Pacific Retirement Services Taps Rouxbe to Bring Culinary Innovation to Senior Living
October 30, 2019
VANCOUVER, BC–Pacific Retirement Services, a not-for-profit family of life plan communities, has selected Rouxbe, the leader in online culinary training, to provide world-class culinary education for its staff of foodservice professionals.
Based in Medford, OR, Pacific Retirement Services (PRS) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with more than 50 years of continuing care experience. It operates a diverse family of nonprofit senior-living communities in six states: Oregon, Washington, California, Texas, Wisconsin and now Arizona.
Rouxbe partners with senior living organizations to offer online training that helps upskill their culinary teams and enhance the dining experience for residents. At PRS, Rouxbe is being used to ensure entry-level cooks, including those promoted, newly hired, or needing a refresher, are trained from the start on fundamental culinary techniques and best practices. The program also serves as a mentoring opportunity for higher-level culinary staff, in order to promote team building, succession planning, and increased morale.
“The Rouxbe curriculum acts as an outstanding tool helping us ensure our culinary teams are performing at their highest level and providing our residents with the best possible culinary experience,” said Todd Albert, corporate director of culinary services at PRS. “By the end of 2020, we plan to be using the Rouxbe curriculum at all 11 of our company’s continuing care retirement communities.”
With more retirees embracing culinary trends like a-la-carte pricing, family-style dining, farm-to-table cooking, plant-based menus, and more, senior living dining services need to train their staff to keep up with their residents’ changing interests. Rouxbe’s online training programs offer teams a scalable, affordable and flexible solution to attract, develop and retain the right staff to help meet the higher expectations of seniors around the dining experience.
“We are thrilled to partner with Pacific Retirement Services to power their internal culinary education program,” said Ken Rubin, Chief Culinary Officer at Rouxbe. “We believe our training will be a win-win for dining services staff, management and residents at the retirement communities – employees will feel engaged and empowered, dining programs will be more on trend, and seniors will get the elevated dining experience they seek.”
PRS develops, operates, and manages a family of 55 retirement communities and service organizations in the United States. Headquartered in Medford, OR, with another office in Memphis, TN, PRS has approximately 2300 employees and provides housing and services to more than 4,000 seniors through its many affiliated organizations, including Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), managed retirement communities, and affordable senior housing communities.
Rouxbe, the world’s leading online culinary school, was founded in 2005 to train people of all abilities to become better, more confident—even healthier—cooks in kitchens around the world. With high definition videos, world-class instructors, peer support and interactive assignments, Rouxbe has set the bar as the new standard in culinary education, providing certificate-level instruction not only to quality restaurants and hospitality organizations but also to serious home cooks and career changers. Rouxbe’s revolutionary online platform delivers cutting edge e-learning solutions that drive and measure learning outcomes and engagement while providing effective, lower-cost alternatives for training professional cooks. Over 110 hours of foundational training are available in English, Spanish, French, Mandarin and Arabic to hundreds of thousands of cooks in 180 countries. Rouxbe programs are also recognized by both the American Culinary Federation Education Foundation and by WorldChefs as approved training programs.