Thank you, Chef: Lacey Rainey honored for transforming senior living dining
Corey Plante
WOONSOCKET – Chef Lacey Rainey says she still remembers staring at her computer screen for 20 minutes in disbelief at her home in Woonsocket after learning she’d been named a Palate Pleaser in the inaugural DISHED Senior Living Dining Innovation Awards.
“I was awestruck,” she told The Breeze. “It still hasn’t really settled in. My wife will tell anyone who will listen that I won a national award, and she tells me, ‘don’t downplay it! It’s amazing.’”
The award, presented by Senior Housing News publisher WTWH Healthcare, recognizes visionaries “transforming senior living dining.” Rainey, who has led New Pond Village’s food and beverage team in Walpole, Mass., since 2023, was honored for her creativity in menu creation, use of ingredients, and culinary techniques.
Her path to the kitchen wasn’t linear. Growing up in Gardner, Mass., she dreamed of being “either a rock star or a chef,” inspired in part by watching Iron Chef Japan on late-night TV. Music came naturally.
Her father, James Rainey, is a pianist, and she still plays bass in her all-female band, the Angry Debutantes. Cooking, she said, became the other great passion. After training at Schriever Job Corps and the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, she worked at restaurants including Gardner Ale House and the Deerfield Inn.
Rainey’s move into senior living dining was sparked by a job offer promising better work-life balance, and perhaps most enticing, a kitchen that closed before midnight. She soon realized the work offered more than just reasonable hours.
“Every meal we cook here makes a difference, and it means a lot more than cooking anywhere else,” she said.
At New Pond Village, a Benchmark Senior Living community, Rainey leads with a “side-by-side” approach.
“I won’t ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do,” she said. “I sweep, I mop, I do dishes. Everyone in my team would do the same.”
She welcomes feedback from residents on a daily basis and is known for weaving their requests into the menu when possible. Her offerings range from honey and fig-glazed salmon with parmesan risotto, to Vietnamese pho and bao buns. Rainey said these dishes reflect the adventurous palates of New Pond’s independent and assisted living residents, noting that as the Baby Boomer generation entered retirement age, she noticed a shift in the culinary preferences of residents.
One of Rainey’s biggest priorities working in senior living dining has been replacing pre-breaded and frozen items with fresh, scratch-made dishes. At a previous position, she recommended that administrators swap corporate-issued prefab products for raw ingredients, and she even proved they could save money while dramatically improving quality.
She worked with her teams to prepare chicken, fish, and vegetables in-house, relying on fresh herbs, garlic, and seasoning instead of salt-heavy packaged foods.
“It became a challenge: how can we make really good food that’s healthy and not frozen?” she said. “Little changes like that make a huge difference.”
Looking ahead, she hopes to make New Pond Village “the benchmark” for dining in senior living. “I want 100 percent satisfaction from my residents,” she said. “Sky’s the limit with the menus. I want us to be known for our food.”
