What’s important to understand is that the TUG itself does not transport the food or the linen, it just transports a cart. And the carts are all enclosed so the TUG itself is considered clean, it’s never considered soiled. The carts that it’s transporting would be either clean or soiled carts depending on what they’re doing or what they are transporting.

Food Lockers

One trend that we saw prior to the pandemic that has even gotten stronger during the last year is the need for food lockers, which are usually stationed in the café between the back-of-house and the front-of-house. Customers will order on a phone app or on a self-serve kiosk and then will be notified when the food is ready. They’ll be able to unlock the locker with their cell phone and then pick up their food and go. It’s a totally touch-free system, and we’ve seen a huge trend towards that in the last year. In terms of food safety, it’s really great. In terms of the labor storage that healthcare providers and operators are experiencing, this is a great way to cut down on the front-of-house staff that you have in a traditional cafeteria.

There are a variety of food lockers. They can be a simple as just a piece of millwork shelving – you might see this in Panera Bread pick-up – or they can be a pretty complicated unit that can be either ambient or heated. Some manufacturers provide a chilling option for the locker, which never really made a lot of sense to me, because if you’re ordering a burger and you want a salad then the burger and salad are two different temperatures, so essentially they would have to be split. That’s something we’d have to work through with an operator when we’re designing these into a project. A lot of times it makes sense to opt for an ambient case, because when you’re notified on your phone that your food’s ready, typically the customer is going to go directly to the food locker and pick it up within a matter of 10-15 minutes, so the temperature lost to the food isn’t really an issue.

Contactless Payment

Contactless payment has been a really huge trend even before the pandemic, but especially as a result of COVID. It’s a contactless, no-touch way to order and pay for your food. Guests will go up to a kiosk, which can be anywhere in the hospital. Often there are several in the café, but it could be in the emergency department or on the patient floors. You can use a touchpad to order and pay for your meals, after which you’re notified when to go pick them up. And you’ll often pick them up from a food locker.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned: in part three of the series, I explore the importance of flexibility as we move past the pandemic. If you’ve enjoyed this series, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog feed to make sure you don’t miss out on any content that we produce here at Webb!

During the pandemic, at least here in California, there was no café service allowed. So as these operations start to open, we’re seeing changes in terms of the self-service salad bars, self-service beverages being maintained. People are not feeling confident yet because of the Delta variant and because of just having gone through wearing a mask for a year. They’re just not feeling great with self-service, sharing utensils, etc. So I can see this projecting for a bit longer.

I think another great thing that we can take out of our experiences with COVID is the hand sanitizing stations or even hand sinks being installed in café dining rooms. There’s a higher awareness of spreading germs both during pandemic and not during pandemic.

Fresh Food Vending

Prior to COVID, we did see a trend in fresh food vending machines. These things are pretty cool: instead of grabbing a Coke or your candy bar or whatever in a vending machine, you can actually choose salads, fresh-made wraps, fresh-made sandwiches. These are often provided by the operators in the back-of-house, dietary kitchen, and are filled into vending machines so that you have 24/7 healthy options instead of what we’re used to in terms of typical vending options.

Scratch-made Food

It’s not even a trend, it’s just something I think is really cool. I worked with one operator who was super passionate about healthy food in terms of wellness and food as medicine, and that’s something that I’m super passionate about, too. They were able to feed the entire hospital (it was a fairly good-sized hospital) 100% from scratch cooking. This chef was just super passionate about getting this food out to everyone. And not only to the patients, but also to the staff and the visitors of the café. In terms of equipment layout of the kitchen, it’s not that different to plan a kitchen that’s for all-scratch cooking. There may be additional prep equipment required, but in terms of the cook line, that sort of thing, it’s pretty much the same.

Thanks for reading!

And stay tuned, in our next blog post I cover how technology has changed through the pandemic. If you’ve enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe to our blog feed to make sure you don’t miss out on any content that we produce here at Webb!