At Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Pittsburgh, Parkhurst Dining Services partnered with Highmark Health Services to implement a healthy catering menu. Dave Manz, district manager for Parkhurst, talks about how the menu was developed.
“The catering menu features healthy options for all areas of catering services, such as no Coke or Pepsi and no cookies. Instead we offer juice, tea, water and fresh fruit. Also, all entrées and sides are healthy recipes from Parkhurst’s Whole Body Cuisine menu program. Developing the menu was a challenge, especially in saying no to regular dessert requests. Our managers have more than 20 healthy dessert options to recommend. Our catering guests love the entrée selections such as turkey with dried cranberries. My advice would be make sure you have marketing and open communication with catering meeting planners—that’s been important to create a successful rollout. Our chefs met with two dieticians to select the menu items that would be popular and still fit the wellness goals. We found selecting healthy customer-friendly items like a healthy chicken parmesan really helped with guest satisfaction.”