Kind Dining: Bringing Warmth to the Table – A Training Series for Senior Living Communities

Course Expires August 3, 2025
Credits: 11 CPEs, 1 Ethics for CDR and 9 general, 1 sanitation and 1 ethics for CBDM
Accreditations: CDR, CBDM

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Attract residents, retain staff, maximize positive results with this 9-module self-study activity! 

Kind Dining® is cost effective, inspirational, experiential, online/on-demand, trainer-led, 9-module eLearning training series designed to help improve the dining experience in senior living communities.The course helps organizations prosper through creating communities of belonging and reducing the epidemic of loneliness, isolation and the feelings of not belonging exacerbated by COVID. It offers immediate skill building for staff to develop skills around kindness, civility, empathy, a unique brand of hospitality, effective communication, food safety and serving skills that close service gaps, raise quality standards, resident satisfaction, and staff retention across departments, beginning with the dining environment.

Kind Dining® Provided Certificate of Training for CDR: 11 CPEUs (including 1 for ethics) or CBDM:11 CPEUs (9 general, 1 sanitation, and 1 ethics)

The Kind Dining® 9-module eLearning training series is evidence-based and values driven. It offers immediate skill-building to develop staff personal, interpersonal, and technical skills to create relationship success in senior living community settings for all–service members, health care professionals, and administrative leaders. The series delivers training in an online, on-demand format. Each module varies in length depending on the topic and features an expert instructor. Learners just need a computer with speakers and internet access. It takes approximately 11 hours to complete all 9 sessions.

All participants learn foundational methods that will prepare them for professional roles and leadership. This training curriculum specifically focuses on raising service standards and teaches unique principles of hospitality, service with kindness, dignity, courtesy, civil communication, and team skills, and how to ethically manage in the dining environment and beyond, including for those new to the workforce and unsure of their role.

Kind Dining eLearning Module Titles (Modules not sold individually)

Foundations of Great Service – Modules 1-3
1. Can we make a house a HOME? – Creating Community
2. WHO are you serving? – Respecting the Aging Process
3. What do YOU bring to the Table – How to be Successful

Nuts and Bolts of Great Service – Modules 4-6
4. Making it Personal- Knowing How to be Ready to Serve
5. The Symphony of Service – Applying What You Know Correctly
6. If I Only Had a Heart – Caring to Become Better

Maintaining Great Service – Modules 7-9
7. Emotion Control – Dealing With the Hard Parts of Serving
8. Don’t Touch That! – Preventing Food Borne Illness & Spread of Infection
9. Polishing Service – Respecting the Company that Hired Us

About the Handbook, Quizzes, Exam and CPE Certificate
Each online module of this self-study course has a specific downloadable handbook. Throughout each course, we have challenge questions and invite learners to reflect, write, and recap their thoughts as they progress through the 9 modules and their handbooks. Each Module has a 10-question quiz for all learners to complete. Upon passing the quiz and submitting the Kind Dining Evaluation Form, Kind Dining will send you via email your Certificate of Completion.

Please note: Once you purchase this product, you will be contacted by Kind Dining via email with your login and password, and a link to the online course materials. You will be using the Kind Dining platform directly for all course materials, exams and certificates. You will have 45 days to complete the program unless Kind Dining grants additional time for completion. This program is not hosted on the BDA website.

Course includes electronic documents and 1 certificate with passing grade.

Overall Training Series Objectives:

  • To reinforce to all staff the importance of their residents’ dining experience as a valuable part of their daily quality of life and sense of belonging in your community.
  • To emphasize behaviors and build competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) necessary to create an optimum dining experience.
  • To foster a sense of teamwork and cooperation that includes working across disciplines as well as within departments.
  • To empower serving staff to own the dining experience and perform the skills necessary to reduce serving errors and make good point-of-service decisions at all levels of care.
  • Set foundation and infrastructure to implement and then sustain person-centered hospitality

After completing this continuing professional education course, the learner should be able to:

  1. Examine your relationship with residents and how that affects their dining experience
  2. Describe how the aging population is changing and how it will affect you
  3. Translate the company’s mission statement into something you can get behind
  4. Boost your job security and job satisfaction through learning new skills to become more valuable to your company
  5. Explore why it is important to start service on time, properly set up the dining room, and what actions create an environment residents feel at home in
  6. Handle foods and utensils safely and hygienically
  7. Be able to interact/communicate with peers and residents in a way that nurtures a healthy sense of community
  8. Practice how to become appreciated for being of service.

This course is intended for: RDNs, NDTRs and CDMs

CDR Activity Number (from Kind Dining®): 169490 Self Study Activity Type: 740 Web-based

CPE Level: 1-3 (depending on module)

Suggested CDR Performance Indicators:

  • 1.1.7 Builds collaborative relationships to encourage professional growth and development.
  • 2.3.3 Identifies opportunities for shared benefit and vision.
  • 2.4.3 Models behaviors that maximize group participation by consulting, listening and communicating clearly.
  • 7.2.10 Demonstrates knowledge of the causes of foodborne illness and applies required practice to reduce risk.

