Overview:

When designing the Café Plus Concept, the goal was to create a community venue for older adults with a new kind of experience. The challenge? How to attract people into an older adult venue for them to benefit from services, programs and resources. The solution? Approach the challenge indirectly, by taking an everyday activity, such as eating, and connecting it with an environment that provides renewal, creates potential and offers support—all in a venue with retail appeal to avoid institutional stigma.

Mather LifeWays took the idea of creating a restaurant with tasty food, good customer service and affordable prices and connected it with resources, learning and wellness programs aimed at older adults. The Café Plus Concept connects to the community by getting end-user input in the initial development phase, opening the restaurant to the public, developing strong partnerships, developing community projects and serving as a hub for activities. 

What You Will Learn:

After this program, participants will:

• Gain a basic understanding of how the Cafés work and the services that are offered;
• Understand the importance of the physical layout and design in creating an “ageless” environment and attracting customers to programs;
• Be able to show the importance of a strong customer service orientation in the Café Plus model;
• Learn how the Café Plus model can be used to attract a younger older adult;
• See how the model is being adopted by other types of organizations.

Speaker:

Betsie Sassen, Executive Director, Cafe Development, Mather Lifeways, will show you how the Café Plus Concept works in facilities she works with and share ideas on how you can apply this strategy to your environments for aging.

Materials: 

• Download the presentation (PowerPoint file)
• Listen to the recorded webinar, Audio (This is a large mp3 file; download times may be slow.)