.”
Senior centers are trying to augment virtual or distance contact with older adults. NewBridge has a “buddies program” where a volunteer checks in once a week with a senior, and Krueger notes that Zoom has been helpful because less computer-savvy seniors can call in to Zoom conferences without needing a computer; some activities are being launched that way.
Velasquez is enthusiastic about a new program called Well Connected, where seniors can register for interest groups and then call in to chat with other seniors nationwide. Some senior centers have begun group walks and each has a list of resources, from virtual card games to exercise suggestions, that can be provided to seniors.
Volunteers are needed to help with home delivery, which will be moving from three days a week back to daily in July, says Velasquez. If you are interested and available to deliver meals to people who are homebound, contact your local senior center.
