There’s no denying that people are at the heart of food and service. Today, we celebrate four exceptional Thomas Cuisine team members recently recognized as Foodservice Heroes by Food Management.
You may be intrigued by the titles of these four honored team members! While we often think of foodservice teams to be chefs and dietitians, there are many hands that make foodservice operations successful. This is why we especially appreciate these fine examples of team members making a difference over the past year. Transporter Antonio Gonzalez, Patient Cook Cassie Ruckel, UnitHost Lead Jenny Cruz, and Office Assistant Sandra Kennedy are all working within our healthcare dining teams to ensure patients, hospital team members, and guests have a pleasant experience when it comes to food and dining on-site.
Thomas Cuisine Foodservice Heroes Featured by Food Management
Antonio Gonzalez, Transporter
Nominated by Alison Christensen, Director of Nutrition & Food Services, Thomas Cuisine
Antonio is our unsung hero. He often goes above and beyond without being asked. He consistently identifies areas of improvement and tackles them himself. His quiet, hardworking demeanor often leads to his excellence being overlooked. There is so much that he does for his team that many are not aware of as he simply gets it done. When short-staffed, he will identify tasks that he can get done without missing a beat — all while completing his own duties at a high level. Plus, whenever he completes his work, he will step in and help other team members that may be falling behind. It is an attitude and behavior like Tony’s that creates such a strong culture at this location: a culture of teamwork and having each other’s back. We can never thank Tony enough for what he does every single day.
Cassie Ruckel, Patient Cook
Nominated by Alison Christensen, Director of Nutrition & Food Services, Thomas Cuisine
Cassie consistently goes above and beyond. She always executes her job exceptionally well while providing amazing customer service. Cassie is one of our patient cooks. Her responsibility is to prepare food for our patients. It is not an expectation of this role to interact with the patients, as we have other team members that collect meal orders. However, when a patient is not happy with their meal, she will happily go into the café, speak to them, discuss our options, and provide them a new entrée within their dietary guidelines. She also goes out of her way to ensure the patients are not only happy but successful. In the past, while helping the café she noticed a patient struggling to eat, and offered some built up utensils and communicated with the patient’s nurse and dietitian her observations. This made a huge impact on the patient’s ability to feed themselves. Beyond being an amazing resource for her patients, Cassie is an amazing resource for her co-workers as well, and is constantly stepping in to help out without complaint. Cassie truly is a Foodservice Hero.
Jenny Cruz, Unit Host Lead
Nominated by Amanda Kephart, Food Service Director, Thomas Cuisine
Jenny Cruz has worked in service to Thomas Cuisine’s Healthcare Dining for over 11 years. Jenny began with us as a Unit Host and now her current role is a Unit Host Lead. Our Unit Hosts are responsible for serving the patients their meals. Jenny has been an inspiration to all of our team members and leads by example in everything that she does. Jenny is positive, hard-working, dedicated, dependable, caring, inspiring, and so many other things.
Like others, COVID has been very challenging for our team. We lost so many unit hosts with COVID and Jenny has been with us every step of the way. We even had to shift from our normal program, which is taking orders at bedside, to a non-select program because staffing was so limited. Jenny was able to assist us with that process, and has covered endless shifts, doubles, OT, etc. to do whatever was necessary to ensure our patients were always fed and taken care of. Transitioning back to our original program, Jenny is the main trainer of all new hires. She knows what is expected and what it takes to deliver excellent customer service to our patients. Jenny also understands and demonstrates how to be empathetic with our patients while they are here for different reasons. Jenny is truly a Foodservice Hero!
Sandra Kennedy, Nutrition and Dining Department Office Assistant
Nominated by Christie Tayar, Clinical Nutrition Manager, Thomas Cuisine
Sandy Kennedy exemplifies what it means to be a Foodservice Hero in everything that she does. Having worked at Clovis Community Medical Center for over 20 years, Sandy is the hub of our department. She is a very organized person who is an expert in many aspects of our department. When calling the Nutrition and Dining Department at CCMC, you will get to speak to Sandy first. Her friendly demeanor and excellent customer service is second to none. She is able to answer most questions that are posed to her and if she is unable to, she will direct the caller to the appropriate area of our department.
Sandy is our hero for so many reasons, and truly can do it all. During the peak of COVID, she took on many jobs outside her normal scope of work to help alleviate managers’ work and ensure the patients’ needs were being met. Transitioning back from COVID, Sandy still is always willing to take on more and help however she can. For example, she is trained to work the cash register and cover if our cashiers are short-staffed. She has also assisted with catering by prepping food items for different events. She updates our retail menu online. She keeps the TV monitor in our kitchen up-to-date with birthday announcements, patient experience scores, kudos, and information that our staff needs to know. She orders office supplies and Shoes for Crews. All of this Sandy does in addition to her regular responsibilities as Office Assistant.
Truly, our Foodservice Department runs so smoothly as a result of all her contributions. These are just some of the reasons Sandy is our Foodservice Hero!
