Dunedin Meals on Wheels Service

The new MOW menu was introduced into Invercargill on 11 January and to Dunedin on 18 January. The new service offers a three-week menu using meals that are prepared fresh then snap-frozen using the latest technology, in Tauranga and Auckland. Meals are then reheated in Southern District Health Board (SDHB) kitchens and delivered to recipients in the usual way.

A wide range of people tasted the new meals, both before and after they were introduced to recipients. A further tasting was conducted again by people from SDHB yesterday and they did not identify any concerns. However we have agreed with SDHB today to speak directly with community groups and recipients of MOW to identify what the specific issues are for each of them.

Compass Group NZ has been providing meals for Meals on Wheels services for over 20 years in New Zealand, and annually serves more than 380,000 meals nationwide. It’s important to us that all our meals are good quality and to ensure that recipients are getting the nutrition they need from them.

Any change in menu and meal service system takes time for people to get used to and there have been some recipients who have indicated they do not enjoy the new meals as much as the earlier ones. But we have also had much positive feedback.

Our enjoyment of food can be affected by lots of things and we must be careful not to create a situation where people don’t want to eat a meal before they even receive it.

Delivery of meals through Meals-on-Wheels is a service that recipients can continually start and stop for a variety of reasons. Whenever we receive a cancellation we will always seek feedback for the reason but this isn’t always provided. In January the numbers are lowest for recipients because of changes in their care arrangements being made for this period.

Because this is a three-week menu we have the ability to make menu changes for items that aren’t widely popular with more popular dishes. This will be done immediately where a genuine issue is identified.

Quality monitoring is continuously done through regular meal checks, tastings and direct feedback from MOW recipients themselves. We encourage people to use the following means to provide us with any direct feedback to 0800 720 000.

ENDS

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