Note: Numerous other Performance Indicators may apply.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Academy) and Commission on Dietetic Registration(CDR) are not responsible for the provider’s interpretation of the Academy/CDR Code of Ethics for the Nutrition and Dietetics Profession or its enforcement as it relates to the scenarios and content presented in this activity.

Certifying Board of Dietary Managers (CBDM):

The Certifying Board for Dietary Managers (CBDM) the credentialing body for the Association of Nutrition and Food Service Professionals (ANFP) has approved Kind Dining for 11 Continuing Professional Education Units/Credits including 9 general, 1 sanitation, and 1 for ethics. Topics Include:

  • Business Operations – Implement cost-effective procedures
  • Foodservice – Implement Continuous Quality Improvement Procedures for Foodservice Department
  • Nutrition: Gather Data – Identify nutrition problems and client rights
  • Personnel and Communication – Manage professional interactions

Each CDM in attendance will be required to report their CE hours by logging into their online account at www.ANFPonline.org.
CDMs are to retain a copy of the certificate of completion in the event they are audited.
From CBDM: “All CBDM Prior Approved programs are subjected to the CE hour limitations for a program type as defined by CBDM policy. For more information, please refer to The CBDM Guide to Maintaining your Credential”.

Note: Upon passing the quiz and exam, and submitting the Kind Dining Evaluation form located in slide 19 (the Thank You slide) of Module 9, and the CDR Critical Thinking Tool (for RDNs and NDTRs only) located in the Resource Tab on the Kind Dining website, next to the handbook in Module 9, Higher Standards will send you your Kind Dining Certificate of Completion and your CPEU Certificate of Completion.

This self-study course includes access to the online modules, PDF Handbooks, a downloadable PDF Handbook for each moduele, and an online exam with multiple choice questions. Kind Dining allows 45 days to complete the series (additional time may be granted upon request). Upon passing the test, the learner can submit the Kind Dining® Evaluation form and KInd Dining® will send you your Certificate of Completion.

Kind Dining® curriculum is designed to assist companies that don’t have time or resources to create their own training. The foundation of Kind Dining® is rooted in raising service standards and teaching relational principles around our unique brand of hospitality and treating others with kindness, civility, and dignity. Throughout the series, servers are taught to respect residents and their home environment as they perform their work.  At the same time they learn foundational serving skills and benefit from the improved atmosphere of teamwork and communication.

Purchasing Instructions – Individual:
After registration and payment, Kind Dining will contact you via email with your login and password, and a link to the online course materials. Upon receiving your login and password, you will have 45 days to complete the coursework.

Purchasing Instructions – Group:
If you are purchasing for 2 or more people, please purchase the course for each individual separately so that each person has their own unique link as required for the certificate of completion. The individual learner information i.e., name, email, username and password, certificate, and confirmation of course completion, is tied directly to the individual name and email address provided with the order purchased. Only the person whose name and email that was sent to Kind Dining at the time the order is placed will receive a certificate of completion.

Please contact us at info@beckydorner.com if you have additional questions.

Once your purchase is completed on the BDA site, Kind Dining will email you within 2-3 business days with your access information. There are no refunds after training materials have been sent. Continuing education credit will be given upon successful completion of all required areas of the course. Online training is not shareable, not returnable, and not transferable.

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I just completed the Kind Dining course, and I thought it was wonderful! Before starting my internship at OHSU, I worked as a cook and server at a senior living facility. Working through the modules today highlighted some of our successes and areas of improvement. I wish my team and I had the opportunity to go through that training because it would have improved team unity and resident satisfaction.
- Kind Dining: Bringing Warmth to the Table: A Training Series for Senior Living Communities
Kelsie Bryant, she/her, Dietetic Intern, Graduate Programs in Human Nutrition, Oregon Health and Science University
Cindy definitely brought warmth to the table with her "Kind Dining" training. Within days of the training, the employees had connected with Cindy's ideas, and these brought positive results not only for the residents but for the employees too.
- Kind Dining: Bringing Warmth to the Table: A Training Series for Senior Living Communities
Shelley Carley, RD, Director of Food and Nutrition, New York Presbyterian Hospital
Kind Dining® training is essential for dietitians and is a lifeline to new and experienced supervisors to better navigate the complexities of their community dining services and community residents' expectations. Learn how to understand residents' needs and abilities, and better communicate to create appropriate relationships, how to problem-solve, how to demonstrate respect, kindness, attend to the needs of community residents and gain confidence in their skills and service to others.
- Kind Dining: Bringing Warmth to the Table: A Training Series for Senior Living Communities
Terese Scollard, MBA, RDN, LD, FAND
Since we implemented KInd Dining training, residents eat better, socialize more, and have family members come to eat with them. They are not just eating for nutrition, they are eating for quality of life. There are just so many aspects that have come together at once, you really need to see it to realize the depth and breadth of what is going on here- and we're doing all this on a nursing home budget!
- Kind Dining: Bringing Warmth to the Table: A Training Series for Senior Living Communities
Kathy O’Hara, RD, Villa Crest Nursing Retirement Center

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