Bendigo Health kitchen staff will hang up their aprons at the Anne Caudle Centre for the final time this week.
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The kitchen’s 80 employees are about to move to a facility inside the hospital’s new campus, where catering company Spotless Services will assume responsibility for feeding hungry patients.
The transition is not without some sadness for long-serving staff members who will take with them fond memories of the Anne Caudle campus.
Operations manager Marie Benson, who has worked on site for 23 years, described her colleagues as “a family”.
In the past 20 years, her team has turned out almost 12 million meals, an average of 1700 plates every day.
But the menu is ever-evolving, with the type of dishes coming out of the kitchen changing as more is learnt about food allergies and handling procedures.
“As people get sicker and more drugs get used, the better we’ve got to become,” Ms Benson said.
“Things are healthier now too, with no preservatives and no salt.”
Suppliers, storage temperatures, cooking methods and delivery times are finely managed by the kitchen staff to care for ailing patients, especially those with weakened immune systems.
But their efforts do not go unnoticed.
Even though the kitchen is out of sight of hospital wards, its staff often received cards or letters from patients thanking them for their hospitality.
In fact, Ms Benson and her co-workers, site supervisors Louise Hayes and Jenny Cobb, had all been treated at the hospital in the past, enjoying meals prepared by their colleagues.
“I still like to try the food,” Ms Hayes said.
Hospital patients were not the only ones lucky enough to sample the women’s work either, with the kitchen producing dishes for nursing homes and Meals on Wheels programs throughout the Loddon Mallee region.
In the past, meals were also prepared for emergency service workers battling fires and floods.
Bendigo Health chief executive officer John Mulder, who thanked staff in a presentation dinner at the All Seasons Hotel last week, described the new kitchen as a “state of the art facility”.
“The new hospital presents a fantastic opportunity for this group of staff to continue their careers in an incredible new environment,” he said.
The Anne Caudle Centre kitchen will be demolished and the space landscaped as the hospital prepares for the official opening of its new site in January next year.
But Bendigo Health leaders are still seeking $52 million from state and federal funding to tear down the Anne Caudle towers and establish a Centre of Ambulatory Excellence on the site.
In defence of hospital food
Anne Caudle Centre chef Tegan Burge gets angry when people complain about hospital food.
The 30-year-old Bendigo Health employee said the common perception that hospital catering lacked flavour was unfair because cooks had to prepare meals for patients with strict dietary requirements.
“We have to cater for everyone from one kitchen,” she said.
Site supervisor Jenny Cobb also defended the meals coming out of her kitchen and remembered catering a hospital function where one guest declared they “would never eat hospital food”.
“Little did they know that’s what they were eating,” Ms Cobb said, laughing.
Ms Burge has worked in the Anne Caudle kitchen for five years and said she enjoyed the fast-paced nature of hospital catering.
But her job presented its own unique challenges, especially when it came to the consistency of food.
“We have lots of patients who can’t swallow, therefore we’ve got to have a puree diet,” she said.