Renovation Report: Carolinas Medical Center kitchen renovation

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CHARLOTTE – For the next many months at the main campus of Carolinas Medical Center, the kitchen staff won’t have a permanent place to call work.

The cooks and dishwashers and other staffers who prepare and distribute food and clean up afterward at the hospital will be operating out of a modular kitchen, composed of a number of trailers – hauled in by truck – doing their best impression of a functional kitchen.

In November, Carolinas HealthCare System began the first phase of a $25 million kitchen and food-services renovation at its main campus in Dilworth. Construction documents have the project reaching completion in January 2016, but Tim Ledgerwood, vice president of the facilities management group of CHS, said he hopes that the temporary kitchen facility will trim a few months off the construction timeline.

“Kitchen renovation sounds mundane and small and like it wouldn’t amount to much, but it really is a very large renovation project,” Ledgerwood said. “It’s also somewhat costly because our kitchen is right in the heart of the hospital and the hospital has been built out for years around it. It has several floors above it and around it.

“The kitchen – parts of it date to the 1950s – it takes a lot to upgrade a kitchen.”

The goal is to modernize the kitchen and the way in which the hospital delivers meals to patients. Kevin McCarthy, spokesman for CHS, said the systems and equipment in the kitchen itself will be replaced. Each of the hospital’s 12 floors are also set to get an installation that will allow patients to order on-demand meals.

For years, CHS has delivered meals to patients in the traditional manner. The patient is given a small menu with a few choices for food; they place their orders; and those orders are delivered at meal times. But once renovations are complete at the main campus, that won’t be the only way for patients to get their food delivered.

“Under our current offsite meal preparation system, you have to order several hours in advance what you’re going to have,” Ledgerwood said. “A patient may be feeling really good at that time and they want a good meal, but when it’s time to eat they may be feeling worse and not be able to eat what they ordered.”

Ledgerwood said part of it is about controlling waste, while giving patients another food option. He said under the new system, if a patient isn’t hungry at a regular meal time, it won’t be a problem. They can order when they’re ready to eat instead of trying to force down cold Salisbury steak and potatoes.

Once the kitchen renovations are complete, McCarthy said, patients will be able to choose from a wider selection of food than the hospital has previously offered. In the meantime – much like the cooks in the kitchen trailers – patients will have to deal with a reduced menu and no on-demand service while construction is in progress.

“It really saves on food costs and food waste,” Ledgerwood said. “A lot of people now don’t have a choice as to what they want and they don’t like what they get. It they can order what they want, it’s less likely to go to waste.”

Project description: Carolinas HealthCare System is renovating its kitchen, as well as installing a meal-delivery system on each floor, in order to modernize its food services at the main campus of Carolinas Medical Center.

Address: 1000 Blythe Boulevard

Project cost: $25 million

Square feet under renovation: 29,600 square feet

Contractor: Rodgers Builders Inc.

Construction began: November

Expected completion: January 2016