Age-Friendly Practices At Moose’s Cookhouse

Last week we were lucky enough to sit down with Leeanne White with Moose’s Cookhouse, one of the restaurants a part of our initiative. We discussed their approach to working towards becoming a more sustainable, economic, social, environmentally-friendly business.
Over the past year, their team has committed to creating a more age-friendly experience for all of their customers.  
If you’ve never heard of Moose’s Cookhouse, it is a local, long-time restaurant (they just celebrated their 26th anniversary a few weeks ago!), welcoming of all. Here you can come as you are, feel like you belong, and put away the worries of the world.

Despite the hardships of the ongoing pandemic, The Moose, with help from The Village at Canadore College, has diligently been planning and learning from the community about how to inclusively serve all ages and ensure an outstanding experience. 
Below are some of most valuable insights from our interview with Leeanne: 

What inspired you to begin working on making these changes? 
Before this project began we asked ourselves - “How can we all be accountable to a healthy community?”. We really believe that the private sector can play a role in contributing! 
Age-friendly practices are inclusive to all! We want our restaurant to welcome everyone, and the strategies or markers for wellbeing for older adults can include various other members of the population. 
Promoting these changes in our restaurant also has the opportunity to inspire our own clients to make similar choices in their lives - the potential ripple effect is really exciting!

​How are you going about making these changes? 
Currently, we are still in the planning stages. We really want to honour the voice of this population, so they are the ones driving the direction of the project. At the moment, we have released a survey to gather perspectives and feedback from the community. We would love more feedback, so if you’d like, please check out the survey here.

What were some of the biggest takeaways from your survey so far?  
We have already learned so much and gained tremendous insight from our survey results. Our biggest takeaway so far is that when asked why people go out to eat - food was not the most popular reason! People go out to restaurants to see and be with others, the social piece of the experience was the most important! 

When we focus on the social aspect, it forces us to reimagine how we do business - it is much more about the relational experience rather than “good food out fast”. This feedback has inspired us to think about our own staff’s interactions with clients and how to improve this experience for everyone at Moose’s Cookhouse too.

This was critical information and backed the purpose of our project even more - if people go out so that they can enjoy time with their friends and family, then we need spaces to be accessible for all.
We continue to learn from the survey! Other insights include the possibility of adding smaller servings to the menu and the importance of language and how it can communicate important values.

What suggestions do you have for other businesses looking to increase their Age-friendly practices?
For us, the key was collaboration and learning. Our partnership with Canadore College helped to push us forward, and I want to say a big thank you to the Steering Committee at the Village for all of their help. 
The restaurant industry can be competitive.  We would like to create a shift: to be more collaborative and have the ability to work together towards an age-friendly experience for everyone. Our endgame of this project is to walk through the process and come out the other side with a model that we can share with other small businesses in the area - positively impacting the entire community here in North Bay. 

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Myself and the team here at Earth in a Nest are so excited to be partnered with innovative and committed businesses like Moose’s Cookhouse. 
The time and effort their team has put into learning, planning and growing their age-friendly practices is phenomenal, and is fully aligned with our values. 
As their partnership with Canadore College last year helped drive them forward, we hope that we can provide the same support and guidance in helping all of our businesses move forward with Eco-Age friendly practices. 

We are still in our infancy, but have great plans for the very near future for the how-to in assisting businesses to achieve these goals. An economically thriving, but environmentally and socially sustainable business model is possible.  
We want to thank all the businesses currently on board, and continue to ask that you help us add others to this growing initiative! 
The power of our collective force is extremely exciting, and alongside our newly formed partnership with Canadore College, we are very nearly ready to make a big difference for our business community, and for the Earth.