New Senior Living Dining Service Director/Chef Chris Weller
Dogwood Village Senior Living has extended a “great big welcome to me” as Senior Living’s Dining Service Director/Chef Chris Weller noted recently. Chris’ plan for progressive improvements centered on customer service and resident care will enhance resident’s dining choices and provide residents the ability to easily make suggestions for ongoing improvement.
Chris began working in the family restaurant business at age 15 and completed formal training at the New York Institute of Technology School for Culinary Arts by the age of 22. Upon graduation Chris worked with Marriott Hotels in the New York City area where he gained much experience in running a high volume kitchen. Chris cites training he gained working with Marriott’s ownership of the famed Ritz-Carlton hotels as providing him with invaluable training in customer service.
At age 24 Chris decided to accept a job change from hotel dining services to a collegiate dining service that would allow him more family time. Overseeing a number of facilities that fed the student population provided more opportunity to serve large groups of guests and learn to manage many employees. “We fed about three-thousand people an hour during the mid day meal” Chris says. It was a pace he enjoyed but found he desired an environment that permitted more interaction with his guests. Chris soon learned that the growing Senior Living segment was such an environment.
At age 33 Chris began his service in long-term retirement communities as Dining Service Director of the Baptist Home in Culpeper. “The satisfaction of serving people became my mission” Chris stated. He remained with the Baptist Home for fourteen years. In 2008 Chris accepted an offer to join the Culpeper Regional Hospital to aid in the conversion of their meal service to the room service format that allowed patients more choice in meals during their hospital stay. While Chris enjoyed the opportunity to learn about dining service operations for acute care, he still longed for the personal service unique to residential care communities such as Dogwood Senior Living. Accepting a position within such a community located in downtown Washington, DC, he found himself once again fulfilling his personal mission of serving seniors. It was the daily commute time of five hours to and from Washington from his home in Fredericksburg that had diminished the amount and quality of family time enough to have him seek a position closer to home. “I was blessed to learn that Dogwood was looking for someone with the skills and experience I have and that I am able to continue my mission of serving seniors” Chris states. “I am looking forward to getting to know and serve the residents, their families, and the community of Orange” Chris said recently.