Ensuring happiness through meals: Songjiang's innovative approach to elderly meal services

Shanghai's Songjiang District has led the way in providing eldery citizens with great, balanced meals and winning the approval of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

As the population ages, elderly meal services have become more necessary. Songjiang District has dealt with the issue by revising policies, strategic planning, and creating new dining spots and cafeterias for the seniors. By innovating delivery methods and using digital technology to bridge the "last mile" for meal services, they now satisfy the hunger of the elderly population in the district.

Recently, the Ministry of Civil Affairs highlighted Songjiang as a model for government-enterprise cooperation and digital empowerment in elderly meal services.

A Digital Leap: Meal Delivery for the Elderly

This innovation allows senior citizens like Ms Ji in Mingzhongyuan, Xinqiao Town, to order a healthy and pleasant dinner through the "Ele.me" app. Her children order online to deliver a healthy supper to her doorstep.

"The key is that a double-portion meal with two meat dishes and one vegetable dish costs only 28.6 yuan after deducting the elderly meal subsidy," Ms Ji said. "Cooking at home required long grocery excursions. My husband and I would make multiple dishes and eat the leftovers for a day or two, which was unhealthy. Professional dinner delivery is now available without leaving home."

Bridging the Last Mile: From Community Cafeterias to Home Delivery

Elderly meal services are a "small matter" for the elderly but a "big issue" for the public. As more seniors live alone, their families worry about their daily meals.

As the elderly food service system in Xinqiao Town improved in 2022, residents began using community cafeterias for clean, affordable meals. Seniors sometimes have trouble going out for meals due to weather or mobility limitations, making meal delivery services a beneficial "last mile" alternative.

Zhang Hui, director of the Community Construction Management Office in Xinqiao Town, said they contemplated using volunteers for lunch delivery. Xinqiao Town's 35 square kilometers and 190,000 residents, including 26,000 elderly, made traditional distribution methods ineffective.

Market-Based Solutions to Social Problems

Food delivery platforms already provide effective services to urban people; thus, Xinqiao Town changed its focus. It employed marketing strategies to address the issue of senior meal delivery.

Guided by its strong reform values, Xinqiao Town contacted "Ele.me" in February 2023. Through repeated technical and operational debates, they began digitalizing community meal delivery services.

The parties signed a partnership agreement in August 2023. "Ele.me" offered "online ordering and offline delivery." The platform gave registered elderly meal subsidy participants "Elderly Meal Red Envelopes" daily to cover meal expenditures. This was the first project to link a food delivery platform with government subsidies for elderly meals, addressing the urgent need for senior meal delivery and digitally connecting government-run community cafeterias with professional delivery services.

Reforms with Impact: Combining Innovation and Implementation

Reforms must be bold and executed carefully. "During the design phase, considering that some elderly people were not familiar with app operations, we launched the 'Filial Piety Action,' allowing a designated family member to help with ordering," Hui said. Other social forces also participated. For example, the Lingang Public Welfare Foundation funded online food assistance and collaborated to provide three meals a day to lonely elders in town.

They provided a lunch service for the elderly by combining government organizational skills with enterprise competence. Since its inception, the service has grown from a few hundred meters to an entire town. Over 2,000 elderly people order online meals each month.

While improving online meal delivery, Xinqiao Town listened to seniors' meal reviews and resident comments to improve services and quality. "The red envelope amount has increased from 8 to 10 yuan, making older dinners more affordable. Zhang Hui said they added 'Customize Your Own' meal options to the 'One Week No Repeats' and 'Nutrition' meal sets to let seniors pick what they want.

The meal boxes were converted from multi-compartment single boxes to multi-boxes, boosting portion size without raising pricing. The ordering interface was also improved for seniors' aesthetics and usability.

Beyond Meals: A Reflection of Community Warmth

Geriatric dining service improvements and innovations go beyond one meal. They represent the city's warmth and quality, showing its potential for growth.

In recent years, Songjiang has built a "15-minute community life circle," targeting locations with a high elderly population and lunch service demand. They have expanded the supply of elderly meal service by inviting local catering companies to run elderly meal facilities, introducing excellent urban chain meal service enterprises into community senior cafeterias, and using "central kitchens" to deliver meals.

Songjiang has 25 community senior cafeterias and 190 elderly lunch locations as of the first half of 2024, benefiting over 58,000 seniors, according to the district's civil affairs bureau.

Expanding Support: Subsidies and Smart Solutions

Policy subsidies improved senior cafeterias. Seniors over 65 with local household registration in Songjiang District, as well as those over 80, receive a 4-yuan meal subsidy each day, while others may receive a 2-yuan subsidy.

Because of these developments, more community cafeterias in Songjiang are utilizing different strategies to meet the elderly's dining needs. Jiuliting Subdistrict has an "intelligent settlement system" with facial recognition and frictionless payment. Sheshan Town's smart self-service cafeteria lets seniors choose and weigh meals by grams. Digital empowerment promotes long-term growth in elderly meal services.

In Zhongshan Subdistrict, a catering firm runs the Zhongshan Happiness Community Cafeteria, which offers reasonable meal sets for seniors and Songjiang-inspired cuisine that community members love.

Yuan Yuan Catering, which uses smart apps, runs senior cafeterias in Huangqiao Village, Maogang Town, and Chedun Town in Songjiang. Yuan Yuan senior cafeterias have computerized panels that display fat, calories, and other nutritional content for each meal, allowing seniors to "see nutrition at a glance."

Some senior cafeterias in Songjiang use "public construction and operation" models. Since 2012, Fangsong Subdistrict's Community Cafeteria has provided elders with three daily meals.

All things revolve around livelihoods. Every Songjiang meal reveals the elderly's "happiness on the tip of the tongue." They congregate in small groups at mealtimes to enjoy food and conversation, or they feel the convenience of home-delivered meals without leaving their homes.

"Eating well," "eating affordably," and "eating conveniently" have become increasingly common in the elderly's daily lives.